The Justice and Mercy of God
Nahum
January 31, 1999

Introduction

A. Who was Nahum?

1. Nahum is short of Nehemiah
2. Elkoshite: Capernaum means "City of Nahum" or it could have been a town between Jerusalem and Gaza

B. Why Neheveh

1. 38 years after the revival under Jonah, they destroyed Samaria and went back to their murderous practices, pride and idolatry
2. 100 ft. high walls and wide enough to race 3 chariots side by side
3. 100 ft. above that were the towers
4. 150 ft wide moat that was 60 ft. deep
5. said that it was built to take a 20 year siege
6. How could it ever come down? 3:8 "overflowing flood" the Tigris overflowed its banks and eroded one of the walls to collapse. The Babylonians then streamed in
7. 3:11 "You will be hidden" After the destruction, it fell into disuse and was covered by the sands until 1842 when it was discovered.

C. Nahum’s vision: God’s Justice and God’s Mercy

1. Psalm 89: 14 Justice and judgment are the habitation of thy throne: mercy and truth shall go before thy face.
2. Matt. 23: 23 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.
3. People want to make God to be all loving and permissive of all kinds of sins or they want to see Him as being all judgement, cruel and uncaring

I. The Nature of God: His Justice

A. God’s anger: Every Hebrew word that can be translated as "anger" is listed here

1. Jealousy 2. Vengeance 3. Wrath: furious, master...

4. Anger: literally is "heavy breathing" & refers to the flaring nostrals 5. Fierceness: "heat" 6. Fury: "burning"

B. God’s anger can be personal

1. Personally against a national: Assyria and Nineveh (2:5-7)
2. Personally against an individual: Shineckarib (1:14)
3. What a frightful phrase: 2: 13 "I am against you," declares the LORD Almighty
4. And again in 5 "I am against you," declares the LORD Almighty.

C. God’s anger is slowly provoked

1. "The Lord is slow to anger..." vrs. 3

a. people who take a slow burn to an explosion, take longer to calm down
b. Jonah had complained to God, "...I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and a God who relents from sending calamity."
c. God was long suffering... people misunderstand that as being tolerance or not caring about sin.

2. "... great in power" vrs. 3

a. The God of the universe called out the judgment of men and a city to which anyone who would have heard this would have said that it was not possible... it did happen!
b. When finishing the reading of this book and looking at all the judgment we feel... frightened, gloomy, very grateful for His mercy

3. Gen. 15: 16 In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure."
4. 490 years God was patient with Israel

D. God’s anger was just and absolute

1. Just: 100 years the great revival when they had experienced God’s mercy and after 62 years brutality, idolatry, pride...
b2. Absolute: i.e. it is reliable
Greek historian Diodorus Siculus:
3. There was an old prophecy that Nineveh should not be taken till the river become an enemy with the city. And in the third year of the siege, the river being swollen with continual rains overflowed every part of the city and broke down the wall for twenty furlongs. Then the king [of Nineveh] thinking that the oracle was fulfilled and the river became an enemy of the city, built a large funeral pile in the palace and collected together all his wealth and his concubines and his eunuch, burnt himself and the palace with them all. And the enemy entered at the breach that the waters had made and took the city.
**The river gates are opened, the palace is in dismay. 2:6 RSV

II. The Nature of God: His Mercy

A. The Lord is good

1. Charles Spurgeon said, "He who does not believe that God will punish sin, will not believe that he will pardon it through the blood of his Son."
2. A truth Satan has challenged since he did so with Eve in the Garden
3. God had forgiven them before... He didn’t have to warn them or call them to repentance.
4. He is good... especially in contrast to all the deities of this world

B. A stronghold in the day of trouble

1. Yahweh... a stronghold in the day of trouble
2. Calling on Him when in trouble

C. He knows those who trust in Him

1. He knows my name... thoughts, desires, weaknesses, sins... and loves me any way
2. 2 Chron. 16: 9 For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him.
3. In the midst of the judgment, there was still hope for wicked Neneveh