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Nahum |
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| Chapter 1 | Prayer | Devotional | Chapter 3 | Prayer | Devotional | |
| Chapter 2 | Prayer | Devotional |
Prayers
Lord God Almighty, the day of Your Judgment will come upon Your enemies. You are slow to anger, but when You come in vengeance, who can stand? When Your wrath is poured out like fire, You will make an end to Your adversaries. You love those who take refuge in You. This is our greatest desire, to rejoice evermore in Your protective love. We do not want to stand before You in our own righteousness, for we could not last for a moment. Bring us good news of the perfect righteousness of Your Son. Publish the news of Your peace to Your people throughout the world. Keep every invading foe far away from us, that Your kingdom may be utterly secure.
Father God, if men and nations had their way with Your church we would have been overcome long ago. Violent men want to kill and destroy the weak. They would carry away people and possessions as though they were in the right. What will happen to the world in the day of Your justice? You know the desires of every heart and the actions of every life. Powerful men and empires have set up for themselves decades of privilege, but there is a day of reckoning coming for every man. Even the strongest nations that once seemed perfectly secure can be swept aside in a moment. Keep us in Your kingdom, for in You alone we have safety.
Glorious God, the age of violence will soon be over. We do not know the day or the hour, but we do know that our lives will not last forever. When our mortal bodies fail, we will still rejoice in You. No longer will we fear enemies from without or within. Today we do not know the one who knocks at the door with an evil heart. But we can trust You, even in this present age. Give us a mind for the life to come. Help us to meditate on the reality of heavenly habitations. Did not Jesus have a resurrection body? Did He not ascend in clouds of glory? Can any evil empire hurt Him today? Have not Your beloved children found their safety in Him? The day of wickedness will soon be gone, and we will serve You with rejoicing forever.
Devotionals
There are many sections of larger prophetic books that are similar to Nahum. They address specific nations directly or speak of those foreign powers, and communicate the Lord’s indictment of these adversaries. There are actions that nations may take, especially against the Lord’s people, that bring upon them the condemnation of God. We should not be offended that the Lord had a message against Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian empire. We should be more surprised if we were to find out that the Lord refused to take a stand against oppressive powers. What kind of God would forever ignore abuse of national authority, allowing the weak to be continually decimated at the hands of the mighty? The Lord will take action. His words against the Assyrians are one small example of His dedication to justice and His concern for the oppressed.
To some degree all civil authorities are called to imitate God in His concern for the weak. We are not called as individuals to execute vengeance against evildoers by our own authority. Nonetheless the Lord has placed people in positions of civil authority, and they do not bear the sword in vain. The governors who have civil powers have military muscle, and they sometimes need to flex it. When they do this justly they are acting as the Lord’s servants. It is His to execute final vengeance against the wicked, but those with civil authority are called to act on behalf the innocent by appropriately punishing the guilty. When they do this rightly they are agents of the Lord’s wrath.
This does not mean that every time that a nation expresses indignation against an enemy that it is always acting justly. Men and nations should be careful in their expressions of anger. Even the Lord, who has every reason to be angry with us, and who could justly have ended this entire experiment in the garden of Eden, is said to be slow to anger. He is judicious and good in His use of His amazing sovereign power. The Lord is slow to anger, but He will by no means clear the guilty. He has complete control over all the forces of nature. We could never endure the heat of His wrath.
This is not to suggest that the Lord is bad. Suggestions that men know more about doing right than God are very offensive. It is always mistaken when people act as if they are holier and better than God, despising His wrath as if they were equipped to sit in judgment against the Almighty. Our best response in the face of some biblical account of the display of God’s anger is to turn away from all sin, and to take refuge in God, for He is good. His mercy is upon those who fear Him. The Assyrians repented at the preaching of Jonah some years before Nahum. It would have been commendable for them to renew their humble plea for deliverance when this message was first brought forward. Eventually He will make an end of all those who insist on being His enemies. It is not noble to shake our fist at God; it is just foolish and stubborn.
There are those who would be deluded into thinking that they can safely rebel against the Lord. He is too smart for us and would be too powerful an adversary against us. When we make plots against Him we will not be victorious. He certainly will defend His loved ones in the end, and those who harm them will fall.
The Lord had a powerful case against the brutal Assyrians. Though He heard their cries to Him in the days of Jonah, in the final analysis nothing had changed. His judgment was merely delayed. The true God is sovereign and mighty, and He hates false worship and evil actions. It is also a fact that all the nations of the world deserve His judgment. While the Lord may delay His wrath for a time, His anger will finally burn against all sin one way or the other.
We return to the idea that He is a refuge for His people. His destruction of their enemies is part of His good news, but how will any of us stand if our sin has placed us in the status of being the enemies of God? There must be some reason why we are still here. We long for some explanation. We know from so many passages that He had a case to make against Israel and Judah, just as He had a case to make against Nineveh and the entire Assyrian empire. If that is true, then why would we even bother with the story of the Bible? Is a delay in divine judgment the only thing that any of us can reasonably hope for? Isn’t their some way to remove the wrath of God that is coming against us?
With that sense of gospel desperation, we look to the mountains for a messenger who would be running toward us with some good news. We know the facts of war. Does anyone have a solid and cogent message of peace? We look around us and find grief and destruction. Where is the hope that gives us something more solid than wishful thinking upon which to build our lives? In the life and death of Jesus Christ we are given our answer. Here is an intellectually beautiful solution to the problem of our debt before God that satisfies more than our minds. In the love of Christ expressed so fully in the cross we find an answer for the deepest longings of our hearts. In His resurrection our eternal peace has become a settled reality.
The story of the Bible can be told according to the idea of scattering and gathering. The scattering part is bad, but often necessary. The final plan of the Lord calls for the gathering of His flock in a place of the greatest peace and blessing. We are moving toward that great gathering. As part of the Lord’s plan to gather His people, along the way it has often been necessary for Him to scatter those who would desire to thwart His perfect plan. We see that at the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11. We also see heartbreaking events throughout the history of the Old Covenant where the Lord has used some foreign power in order to scatter His own people. While this kind of discipline against Judah and Israel was in some sense a necessary part of His larger plan for mercy to the nations, these episodes of brutal scattering against the Lord’s children cannot be the end of the story. Assyria was one of the agents of the Lord’s correction of His people. But the Assyrian Empire would face a scattering that would come against her. As she had done to many nations, it would be done to her.
This world during this present evil age is a very dangerous place. As we have been warned by the Lord Jesus prior to His death, the age of the gospel in which we live is an age of birth pains. The resurrection age is coming, but not without pain. Nation will rise against nation. There would seem to be a continual stream of winners and losers, accompanied by much injury and destruction. This has been the way since sin and death entered the world through one man. No nation can afford to ignore the brutal truth of the troubles of their times. In their national pride, powerful peoples may think that they will never fall. The truth is that the Assyrians will face the Babylonians. The Medes, the Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans will each come in their own time, and all of this even before the gospel goes out to all the nations of the world, and the church faces the brutal persecution that comes from her enemies. Because of the dangers all around them, it would be necessary for the Assyrians to man the ramparts; watch the road; dress for battle; collect all their strength. Though they might dream that they alone would never fall, every empire of men that dreams that theirs is the final kingdom is in for a violent disappointment.
The final kingdom will be the Lord’s kingdom, a new Israel that includes all of his people from all the nations of the world. God’s kingdom, inaugurated through the death and resurrection of Christ, is a most unusual force. They do not rely on the weapons of this world for their progress. Some of their greatest victories come when they are martyred. Some of their worst moments of disgrace happen when they have too much worldly power and they move to kill their enemies. That is not the way of the kingdom of Christ. What kind of kingdom is the Lord’s church? This kingdom wins by the power of the resurrection. The one who dies in the Lord is safe in Christ in the heavenlies. From that place on high great and mighty things are taking place among a great multitude who are preparing for a massive resurrection invasion, when men and angels return under the banner of the God/Man Jesus Christ. Even now the message of the peace, love, glory, and judgment of God in Christ goes forward, and the souls of His people are nourished in the hope of the resurrection. We should be doing holy battle now as the greatest force of faith working itself out through love ever known among men. Those within the Lord’s church that would want to turn her into yet another miserable expression of forceful earthly temporary power are not working on the same side as the One who won His greatest victory on a Roman cross.
That kind of effort will only fail, just as Nineveh and the Assyrian Empire eventually met its match and was destroyed. The misery and loss of military destruction! How many cities have faced their end in the same ugly spectacle as took place in ancient Nineveh? Their reward was desolation. The proud are made to tremble, and the bravest faces grow pale in the face of death. The power of men will never be the final story, and the weapons of men will never bring about the glorious peace of God. Nor will coercion ever be the way for us to truly lead people into the liberty that Christ has won for His people. Christ is the great victorious warrior of Psalm 110:3. A willing people in His day of power shall come to Him.
There is much for us to learn through the story of history. Are we proud in our own strength? Many have been there before us. They became the subject of the taunt songs of their conquerors. Assyria was a proud lion, a young lion that no one would dare to disturb in her moment of quickly fading glory. Soon the Babylonians would be singing about it with derision. “Where is the lions’ den now?” Yet it would not do the Babylonians any good to sing too proudly or too loudly. Their day of destruction would come soon.
The Lord Christ is on the move throughout this gospel age with the strange power of the message of a crucified and risen King. Through Him a most unusual kingdom is being built up throughout the world. Though there is much evidence of our worldliness, guilt, and shame within that ironic kingdom, because of the righteousness of Christ and because of His electing love and power, one day we will hear these words of commendation, “I was hungry and you gave me something to eat.” Our risen Lord will gather His people into the eternal kingdom of resurrection love, and we will never be scattered again.
When a great city is at the pinnacle of her power she may give herself proud names by which she expects to be known. Now the Lord of cities who has the final word on these matters calls Nineveh the bloody city.
The Assyrians had many accomplishments. They were used to being the head rather than the tail. They expected to inspire fear in lesser powers, and they frequently had the might that permitted them to dictate the rules of acceptable living to other nations. They told their captives that everything would go well with them if they just followed the plan of their new Assyrian rulers. God’s assessment: Nineveh is “full of lies.” The empire moved captives far from their homes and extended their reach by forcing foreign men to fight for the expansion of the motherland. Everywhere they went they plundered the land, and soon moved on to seek the next target in their hunt for more prey to devour.
What would it feel like for Nineveh if the whip cracked against her? What if some foreign power set the terms of life and enforced their will as an oppressor over the Assyrians? The Lord looks to the day when there will be mounds of dead bodies in Nineveh. Their lies win the Assyrians the title of “prostitute.” Like many powers throughout history, they betrayed nations with many promises, but their actions proved very deadly to those they ruled.
The Lord has an answer for the strongman nation. “I am against you.” It is a frightening thing to have God as an enemy. He has countless weapons that He can use at will. He can destroy a people slowly or swiftly. He can humble an empire quietly or publicly. In this case it will be swiftly and publicly. It will be embarrassing to this city to be exposed before the world. She will be a spectacle of the Lord’s judgment against an evil nation.
When that day comes, who will grieve for Nineveh? She has made so many enemies, that there will be no loyal allies to mourn her swift demise. There will be no helpers to fight on her side in the day of disaster.
Looking at the matter objectively, we should not be surprised that the Lord has any number of ways to destroy an empire whenever He wishes to do so. Great nations to the south and west provide obvious examples of places of defeat and captivity. There is no nation that can ultimately stand against Almighty God.
Proud leaders, if they were even aware of the words of Nahum, might have brushed off such arguments. Were they not far superior to all those other lands? How often had they proven their greatness? Yet when the Lord fights against a strong nation, He can make them seem like drunken men running for cover. He can make them like a nation that sends their women out to fight, because the men are somehow out of the picture. He can open up the gates very wide so that a conquering foe can come right in.
Though Assyria had seemed to multiply like locusts, the hoards of flying insects have spread their wings and taken off. Where are their soldiers? Where are their merchants? Where are their leaders? Apparently they are sleeping. The people will be scattered on the mountains, and the Babylonians will capture Nineveh, dealing the Assyrian empire a fatal blow. Every nation will celebrate their fall, for they have brutalized so many lands with their continuous evil.
The Lord is a mighty warrior against His adversaries. The God of creation and providence has sovereign control over any proud foe. The fool says in his heart that there is no God. Yet the Lord Almighty has so many arrows in His quiver. He can remove the courage of soldiers. He can fill kings with fear. He can withdraw His restraining hand across a society and watch as the evil of men destroys the fabric of life among a powerful people. He controls all the forces of nature. He is the supreme Judge, and the King over men and angels. With all the weapons that He can use in every kind of warfare, it is unwise to take up arms against Him. He will execute His justice against His adversaries when His Son returns at the end of this age.
All of this power was in evidence in the cross-work of Christ. Here was the battle of the ages against our fiercest enemies. Our biggest problem is not any empire of men, though they may be proud and brutal. Our most difficult challenge comes from sin and death. In fact, our biggest problem is the just wrath of God Himself. That battle could only have been won for us by the God-Man Jesus Christ. He has achieved victory by facing the supreme humiliation of the cross. By that cross, our God has defeated the vicious enemies that were against us, paying the debt for our sins, and demolishing death through the power of an indestructible life. The resurrection age that Christ has won for us is not some Assyrian-like empire in a world of scarcity where we are the abusive rulers who have our way over weaker neighbors. The victory that God has for us is instead a world of love, where the Lord is our marvelously abundant provision, and sin is a thing of the past.