[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching from God's Word you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to Him. If you're ever in the Madison, Alabama area, we'd love for you to worship with us on Sundays at 8:30 or 10:30am if you have any other questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, find
[email protected] Be sure to also check out our Bible study podcast, Madison Church of Christ Bible Studies. Thanks again for stopping by.
[00:00:37] Speaker B: So glad to see all of you here this morning, especially if you're visiting with us. Man. We appreciate so much you being a part of our worship assembly this morning. Glad to have you with us. We're in the middle of a study called Messengers. We're studying them, the minor prophets.
And it's been kind of an interesting study.
And I'm afraid as we look at this, sometimes we can get kind of caught up in the muck of it. There's a lot of warnings, there's a lot of, you know, justice being served and all those kinds of things. And in the middle of all that, all of these can kind of blend together a little bit. And they're called minor prophets because there's very little said and they're kind of smaller in relation to some of the other prophecies in the Scriptures. And so we tend to quote from them, but we don't always get into the depths of them and try to figure out what is in there for us. But if we do take a moment and we think about each of them and recognize who their audience is, if we take the time to, to learn more about the history and what's taking place, not only will we understand what happened to the people that it's being talked to, but also we can pull from it and say, hey, how has God given us an idea of what's taking place in the future and how does that impact us today in our lives as Christians? And so I think it's wonderful when we see the prophets and just how God kind of works his plan through the ages? But if you're thinking about all the prophets that we studied already, let's just talk real quickly about Obadiah. Obadiah was specifically sent to the Edomites. Now, the Edomites were the descendants of Esau. And you know, the story of Jacob and Esau and the sibling rivalry that took place in their life. And how that kind of got blown up bigger and bigger as time went by. And after all of those years of oppressing and being trouble for Jacob's descendants, God said, that's enough. And so he declared Edomites guilty and gave them a judgment that came against them. That was the book of Obadiah. If you look at Joel, there was a promise of a plague coming, a plague of locusts. But it wasn't just a plague of locusts. It was a reality that they had left God, that they were beginning to turn their minds other places. And so that plague was a reminder to be faithful back to God. If you go into Amos, that one, remember, he held the plumb line. And against that plumb line was of righteousness, of what God required of him.
The Israelites failed to be what they needed to be. And because of that, they were rich and wealthy and prosperous and all those kinds of things. But they really oppressed the weak and the poor in their area, so much so that they really abused them. And so God said, hey, there's a judgment coming as a result of that.
Then you look at. We talked about Hosea last week, and Andrew gave us a beautiful message about what it must be like for God as he looks out and he expects so much of his people and he expects their faithfulness, but they continue to run away to other idols and they're unfaithful to him. And so much so that he asked Hosea to give a real life, you know, object lesson and said, hey, I want you to go. Not only tell them that they're unfaithful to me, but I also want you personally to take a prostitute as your wife, knowing full well that that prostitute was not going to be faithful to him. It was an illustration the way God sees this relationship with us, and it shows us just how much he wants that relationship with us. So as you look at all of those, what I want you to grasp from all that is that each one of them are different. They're specific, they're targeted at specific things, but they're meant to be for us, something to learn from and to listen to the warnings that were there and maybe put some application into our own lives. And when I think about it, that's kind of what happens in all the memorials that we see around our country. You know, I've never been to New York, so I've never been to the 911 memorial, but I've heard it's kind of inspiring. I've heard it's one of Those moments where you kind of get hit with the gravity of what took place back in 2001, the loss that we experienced as a country, the attack, the evil that was present in the middle of all that. And, you know, it kind of stirs up the emotion and kind of brings us to a reality that we don't ever want to see that kind of evil thing happen again.
I have been to D.C. and I've seen some of the war memorials there. And they're moving to go out into all those and to walk through and to read all the names of the people who sacrificed their lives. They're beautiful, they're inspiring.
But there's one in D.C. that I've never been to, that I've heard so many things about and I've seen so many pictures and I've read up on it, and it's a beautiful one. And it's also one that reminds us of some atrocities in this life. And it's the Holocaust Museum.
And I don't know if you've ever been there. Some of you may have, and you've probably talked about it, and I don't know if you have the same struggle I do, but when I hear that 6 million Jews were exterminated, they were put to death, they were put in gas chambers or shot or what have you, that's amazing to think about. It's overwhelming to think about.
But if you're like me, you may find yourself going, okay, 6,000. You see it in print and you see a six and a comma and three zeros and a comma and three more zeros.
And maybe in the back of that number you see like faded out images of people in the background.
And you kind of just imagine it. It's so overwhelming that we can't put our mind around it. And so it becomes something that's sort of almost not touchable. Like we can't see it, understand it. Like that kind of number is just ridiculous stuff. But if you look deeper and if you challenge yourself to research a little bit more, you'll find some images that hit a little bit harder.
You know, one of the things that the Nazis did is in those days is they decided that the Jews had to be done away. It was called the Final Solution.
And in that they deemed them as not valuable humans, but in the process, they thought there were some things about them that were valuable. Their possessions, their clothing, their shoes, their glasses.
And I don't know if you can do it in your mind. I know you'd love to just expand on this. And I have zoomed into this image I don't know how many times.
And every one of those lines is one of those thin, just pin, you know, thin glasses.
And if you dig deeper, you see individual glasses. So when I look at this, it's a big pile of stuff, right? But every single one of those represents glasses that were on the face of a person who had a soul, who had a life.
It's kind of.
It's kind of deeper, right? It kind of sinks in a little bit heavier.
But another one that they have in the museum itself is they have this placard that talks about the shoes and these shoes again, as they took all of their belongings and left them naked in those gas chambers, they took all of their belongings and scraped them out and just put them outside these concentration camps to be picked up later. The ones that were deemed to be good and in good shape were given off to the Germans. But the ones that were deemed worn out or no good were just left there to be thrown away.
Well, in the museum, they have a room where these are there, and you can see those shoes.
And this is a tiny, tiny representation of the number of people that were put to death just because of who they were and their race.
You think about all that, and that's awful, right? And I know when you come to worship, you're not looking to be depressed, right?
But when I think about that, it's a reminder.
It's a reminder that atrocities are out there. And we have these museums to remind us to not let things like this happen again, for us to be vigilant, to be watchful, and to make certain that nothing like this ever happens again.
But if you were to go back in time thousands of years, and you would go to a place called Assyria, I want you to know they had some of these kinds of things on their walls as well.
But it wasn't because they were saying, here are some atrocities that you need to be aware of and that are, you know, memorials to people who have given their lives. No. The Assyrians created these, what they call stone reliefs. They were. They were these stone canvases, so to speak, that they put on their walls, and they chiseled out stories of their own triumph, their own prideful victories, and the ways that they treat people. So you'll see one of these. It shows where they had these big sticks that they would impale the leaders of a country or a nation that they had conquered, and they would put them on display outside their city walls and hold them up as a way to say, don't ever stand up against the Assyrians.
They would decapitate their victims and they would create stockpiles of these skulls, these heads that had been decapitated as a way to show a trophy room of the things that they've done. So when you look back at Assyria, they're not showing these things to say, here's some stuff to avoid. They're doing these things to say, don't mess with us.
And in a sense to say, this is how powerful we are.
And this is funny to them.
This is their boasting, it's their arrogance.
And so when you think about the Assyrian Empire, we're talking about in the mid-800 BC to 700 BC timeframe, where they were rising up in power and being stronger and stronger.
Now, the Assyrians, you may not make this connection, but one of the things that we know is that Nineveh became the capital of the Assyrian Empire. Now you'll notice Nineveh, because we remember, like Jonah, right? We remember that Jonah was sent over there.
Speak to them. Well, the Assyrian Empire started back. It goes back to Genesis chapter 10. You remember the Tower of Babel, how they were trying to build and construct something to show their power and their abilities and their strength and all these kinds of things. And God saw what man was doing and he came down and disrupted all that and gave them different languages and spread them all over the place. Well, the guy Nimrod, who started all of that, was sent over into Assyria, and that's where he began to settle and build there.
In 722 BC, the Assyrians got enough power and strength that they came in and took the Israelites. Now later, Sennacherib, you've probably heard of him in the Scriptures, he was an Assyrian king, came in and fortified the city. We're talking about 100 foot walls, several feet thick. It was meant to be a fortress of fortresses. It was right on top of the Euphrates river.
And they created aqueducts and all kinds of things. The city itself was like three and a half days journey across. 120,000 people would have inhabited Nineveh. It was a massive city with huge wealth, prosperity, and it was a symbol of strength. There was nothing like it in its time.
And so those are the people that we know that have taken the Israelites into captivity.
And so again, thinking about this, Nineveh is a place, if you remember that God told Jonah, and if you can imagine him saying to Jonah, I want you to go over there and hang out with those people and preach to them and love on them a little bit. And. And of course, Jonah was like, no way. And so he took off in the opposite direction. You remember his deep sea expedition that he traveled in a fish. And he ended up being brought back and said, go to Nineveh and preach. He does.
And y', all, you wanna talk about the most dispassionate preaching ever. He walks through the city, he's like, okay, you got 40 days or God's gonna destroy you. And that's really all he's saying. He's just going through the city streets telling these people, well, somehow they were touched in their hearts and they did repent, which is amazing that that whole place was saved in that moment. And they were given mercy from God because they did repent.
But it wasn't long. Within 100 years, they're back to their evil ways.
And now God, having given them mercy before, is now bringing judgment. And he sends a guy by the name of Nahum as an oracle of judgment to the Ninevites. Let's talk a little bit about who Nahum is.
His name means comforter, or to console, to comfort.
It's the idea that he was coming to bring a message that would comfort the Israelites, not necessarily the Assyrians, right? So he prophesied sometime between 664 BC and 612. The reason we know that is we don't know the exact date, but what we do know is that Thebes, which was a temple city in Egypt, was taken over by the Assyrians. And it's mentioned within Nahum. So we know it had to happen after that. And then, of course, Nineveh itself is destroyed in 6:12. So some time between those two events is when Nahum brought this message. Probably closer to the 612 than the 664.
But it's kind of meant to be almost like a sequel. Like God had already given message to Nineveh, they had repented, they'd gone back. And so now it's like God is saying, okay, that's it, I've had enough. All this brutality, all this violence that you've done, that is going to be remedied right now. And so God sends Nahum to them.
I want to say something here, too.
This is a reminder that God is patient, okay? That God wants everybody to be saved. We know that in Scripture, right? That God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. God wants that he is patient, but he's still not going to Leave the guilty unpunished. And that's a reality that maybe sometimes we gloss over and we say, hey, maybe he's still going to be patient and patient and patient. But there comes a time where God's.
Where his patience kind of runs out.
So mercy ignored, like what God has done for us, ignored over a long period of time, will eventually give way to God's sovereign justice.
And that's something that this book is all about. It's a reminder to the Assyrians and also maybe to us, some things that we can learn from it. So the book itself breaks down into three chapters, and each of these chapters have kind of a focus. The first one is about God's sovereignty, about his power, about his control, and how he works things out.
It's. No matter how great the Assyrians feel about themselves, God is greater. And he reminds them of that in that first chapter. The second chapter is. Is about the judgment that is coming, and it's certain it's not going to happen. Maybe it's like the time for repentance is over with and the judgment is coming. And then finally, in the mix of all that, is a reminder that there's certain things about that culture that have to be done away with.
And again, as we're thinking about this and we're listening to it, we know it's about the Assyrians, but let's also stop and just step back and ask ourselves how this applies to us as Christians today as well.
So the book starts out with this term, says the oracle concerning Nineveh, the book of the vision of Nahum of Belchosh.
Oracle is a word that just means burden. Okay? It just means, like a heavy weight that's going to be passed on to Nineveh.
And it says that it was given as a book of division. So in other words, it's not just that God spoke to Nahum, had said, hey, say these things, tell them these things, write this down. It's like, no, he gave him this vision. So when you read Nahum, if you dig into it, you're going to see, like, these beautiful, vibrant, poetic terms that kind of help draw a picture for you. You can visualize the things that he's. That he's sharing with you because he's seen it, he's visualizing it, and so he's imagining things that are coming up later. And God has given him that kind of a vision.
And notice how he starts this off. He says, the Lord is a jealous and avenging God.
And just in case you didn't catch that the Lord takes vengeance, or the Lord is avenging and wrathful. And if you didn't catch that, he said the Lord avenges, takes avenges on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies. What he's saying is, you need to understand Assyrians right out of the gate that punishment is coming, that this is a declaration of your destruction. It's coming. And I, the Lord, am bringing the vengeance. And by the way, did I say that I'm bringing the vengeance and I'm bringing wrath, and then also I'm going to continue to bring the wrath. Whatever level you think of wrath is coming. There's a greater level of wrath that's right behind it. He's saying this is over. It's completely over.
It's probably a good place for us to remind ourselves that God is love, right? First John, chapter four, verse seven and eight says, love one another, for love is of God. And everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.
He who does not love does not know God. For God is love like he is the very presence of love, right? His mercy is. His kindness toward us has been extended in so many different ways, but especially through Christ. We know that because even while we were sinners, Christ died for us. Like there's a measure of love that is higher than anything we could possibly imagine.
And while God is that love, folks who forsake that mercy, that kindness, that goodness of his, what he's saying is we'll see his power in undesired ways.
And again, that's something for us to just be reminded of. So let's talk about his sovereignty. Let me read to you the first few verses of Nahum and go to verse three.
Says this. The Lord is slow to anger and great in power. And the Lord will by no means clear the guilty.
His way is in the whirlwind and the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet. He rebukes the sea and makes it dry. He dries up all the rivers. Bashan and Carmel wither, the bloom of Lebanon withers, the mountains quake before him the hills melt, the earth heaves before him the world and all who dwell in it. What's he saying? God is in control of everything.
Everything that you see is because God Himself is in control. He commands the weather, he dries up the bodies of water. He withers the fertile lands that we see, and he shakes the earth. That's the limit of his power, is unlimited. In other words, there's nothing that he is not in control of. And that's something to be reminded of that this God that we serve also has this vengeful part that says, hey, I'm gonna take down the enemies of my people.
And so he says, and moving on. Second of all, that his wrath is against the evil. No one can withstand it. His judgment is inescapable. I think I've told you guys this story before, but there have been a lot of times in my life where I've done things that were not right.
Especially growing up as a kid, you know how it is. You think you can get away with something, so you do it right? And then you hide your guilt for a little bit, you conceal it. You think, maybe if I can just cover my tracks a little bit. And all of us have done this. So you kind of think in your mind, I been able to get away with that. And so you think about that, you maybe do it again the next time. And the more you get away with something, the more you try to keep doing it. And I remember years ago, I fell and broke my arm.
And what I told my parents was that I fell down the steps when I broke my arm.
But what actually happened is I was hanging from an overhang, jumping up and grabbing it and trying to do pull ups. My finger slipped and I fell down below onto steps and it broke my arm.
Well, what I did tell you is that my parents had told me several times, don't do that, don't do it.
I'm like, yes, ma', am, yes, ma'. Am. Yes, sir.
And then I would do it, right? And so I fell and I broke my arm. So I told them I landed on the steps and broke my arm. That was true, but it wasn't the whole truth. But I thought either way, I got the cast, I got the healing, everything was fine. My parents were really sympathetic toward me during that time. Everything was good, right?
35 years later, my brother Chris sold me out.
I don't even remember. We were at a family function and we were laughing and telling stories and making fun of each other. And all of a sudden, Chris, you remember that time you told mom and dad you broke your arm and you really had been hanging up there. And I'm like, shh. You know? And so they kind of like, what, what happened? And so I had to like pour all that out again. It was a reminder that your sin is gonna find you out. There's a double verse in there, it says that as well, right?
You're not going to escape judgment. I thought many times I could get away with things. And how Many of us do that. We think we can get away with things, but the reality is, the Bible says, you know, it is appointed a man once to die, and after this, the judgment, no one's going to escape it, right? Not just the things that you do that are not right here in this life, but the sinful things that we do. You're going to answer for those things, every one of us.
And God here saying against his enemies, hey, my wrath is against the evil.
It's inescapable. You are not going to get away from this. No one can withstand it.
But then notice this pivot in the language.
And this is also something for us to lay hold on.
The Lord is good.
He's a stronghold in the day of trouble. And catch this part. He knows those who take refuge in him isn't that of comfort.
He knows who are his.
But catch this if you find yourself on the other side.
But with an overflowing flood, he will make a complete end of his adversaries. And this part should cause people who are enemies of God to shudder.
And he will pursue his enemies into the darkness.
There's no escape.
It's coming.
That destruction is there.
So it reminds me of this text in Romans, chapter 11. I couldn't help but think of this as I was reading is, you know, we know that God is love and we know that he is just and that his punishment comes and it's certain. And this passage kind of reminds us, notice how God is both kind and severe. He's both of those things. He's severe to those who disobey, but kind if you continue to trust in his kindness.
But if you stop trusting, you will also be cut off. And so that's a reminder to all of us to not fall back, to not wander back away from the things that we know are pleasing to God that drew us into him to begin with. And not fall back. He says, hey, he knows who you're his. He loves you. He wants to provide mercy for you. He is so kind to you if you trust in his kindness. But if you turn your back on him, you're going to be cut off, just like the enemy is. And that's important for us to bear.
Another thing about his sovereignty is this, his power over empires. Verse 12 and 13 says, he shatters oppressive powers. 14, he terminates royal dynasties. Do you understand? Like, there's no power out there. There's no country, there's no nation that's so strong that if God wanted to bring them down, he could.
He has that power. He has that strength, he has that sovereignty. And he's reminding the Assyrians, but also a reminder to all of us.
So the Assyrians, they thought they were invincible, but God used Nahum to inform them otherwise that you're not what you think you are.
And if you can imagine, they grew that empire and they took over all of Macedonia area and all the way down the Mediterranean coast and into Egypt and they created this empire that they thought was massive, that they had come to, to the apex of world power and domination and that they had a formula that would last forever and ever. And it's God is saying, no, that's not the case, I'm still in control.
So chapter two gives us the certainty of that judgment.
And again, as Nahum is hearing what God is saying, he's visualizing these things and he says, these things are going to happen. Chariots are going to ravage the city. Well, but what we know about the Assyrians is that they had like the state of the art military components. They had things that other nations didn't have. They had like these three decker like battering rams that they could knock through walls into cities. They could get into them very easily. They had the chariots that had those little spokey things out on the side that would chew up the enemy as they were going through their streets, whether they could get to them or not. If they got anywhere close to those, it would just kind of maul them and they would come in and just completely and totally dominate. And God is saying, hey, you may have done those things, but that's ultimately what's gonna happen to you.
The officers he says are gonna try to escape, they're gonna flee to the, to the walls of the sea, they're gonna try to jump those things. This is kind of an imagery also of what they would do to people. The Assyrians were noted for going into the cities, taking leadership and officials within the city and killing them, skinning them alive and putting their skins on the city walls. And here he's saying, hey, you're going to run to those walls again, but this time it'll be your demise. It won't be theirs, it'll be yours also. They were going to be taken captive. Now the history of the Assyrians is this. They go into a place, they take a country by storm, they plunder all of their wealth, they'll kill their people, and then they repopulate it with their people.
They would do this, they would take these people captive and spread them out into other kingdoms and other places and put them under captivity. And they did that over and over. And every time they would do that, they would grab more wealth and more power and strength. And they would also create this sense of intimidation in other people. Well, God is saying, what you've done, I'm gonna do to you too. And again, they would take all of their wealth and they would plunder it.
So that's how they. That was their formula. That's what they did. God is saying, all of those things are gonna be done to you.
He says, behold, I am against you, declares the lord. I'll burn your chariots in smoke, and the sword shall devour your young lions. One of the things about the Assyrians is they had not as a mascot, but almost like a thing that they put out in front of them when they went into these areas to fight in battles. And it was the symbol of the lion.
Now, what they would often do, I know this sounds crazy, but they would take lions into their midst and they would have, like, this big gathering of people, and they would take the lions and they would slaughter the lions in front of everybody and say, hey, this is the king of the jungle.
This is the most powerful animal that everybody fears.
Notice what we did to it. We're the lions. And so they would put that out as an image, saying, as a lion, we're gonna go attack our prey. And that's kinda how they felt about it, just evil all the time.
And yet God, as he's using their own terminology, he says to them, I'll cut off your prey from the earth. What he's saying is, I'm gonna protect all the people around you. You're not gonna have that ability anymore.
And your messengers, the things that you say, the things that you use to intimidate other people, that's going to be shut down, too. We'll never hear from you again.
That's the extent that God would take down the enemy.
Human power, military, vast wealth cannot fortify a nation against the decree of God. In other words, if he wants to take anybody down, he has the ability to do that.
He starts off chapter three like this.
Woe to the blazed city full of lies and plunder. No end of the prey. Let me help you understand.
What he says ultimately has to be done away with. And these are things, again, that we need to just take an awareness of in our life, Things that maybe we can control from our own heart and the way we live our lives.
These are things that he says must die. This culture, these things that have become so commonplace in the Assyrians, are the things that we've got to do away with too.
Lying, robbery and senseless violence.
We see it all around us already in our nation.
So we got to get rid of those things.
We got to find a way to stop that kind of thing from happening.
But also spiritual corruption and sexual deviancies.
They went off after other gods for sure.
They had no desire to follow God.
But then also they did some of the most filthy and nasty things sexually.
And they did it to harm people and to please themselves.
And I think they took something that God gave to us in marriage that was meant to be beautiful and wonderful and special and a gift to mankind.
And they turned it into self pleasure. I'm just reminded, just as a commercial break here of our society. Here we have pornography, we have endless access to things, images that are awful.
And it's unchecked, it's free. You can get to it however you want to.
And we've turned something very beautiful that God has given us in purity within a marriage relationship that a husband is supposed to provide for his wife and the wife is supposed to provide for her husband. And we've made it more about what am I giving myself.
And as a result, we forfeited what God really gave us to be, which is the gift of us sacrificing for somebody else.
When he talks about marriage, think about it, he uses the terminology of Christ in the church. It's like the husband sacrificing for the wife and giving her all that she needs. And the wife turning around and showing that respect and honor for the husband. It's like this beautiful model that shows that when I give my fullness to the other person, it's not really about what I receive, it's about whether or not I'm taking care of that other person. And they've taken this beautiful thing and we've all twisted it.
That's got to be removed. We can't put anything before God and we can't be taking this sexuality, this sexual revolution, this life that is so free to say me, me, me and get what you need and all those kinds of things.
We've got to put that aside for the sake of what's right.
And then here's another one, arrogant self security, thinking of oneself as invincible. And I don't want to say for a second that it's not important for us to take care of ourselves, to be militarily strong, to fortify our nation, to protect ourselves. I think God expects us to do those kinds of things. But somewhere along the way we Got to be really careful that we don't think that that's all about our strength, that it's our doing. Yes, use our judgment and all those kinds of things. But we can get so caught up in our ability to protect ourselves that we don't realize that the goodness of God is what has brought us where we are as it is.
And so he's telling the Assyrians, but I think maybe he also is telling us, take care of yourself, but don't think of yourself as the ones who are in control.
The attitude that these people existed, this is what he said to them.
I'll throw filth at you and treat you with contempt and make you a spectacle.
Just a couple of verses before he said, I'll take your skirts and pull them over your heads and expose you to everybody.
It's like the idea that you're not going to have anything when this is done with, I will take you down as far as you can imagine. I will humiliate you. I will put you on display.
And all who look at you will shrink from you and say, wasted is Nineveh who will grieve for her.
Nobody's gonna be grieving.
God even says, where am I gonna go to find these people to comfort you because of all that you've done against them? I guess what God is telling all of us, he was telling them, and he's telling us, is that his patience has an expiration date. There comes a time where God's judgment will take place, and it's going to take place for all of us.
God's judgment is coming.
He says to them, there's no easing to your hurt. Your wound is grievous. And all who hear the news about you clap their hands over you, for upon whom has not come your unceasing evil.
So God is declaring judgment on the Assyrians, and that's part of the application, but there's also a secondary one, and that's judgment against the enemies of God.
And so we want to be really careful that we don't find ourselves in that circumstance. Let me take you to Hebrews chapter 10 real quickly, and let's read just a few verses here. I want you to understand what's happening is God, through the Hebrew writer, is reminding the Jews who had converted to Christianity to not want to go back to that old law. They were trying to find a way to marry those two concepts together. He said, no, I need you to focus completely on what Jesus has done for you, that he is the answer for all of these things that the law was good to bring you up to the point of Christ, but once Christ has come, he's better. And so the whole book of Hebrews is about how Jesus is better than all of the other things that are wrapped up in the old law, and that Jesus is very much the fulfillment of the law.
He says to them after talking about coming together to express our worship together. Verse 23 says, Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.
And let us consider how to stir up one another's love and good works, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another. And all the more, as you see the day drawing here. What he's saying is it's important for us in our commitment to God to find each other, to be together, to develop relationships, to be encouraged as we lift up our worship together to God, but also to be strengthened in the relationships that we enjoy together.
Then he goes on to say this.
Let's say, for example, we start stepping away and we start embracing something else beside what God has given us. He says, if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins. What he's saying is there's no other sacrifice besides Jesus.
That's the only one you got.
He's the best offer that's out there. If you turn your back on that and you sin willfully, understanding that he came to take away those sins and you want to go back into that kind of lifestyle again, he said, you know you can't keep doing that. He said, there's a fearful expectation of judgment and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. In other words, he's saying, if you're not careful, you can turn yourself as an adversary against God.
Then he says is anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses.
How much more worse punishment you think will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God and pervaded the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified and has outraged the spirit of grace? Moving down to verse 35, it says, Therefore throw away your confidence.
God has done this. Everybody around you may be choosing something else, but don't throw away what you have.
He says, this is a great reward, for you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised. And what was that for a little while? And the coming one will come again and will not delay. But my righteous one shall live by faith. And if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him.
Then he says this, he reminds us. But we're not those people who shrink back under destroyed, but those who have faith and preserve their souls. What am I saying is God expects his people to be faithful and to trust in him no matter what's going on around us.
But let's try to make this practical for us as we kind of find the end of this message.
When God gives us a message and he gives us the message of His Word, it's meant to inform us on how we can grow closer to Him.
His instructions are meant to draw us into a relationship with Him.
The second message that comes is when we go back and we read it again and we hear what he says and it convicts us and reminds us, oh, yeah, I gotta stay on that. I need to keep living that way. I need to keep giving my heart to him every day. It's kind of a reminder. It's a warning about disobedience. And so we need to come back and do those things again. But here's another thing that we've got to do is we've got to recognize that when we do see things, we read the Scriptures and we find out that there are things that in our life do not line up with what God wants us to be. That we embrace the idea of repentance, if I can. Parents, families, right now, there's three things you need to teach your children right now.
The first thing is these words, sorry.
Every one of us need to learn how to say I'm sorry. The second thing we need to teach our families is this.
I've done something wrong.
We need to say it out loud. We need to model it for our children. I've done something wrong. And then the third thing is this.
Will you please forgive me?
Now imagine if our kids go a whole lifetime and they never hear their parents say, I'm sorry, I've done something wrong.
Will you forgive me?
That's a picture of repentance, right? It's a picture of me realizing that I don't have it all together. I have done wrong and I do need to make it right. And I do need your forgiveness. And if all of us will do that, if we will model that for our kids, then we. We won't have a time where kids are afraid to come back to God for repentance.
They'll come to him knowing that's where we receive the forgiveness. That's where we get that mercy and that grace. That's where we find ourselves aligned back with his will.
All of us need to remind our kids that if we don't practice this kind of self reflection, this ability to repent and get things right, then our kids will not learn it. And it will not be long before we find ourselves in the same boat as those Ninevites.
People who didn't learn to repent, didn't care, and didn't teach anybody to do it.
All of us need to do that. And then finally, the recognition that judgment's real.
Acts, chapter 31. I mean, chapter 17, verse 31 says this, that there's a fixed day.
There's a fixed day in which God, God will send Jesus back.
Okay, and first Thessalonians, chapter four kind of describes that moment. It says it's going to be like a shout of heaven. And I wonder what that'll be like for everyone to hear that.
And the trumpet of the archangel, you will hear all of these things, right? The trumpet will sound the archangel, there'll be a shout from heaven, the sky will split, Jesus will return back. Those who are dead in Christ will rise up first, and those who are alive still on the earth will join up with them in the air and will be with the Lord forever. At that point, it's gonna be an amazing day.
But it's a fixed date that only the Lord knows.
And so, reminder, we've been told what to do, we've been warned what to do.
We need to know how to repent, but we also have to be prepared.
Ultimately. When I think about this text here and I get over here to Nahum, I want you to kind of visualize this from another angle as we kind of wrap up here.
We know what happens to those who oppose God by this text. We know that whoever opposes him is going to be wiped out.
And we find out later that the Ninevites were wiped out. In fact, the archaeological digs, where they've gone and they've tried to explore some of these places, there's nothing to be found.
God had them plundered by Babylonians and a big other crew of other nations that joined together and came through and absolutely ravaged this place.
So the enemies of God are going to experience destruction.
But I want to take you back to Nahum, Chapter one, verse seven and eight, because I want you to imagine that you're the Israelites and you're in captivity.
I want you to think about them imprisoned in kind of those concentration camps in those places where things are tough and difficult, and you're oppressed.
And the word of Nahum circles through, and all of the people and the inhabitants in that area are beginning to hear what God is saying.
And then you, as God's people, hear these words.
The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble.
He knows those who take refuge in Him.
But with an overflowing flood, he will make a complete end of their adversaries, and he will pursue his enemies into the darkness.
Man, I hope we're all ready.
But I hope you can have confidence in a God who says, I will annihilate the enemies.
That's the blessing of being a child of God.
And there may be some here who when you think about judgment, it scares you a little bit when you think about Jesus coming back and then no more. Can I do anything about it? I can't say, hey, let me send this one more prayer up, or God's mercy is great. His patience is long, but it has an expiration date.
If there's anyone here today who needs to get their life right, please don't delay.
Do it right now. While we stand saying.
