Amen. Well, turn with me to Nahum chapter 3. We continue our sermon series about the fall of Jerusalem and the coming of God's heavenly kingdom by wrapping up Nahum chapter 3 today. Specifically, we'll be looking at verses 8 through 19. Nahum chapter 3, verses 8 through 19. Are you better than thieves? that sat by the Nile with water around her, her rampart a sea, and her water her wall. Cush was her strength, Egypt too, and that without limit. Put and the Libyans were her helpers. Yet she became an exile. She went into captivity. Her infants were dashed in pieces at the head of every street. For her honored men, lots were cast, and all her great men were bound in chains. You also will be drunken. You will go into hiding, and you will seek a refuge from the enemy. All your fortresses are like fig trees with first ripe figs. If shaken, they fall into the mouth of the eater. Behold, your troops are women in your midst. The gates of your land are wide open to your enemies, and fire has devoured your bars. Draw water for the siege. Strengthen your forts. Go into the clay. Tread the mortar. Take hold of the brick mold, for their fire will devour you. The sword will cut you off, and it will devour you like the locust. Multiply yourselves like the locust. Multiply like the grasshopper. You increased your merchants more than the stars of the heavens. The locust spreads its wings and flies away. Your princes are like grasshoppers, your scribes like clouds of locusts, settling on the fences in a day of cold, but when the sun rises, they fly away, and no one knows where they are. Your shepherds are asleep, O King of Assyria, and your nobles slumber. Your peoples are scattered on the mountains with no one to gather them, and there is no easing of your hurt, and your wound is grievous. All who hear the news about you clap their hands over you, for upon whom has not come your unceasing evil. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our Lord will stand forever. Please be seated. Speaking truth to power is a very popular concept. You know something is popular when everybody tries to take credit for it. When there's a fight over who gets praised, you know that it's truly popular. And there are a lot of people who try to take credit for that idea of speaking truth to power. Fans of ancient Greek and Rome will say the concept comes from them. There was a Greek word, a phrase, known as paresia, and the claim was that was a practice of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Similar, the followers of Mahatma Gandhi say that speaking truth to power came from him and his adherents. They used the phrase satyagraha to refer to what Gandhi was doing, and that's the origin they claim. John F. Kennedy had a civil program by the name of speaking truth to power. Perhaps it came from that president. You'll find a lot of altered quotes of the Koran trying to fit that phrase into different verses, but it doesn't really come from there. It comes from a fairly unassuming source. It comes from a movement, a conference hosted by the Quakers. And that's confusing because in America, the Quakers are more known for their breakfast cereal than their political philosophy, right? So, who really came up with this idea? And maybe as Christians, should we be a little bit more critical about the concept overall? Because if someone is speaking truth to power, it's Nahum. This almost faceless prophet we know very little about. A man of no great wealth or power, prestige, there's no monuments or vases we found that bear his name. But when he's speaking to Assyria, faithful Bible commentators will point out that he's almost definitely writing during the very pinnacle of the Assyrian Empire, during the height of the reign of the king Ashurbanipal. That's when Nahum is writing. Is he speaking truth to power, or is there maybe something more complex going on here? I think that's what we're gonna find, right? We know that we as Christians, although we are not ordained prophets of the Lord with new revelation, we are called, we are called to speak the truth of God's word, even to those who occupy positions of great power and prestige. What does that look like? Does it look like speaking truth to power? Let's see what Nahum wants to show us this morning. Now, Nahum is going to have basically three messages for the king of Assyria. His first message is, you aren't safe in your city. You're not safe. The second message is similar. He's going to say, you're not safe in your resources, in your wealth. And the last thing Nahum's going to say to the last king of Assyria is, you are not safe even in your power. Even in your kingship, you're not safe. in your city, in your resources, and in your power. So we start with the idea of a city. And we've talked before in this series and other series that cities are an important biblical theological idea. In the ancient world, cities could be places of great violence and danger, but they were, by and large, inarguably safer than the wilderness. There is no kind of Pax Romana, Pax Britannica, Pax Americana. There's not widespread peace in the ancient world. And to be in the wilderness, your best hope is to run and hide because if animals or brigands or famine came upon you, you were going to die. And so cities are often viewed biblically as a place of respite and safety. And that's why it's powerful that the prophet Nahum spends no small amount of time saying the very thing that you're clinging to is in fact unsafe. You're not safe in your city. And by way of example, he's going to talk about another ancient powerful city, which is the city of Thebes. And we can understand historically that Nahum is very probably writing this message months or only years after Thebes has fallen, right? Because it was the King Ashurbanipal that led great crusades and military ventures to crush Egypt and to bring it under heel with totality to the Assyrian Empire. And so in a sense, you know, we're taught not to do this in our sermons. I don't think it's a bad practice, but Nahum was basically referencing pop culture right now, recent historical events. The big news across the ancient world right now is that Mighty Thieves has fallen. And so Nahum's going to bring that tension point, that really famous event, into play. And he's going to remind the Assyrians that the very reason that they're proud, that they're so mighty that they could have conquered Thebes, is actually proof that a city isn't a safe place. And he's going to detail the things that Assyrians themselves know very well. It was Assyrian soldiers, it was maybe even the king of Assyria who traveled with them, who can remember how safe Thebes looked. It sat by the Nile, the greatest conduit of wealth in the ancient world. The Nile would flood every year, and in its flooding of the different plains, it would produce a harvest that basically fed the Roman Empire for hundreds of years. That's how wealthy the Nile is. And so first, you would think Thebes is safe because it's wealthy. Second, you would think it's safe because it has natural defenses. It sits by a river and the ocean. So it's hard to even attack. Not only does thieves have man-made walls, Nahum is saying thieves have God-made walls that make it impossible to attack. It has unmatched riches, it has unmatched protection, and he goes on to say it has unmatched allies, which is a true interesting phenomenon in the ancient world. Assyria, Babylon, Persia, so many of the great empires of the ancient world fell because when they would conquer nearby areas, it would create this enmity, this conflict. How dare you conquer my people? And so it is that Babylon, a conquered city, will eventually rise up and destroy Assyria, just as Nahum has prophesied. But not so with Egypt. Because of a lot of intermarrying and alliances, the surrounding nations actually loved Egypt. They had this great relationship. And so Thebes has unnatural, we might say, unnatural wealth, unnatural protection, and even unnatural allies, or at least uncommon allies. And these countries are listed. Cush put the Libyans. If you were to attack Thebes, all of these other nations would come to their aid. But he points out what's just happened with the king and all the Assyrians now. Yet, despite all of these strengths, all of these worldly strengths, she has become an exile. She had every reason to trust in the strength and the power of the natural world, and yet, her very infants are being killed in the streets. This is put into another picture in verse 11, right? You will be drunken and go into hiding. And so it's drunkenness is, especially in Proverbs, but in a lot of verses in the Bible shows kind of that inversion that God does with the wealth and power of the world. Wine, Ecclesiastes says, is given for merriment. It's a sign of wealth. It's a good thing, right? And so the Thebes is full of wine, should be a cause for celebration. Yet when Thebes trusts, or when Assyria trusts in its natural power, its natural resources, what happens is you actually just become drunk. You're worse off than you were before. You're stumbling around, you've been taken into captivity. And so all of the things that an empire to this very day might trust in, its natural resources, its power, its alliances, the very thing nations have always trusted in, God says, you should know better than anyone are insufficient to save you. In fact, these very things that you trust in are gonna be inverted to be your doom. Now, an illustration of this that the Bible itself uses, and again, I think we can uniquely understand as Arizonans in a hot desert, it's the idea of a mirage. It's a combination of two phenomena. One, and again, you've seen this if you've been in a Walmart parking lot in August, the heat itself will cause vapors to kind of appear in the air. And so what you're seeing is changing. And sometimes it can look like water. In great heat, it looks like there's water far off in the distance. And that's just because it's so hot, the air itself is changing. And of course, the other thing that happens is when we are thirsty, when we are deprived, we can hallucinate. So it's a very common phenomenon across the world in very hot places that you will have a mirage. So common that word now means something that's fake more than actually means the idea of water where it's not present. Well, that's what a city is. That's what natural power is in this world, Nehum is saying. It's a mirage. It looks like you have water. It looks like there's hope. It looks like you can trust in something. But it's a lie. And it's a lie from the beginning. Because the minute you start believing that the river, the Nile, or natural defenses, or power, or allies can actually save you against the Lord, you are every bit as doomed as the poor, thirst, starved, desert dweller crawling towards a mirage. That's how broken that idea is. Now, all of this is directed, interestingly, specifically to one person. We see the very last verse. That this part is now directed towards the king of Assyria himself. Right? We see this in the kind of covenant theology that's common in the Bible. That the king of Assyria is standing for all of Assyria, but he's still uniquely responsible as the shepherd king of his people. We're going to use shepherd youth. Shepherd was a common, ancient, Near Eastern picture of a king. And so Nahum is saying, like a bad shepherd, you are leading your sheep not towards water, but to a mirage where there is no water. And Nahum wants us to contrast that with the good shepherd we read about in John 10, who is Jesus Christ. And specifically, let's look at what Hebrews chapter 13 says about this good shepherd, unlike the shepherd of Assyria. Jesus, Hebrews 13 says, suffered outside of the gate. in order to sanctify his people through his own blood. Therefore, let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured. For there we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come. Through him, let us then continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God that is the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name and do not neglect to do good and to share what you have for such sacrifices are pleasing to God. so we see in Christ his Atonement and collecting his nation his people in Hebrews 13 is pretty much the opposite of what we see here of Assyria and of Thebes Right, they are trusting in the city of this world and they are placing himself in that city vainly against God the Good Shepherd goes outside of the city in order to save his people the cost of his own life and But that is so powerful and so trustworthy unlike the Nile and the ocean and Cush and Libya that is so trustworthy That it actually brings them to a city that can't even be touched with hands But it has to be, where does it have to be? Outside of the city. It has to be outside of Thebes, it has to be outside of Nineveh, because we seek a city that has not come yet. And that's the contrast. Not safety in the mirage of worldly cities, but going out to seek the city that hasn't come yet, because the Good Shepherd is good, we can trust that, unlike we can trust the King of Assyria. We also have the same inversion and conflict in our resources. Our resources are another thing that we can be tempted that Assyria is trusting in. There are five things here. Nahum is saying you aren't safe in your resources. There are five resources. Nahum wants the shepherd of Assyria, those who follow the shepherd of Assyria, to consider. The first in verse 12 is a fortress. Well, surely a fortress is the best resource if you want to be safe. It has walls, parapets, catapults, defense. It's the place you should be. And that was the reaction during, I mean, up to really the modern age with gunpowder. That's how we defended ourselves, right? Is you go behind the big walls and you sit there in safety. You all gather together, you ring the bell, everyone's inside the gates, you hang out inside the fortress. But Nahum is telling the shepherd of Assyria and everyone who's going to follow the shepherd of this world, when you run in behind the fortress, you're actually running to your own doom. And so the picture is like a fig tree, right? You're actually going to the very place that you'll be collected. Where do you get figs? Underneath the fig tree. Where do the followers of the false shepherds of this world go to receive judgment? Their own fortresses. They're actually running to their own doom, right? And God will shake them loose out of their supposed resource just as easily as a fig is shaken off of a fig tree. After a fortress, what's the next thing you're going to trust in if you're a king? Your soldiers. Soldiers verse 13 behold your troops and we should see in all of these things God through name is commanding the shepherd of a Syrian his people to run to these things He's like, yeah, you should run to your fortress because that's where you're gonna be collected like figs. Yeah, you should look at your soldiers collect them Where are they and the answer is if you trust in resources like soldiers, you'll find out that they are not up to the task and That's why they're called women. Women weren't made for physical hand-to-hand combat, right? This is a biological phenomenon called sexual dimorphism. Women are smaller. They have less bones in them. They aren't meant for this work. Neither are your soldiers when they fight against God. they are fundamentally not built to fight against God. And so they will disappear. They will become like phantoms, ghosts, and you'll realize you never had a hope in the first place. So your fortress becomes a place of judgment. Your soldiers become ghosts. It's like there's no one even in front of the gate. They're wide open. That's how little you can trust in your soldiers. You can't even trust in normal resources like water. Here's the longest section, 14 and 15. God is telling them, go get your water. Collect as much as you want. You can be the most water-rich city in the world, and it will not satiate your thirst. It will be insufficient to the task. But go ahead, go grab it. And use that water to make clay. to build up a fortress again. But all of your water will not satiate your thirst, and all of your water will not put out the fire of the Lord, which will devour you. That's how much you can trust in resources. What about merchants? What about the wealthy? Just actual gold. Maybe that will save us. He tells Assyria that they have merchants and wealth like no one has ever had. Truly, ancient historians remark that the wealth of Assyria does dwarf the wealth of Nineveh. dwarfs the wealth of any city that ancient historians had ever heard of, and yet so thoroughly destroyed will Nineveh be, that within a hundred years of its destruction, visitors come seeking the city, can't even find it in the sand. Where is your wealth now? God says it's like a locust that flees the minute there's a sound. That's also true of the last thing, the last resources. So we have a fortress, strongholds, we have soldiers, strong men, strong walls, strong men, strong resources, a lot of water, strong gold. Maybe at last we have strong leaders. We have someone who will stand up. God says, no, they're like locusts too. Everything's fine when they're not in trouble. They sit there doing their job, they look like they have wisdom, they look like they're trustworthy, but the minute the sun rises, look at the surety of that. What's the one thing we all know will happen every single day? The sun will rise. With that surety, your leaders will desert you. So you can't trust in strong walls, strong men, strong resources, strong wealth, or strong leaders. That is to say, if trusting in a city and in the natural resources are like a mirage, trusting in physical resources, walls or money, it's a Ponzi scheme. It's a Ponzi scheme. Because what's so kind of wicked about a Ponzi scheme is how it kind of suggests wealth. It lures you in, right? And a Ponzi scheme is another name for the classic kind of pyramid scheme where simply by collecting wealth from more and more people, they're gonna be distributing that selectively to people at the top. But there's never enough money at the bottom to cover up the corruption and loss at the top. All it can do is grow. And that's what God is saying the resources of this world are. They will proliferate like locusts. There will be billions of them, but all they're doing is eating up and destroying so that it's nothing left. And eventually, you will see, just like a Ponzi scheme, the money that you've been paying in, the friends that you've been bothering to come in and join in your scheme, at the end you'll find, like locusts, it's actually all gone. The promise of wealth has now destroyed the wealth that you had on your own. It's a complete inversion. And this is compared, the shepherd of Assyria who leads his people this way, whose resources are a Ponzi scheme, is compared to the good shepherd Jesus Christ. And we saw this when we read John chapter 10 this morning. Jesus warns that there will be hired hands, there will be traitors and brigands who come in, like a Ponzi scheme, to steal from you and to destroy you. Who will take from you. But Jesus said the Good Shepherd is the opposite of that. Three times, three times in calling himself the Good Shepherd, Jesus says, here's how you know I'm the Good Shepherd, is I don't take from you, you take from me. I lay down my life. I lay down my life, and then there's the discurses. I allowed down my life, and let's not be mistaken, no one's taking it from me. I'm doing this. There's no one at the top of the pyramid. I am laying down my life in my own accord. And so the resources of this world, if you trust them, will actually not only abandon you, but will take from you, will be worse off than when you started. Jesus says the opposite is true of the good shepherd. I will give you, out of myself, everything you need. So you can't trust in your city, you can't trust in your power. Third point is you're not safe, you're not, your resources, the third point is you're not safe in your power. This is verses 18 and 19. Let's consider where the power of a king comes from. So it comes from a city, it comes from geography, it comes from military might, it comes from resources, from merchants and leaders and soldiers. But Nahum was pointing out something that political theologians have agreed with, political theorists have agreed with for thousands of years, that there's basically two sources of power for a ruler, right? There are the lower classes, the people, the consent of the governed is one source of power, Right? And then it's the strength of the might. The upper class, the ruling, the rich, the powerful. That's another sort of power. Right? And so most political philosophy is kind of relating how all these things work together. Right? And Marx actually ended up thinking that all of life could be explained as a struggle between these two groups. And he's wrong. But we do understand that these are two main sources of power for a king. Right? You have the elite, the wealthy, the powerful. You have the consent of the people, the masses and their number. And that's what makes a king feel secure. But Nahum says, let's make no mistake. If you rise up against God, neither of these things will save you. Your shepherds and your nobles They're asleep at the wheel. All of their power is nothing. It's as strong as a sleeping person is against a bandit. And the people that you rely on, like the assents, the consent, the adoration, the loyalty, the fervency of the people, they're gone. They're in the mountains. At least your nobles are still in bed. They've fled and they no longer care about you at all. Your power is basically a phantom. It doesn't actually exist. And that's a powerful message to us today, when perhaps more than any time I know of as an amateur historian, we are told that the will of the people not only dictates what's politically expedient, but what is morally right. If 51% of a culture have decided that something that was wrong is right, it's not only right, but you're a hated bigot for disagreeing with it. Even though everyone had that position five minutes ago. We now live in a time and place where the ascent of the people, the mob, seems to be at its zenith. What we also see, as we always have, is those who have hands on the levers of power, wealth, prestige, also have an undue influence. And so the message of Nahum is not just about an empire thousands of years ago. Today, today, The false shepherds who are risen up against the church, against the gospel, against Christ, are still using those same levers today. If it's just harnessed through social media now, or if it's harnessed through pure wealth, or Ponzi schemes, it's still working the same way. And that's why the prophets are timeless. The message that Nahum is speaking of the good shepherd versus the shepherd of Assyria, the good shepherd versus all of the false shepherds in this world, is true of Assyria, but it was also true of Egypt, and of Babylon, and of Persia, and of Alexander, and of Caesar. It has always been true and it will be true. They will rise up, they will use all of these things, their cities, their geography, their resources, their power from the people, and they will claim that these things make them a shepherd. But against God, these things will fail. They will fail completely. And all that's going to be left is a grievous wound and a ceaseless pain. Now as an illustration for this, I want us to think about dynamite. Dynamite's a good stand-in for power because Alfred Nobel actually just took the Greek word for power, dunamis, and that's how he came up with the word dynamite. And when Alfred Nobel invented dynamite, let's be clear, it was for human flourishing. It was for construction. They were using unstable resources that would explode in front of you. Imagine that the only thing we all had to go on for our construction projects were those shaky roadside firework stands that pop up every July. That's how trustworthy the situation was. So dynamite was a good invention, it was. It allowed people to construct and to build, to drill wells for the thirsty, to harvest resources for those trying to build their homes. And power is like that in this world. We can't, as Christians, look at power God gives in this world and say it's always bad. That's wrong. Right, Romans 13 makes it clear. Peter makes it clear. That God has established those to have power over you. Parents, right, over children. But even governing authorities over nations. Romans 13 says this is good power. It is for your good because that power is supposed to be used to destroy, like dynamite, to break up evil and to allow good to flourish. But what do human beings do? We turn everything inside out. That's what sin is, right? It's turning goodness inside out and back onto ourselves. And so the very thing that God gave shepherds to help people, to protect them, to lead them, to guide them, false shepherds become obsessed with. And so although dynamite is good, I want you to imagine building your house not out of rocks harvested by dynamite, but by just sticks of dynamite piled one on top of each other. And the bed that you sleep in is a queen dynamite bed covered with 3,000 ply dynamite sheets, right? And your table from dynamite Ethan Allen is dynamite oak wood and little fuses. That's how the kings of Assyria are. They become obsessed with this power. And God's now saying, that is every bit as foolish as building your house out of diamond. The thing that you're clinging to will blow up in your face and you will have only an empty wound. Now we began this morning by talking about speaking truth to power. And the concept, I believe, is that if we are faithful to tell the truth to those who are powerful, we might convince them to instead turn around and do good. I think here's the Bible's answer that question maybe maybe And we see that is true of Nineveh, right Jonah goes to Nineveh and says all of these things. You're not safe in the city. You're not safe in your resources King he speaks to the king of Assyria. You are not safe in your power for the Lord is wrathful And they go, praise God, we repent. They cover themselves in sackcloth and that generation repents of their false shepherd. They stop trusting in the city and the resources and the power and they trust in Yahweh and they are delivered. And that generation comes and goes and a new generation who has heard of that truth for sure has rejected it out of hand. This is not often you'll hear me agreeing with Noam Chomsky, but he said, well, sometimes speaking truth to power is pointless because they're the ones covering it up. They know the truth and they're hiding it. So rather than specifically thinking it's our call to speak truth to power, More broadly we have to know is that we have to speak the truth about the Good Shepherd to everyone who is a sheep. And that's every human being who is alive. Even the highest who call themselves shepherds. Romans in the scriptures say they are at the best under shepherds under the High King of Heaven. So everyone needs to hear the truth about the shepherd. And that's a more powerful message than thinking simply we grab on to the mechanisms of power just like the King of Assyria does. Now, this is, I think, well displayed in a back and forth between a movie. And it's a group of leaders speaking to each other. There's staff speaking to the leader of the country. And it's a time of great national crisis. And so the staff is begging the leader. They're begging the leader to grab onto the mechanisms of power. Use the city. Use the resources. Use your power to fix this. And when the staff person cries out, they're listening to nonsense Because that's the only one who's speaking to him. He says that people are desperate for leadership. In the absence of genuine leadership, they will listen to anyone who stands up to a microphone. That's true, isn't it? In the absence of genuine leadership, people will listen to anyone who stands up to a microphone. And they are so thirsty for it that they will crawl across the burning sand to a mirage. And when they find that there's no water, they will drink the sand. And we see that in the world, don't we? Then the leader says, I think poignantly and correctly, and this is our message, he says to his staff person that people don't drink the sand because they're thirsty, they drink the sand because they don't know the difference. And that's ultimately Nahum is saying. You have no idea what you're trusting. You are drinking sand, and you're drinking it on purpose. You've been told to trust in your city and your resources and your power, and it's sand. It's a mirage, it's a Ponzi scheme, it is dynamite blowing up in your face. And so before the people can follow leadership, they've got to know the difference between water and sand, don't they? They have to know the truth. Nahum chapter 3, this last message against specifically the Shepherd of Assyria starts and ends Defining the shepherd of Assyria and all the sheep of Assyria by their sin By their sand drinking first one woe to the bloody city. We talked last week. You're identified by your sin You're covered in it. The whole city is a city of blood and verse 19 the last the last part of this book is People are rejoicing over your downfall because everyone has tasted your sin Everyone has had to deal with your evil. It's been poured out on everyone. And so When you drink sand when you follow the false shepherds of this world, not only is your doom sure But everyone will rejoice at your downfall they will clap and sing and be happy Because your good shepherd has led you astray The true good shepherd says this and we'll get to this in our series is Here is not the shepherd of Assyria, the shepherd of the world. Here is the good shepherd. Zephaniah chapter three, verse 15. The Lord has taken away judgments against you, and he will clear away your enemies. The king of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst, and you shall never again free evil. On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem, fear not, O Zion, or let your hands grow weak, for the Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save you. And so when we drink sand, when we follow false shepherds, we are imbibing our own destruction, and that's what the world is doing, and they're doing it because they don't know the difference. They're doing it gladly. And the only thing that will happen is the very people who are praising Him right now will rejoice when they are destroyed. But when you follow the Good Shepherd, here's what the Good Shepherd does. He will rejoice over you with gladness. He will quiet you with His love, and He will exalt over you with loud singing. I will gather you who mourn, and you will no longer suffer the reproach of this world. And so we say to Nineveh, we say to Scottsdale, we say to the world that they are drinking sand, and the things that they are trusting in will destroy them. And then we ask them a question, do you know my king? Do you know the shepherd who will not exalt over your destruction, but will sing and rejoice over your salvation? Do you know the one who will bring you to a city that can't be destroyed? Who will give you an inheritance that will last forever? I know this king, I know this shepherd, and I can introduce you. I have privileges at court. Do you know my king? Do you know the Good Shepherd? And just three small thoughts here now as we close. The wicked are defined by their sin, right? The bloody city and the evil that everyone will rejoice over. And so when we tell the world that their shepherd is a liar, that we know the Good Shepherd and that they need to flee from their city and their wealth and their power to come to one who will not exalt over their destruction but will exalt over their salvation, we need to be sure that we are doing that clothed in the obedience of Christ. So here are three things I think to watch out for. When we are telling the world to leave their shepherds and come to the good shepherd who is Christ, to abandon their cities and their resources and their wealth and their power, but to come to Christ instead, first, we need to make sure that we're not resting in where we already are. Because that's gonna be the Christian's version of trusting in the city. And I think particularly, just on my heart, as Providence has grown and has gone from a handful of families to strength, to particularization, to officers, to growth, to us kind of taking on planning the church in Levine, if we ever look at where we have been, where God has put us and go, yeah, that's good enough, then we're resting in the city. We're resting here where God has built instead of following the Good Shepherd outside of the city to a place where there is salvation. So it can be very concerning for Christians for us to rest where we are, instead of knowing that following a good shepherd means going out. Second, when we rely on the resources of this world to do the work of ministry, we're falling into that trap ourselves. Now, that's not to say that money is bad, it's not. We just taught power's not bad, money's not bad. Wine isn't bad. All of these things are explicitly stated in the book of Ecclesiastes. But the question is, where is our confidence? And what are we grabbing onto to achieve our goals? Because if we are grabbing onto the resources and wisdom of this world to achieve our ends, then we are falling back into the trap of not following the good shepherd, but a worldly shepherd. And the third thing I think we should watch out for as we go from this place is to remember the shepherd that we're talking about. The Shepherd of Assyria is marked. We talked about this a couple weeks ago, that in the ancient world, there are so many evil kingdoms. But what's unique about Assyria is how much they bragged about it. They would literally erect monuments praising Ashurbanipal for how many innocent civilians he killed, for how many innocent people were flayed alive. The dead bodies would block out monuments. They bragged about their wickedness because they became their sin. And so when we're talking this final thing about power, If we're called to go to Nineveh and Scottsdale and London and Paris and tell them that the shepherds of this world are feeding them sand, that their cities and their wealth and their power will not save them, but that the good shepherd Jesus Christ will, we do that in a way that reflects we know who our king is. Because then when we speak with malice or with deceit or with cruelty, we are speaking like the king of Assyria. When we speak in boldness, in clarity, and in love, we're speaking like the good shepherd we want to introduce. And to fall into the trap of speaking like the world and using worldly speech, worldly ways to gain power is falling into the same trap that the Assyrians do. They had tasted the goodness of God, but they fell into trusting into where God put them, the resources of the world, and even the power of the world. Brothers and sisters, each and every one of us has been freed from those lies. You have been given not sand but living water in the Lord Jesus Christ. Put him on and we can make no provision for the flesh so that when we go to this world and ask them if they know our shepherd, we can do it in a way that reflects we know who that shepherd truly is. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, Remind us this morning that your victory is not only assured, but has already started. When our good shepherd and great king, Jesus Christ, rose from the dead, he was trampling not over death itself, but over all of the powers and shepherds of this world that were raised against him. The shepherds of this world threw their best shot at Jesus Christ. Remind us that he conquered it to free us from those shepherds forever. And so Father, as we go out into this world this week, it is so easy for us to fear because they have some great cities and they have a lot of walls and soldiers and money and resources and they have so much power. Father, implant into our hearts the message of your servant Nahum. None of these things count for anything but sand in the face of the Lord. and said, Father, remind us just how good our Shepherd is and just how much, how much He can free not only us, but Ninevites and Scottsdalians and Americans from their sin. How much He can deliver them from the cities and resources and powers of this world into an eternal city beyond compare. Father, give us the faith to believe that in our own hearts that we might not despair. But Father, knowing how good our shepherd is, give us the boldness to introduce him to each and every Ninevite in our lives. Father, we pray that you would do this.