The Lord Will Have His Way

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Transcript:

This morning, if you would, turn with me to Nahum chapter 1, and if you’re not familiar with the book of Nahum, go about two-thirds of the way through your Bible. If you know where the book of Jonah is, it’s two after that one, and kind of fitting because Nahum really is the sequel to the book of Jonah. And we’re going to talk this morning about God having His way, God getting His way, even if it doesn’t always look that way in the beginning, even if it doesn’t always appear that God really is at work and in control.

God is in control and God is going to have his way. I get irritated a lot by watching television. I probably shouldn’t, but I keep it on for noise even if I’m not watching it.

And I will get irritated from time to time at the way people on shows talk about God. And I’m not completely humorless, okay? I’ve seen shows where they poke fun at Christians and sometimes it’s funny to me.

I’ve been in church long enough to know we’re funny sometimes, and we don’t mean to be. And there are things that the world looks at outside and it doesn’t make sense, and you know, it’s genuinely funny. What I don’t like is when they put us on law and order and the Christian is always the murderer and the villain.

That I don’t like. I can laugh when they poke fun at us sometimes. What I don’t like is when the world pokes fun at God, when the world mocks God.

And I’ve preached messages on this before, on the character of God and who he really is in contrast to the way the world sees him. You know, he’s not the genie or the Santa Claus or the senile grandfather who lives upstairs. All these stereotypes that the world has about God, we look at the Bible and that’s not the God we see.

But I was reading even this morning about a comedian who a few weeks ago caused an uproar by going on TV and mocking God, and I won’t tell you some of the things that he said. But folks, we live in a society that mocks God, whether it’s blatantly like that. We’re going to get up on national television and tell jokes about God, disrespectful jokes.

I can’t write, you know, at this moment think of what would be a respectful joke, but tells disrespectful jokes, mocking God. But sometimes it’s not quite that open. It’s not quite that overt.

We as a society sort of collectively and individually thumb our noses at God on a regular basis and say, you know, we really don’t care what you have to say. We really don’t care what you’ve said for 6,000 years. We’re going to do what we want, and you’re just going to have to be okay with that, God.

Now, very few people would say that outwardly. I mean, I know very few people who would say that outwardly. I know there are some.

I just don’t happen to know them personally. But in our attitudes, we do that. We would never say, God, you’re just going to have to deal with it.

But in our attitudes, we get to a point where I would say we’re too big for our riches and we think we can do what we want. It doesn’t matter what God has said and he’s just going to have to be okay with it because we’re going to do it anyway. And folks, that’s not the way the world works.

If we refer back to what the Bible says and what the Bible teaches about who God is. Folks, my Bible tells me in the book of Galatians that God is not mocked. Be not deceived, Paul tells to the Galatians, for God is not mocked.

For whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap. For he who sows to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption, but he who sows to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. You know, I’ve not had a great deal. I hear you all talking about telling each other, oh, your garden looks great.

Oh, the cabbages. Oh, the pumpkins. It’s all looking wonderful.

Whatever you’ve got planted. I have planted gardens for years and don’t always have a great deal of luck with them. It seems like every time I’ve planted a garden and more, then we have a massive tornado that comes through.

So I’m working on a garden now and that makes my family a little nervous. The last two years in Arkansas, we had a major drought. I think I worked all summer and got an okra.

You heard me right, an okra. So I’m not, I enjoy gardening. I’m not a tremendous gardener.

Don’t know a whole lot about what I’m doing. Just get out there and do it. But the one thing I have learned is that what you plant is what you’re going to get.

You do not plant corn and expect okra to grow. You do not, folks, I planted corn one year, we had a tornado, and we ended up with corn in the front yard, because the corn seeds had been picked up out of the ground, and they were planted in the front yard, so they didn’t turn into grass because they were there in the grass. We inadvertently planted corn, and we ended up with corn.

Folks, God is not mocked, the Bible says, and what we sow, we will also reap. And God has made the rules very clear about what we’re supposed to do and what we’re not supposed to do. And we thumb our nose at him and expect that we’re just going to get away with whatever we want.

And you’re probably thinking, oh my goodness, what a downer of a message. And it’s going to be for a little bit, but it gets better at the end, I promise. But folks, God is not mocked what we sow.

We also reap, and God is going to have his way, even if for a little while it looks like he’s not paying attention. Nahum was sent to the city of Nineveh. Nahum was an Israelite prophet and was sent to the city of Nineveh with this kind of message.

I mentioned that Nahum is sort of the sequel to the book of Jonah. And most of us know the story where Jonah was told, go to Nineveh and preach that I’m going to overthrow the city, meaning God is going to overthrow the city in 40 days because of their absolute wickedness. Tell them that 40 days the city will be overthrown.

And Jonah said, I don’t want to do that. Are you crazy? I mean, he doesn’t say that in there, but I’m just sort of reading between the lines and thinking what I would have said.

Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian Empire, and this was one of the most powerful empires in ancient history, maybe the most powerful at the time, and they were not nice people. And you’re telling him, God’s telling him to go to Nineveh, go to the capital city. And it reminds me, if you’ve seen, I’m a big fan of the Indiana Jones movies, and if you’ve seen Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, which is my favorite one.

They escaped from the Nazis at this castle and they’re trying to hunt down a diary so they can find what they’re looking for. And they realize the diary is in Berlin. Now they’re running from the Nazis and they realize we’ve got to go to Berlin.

And I think he says something about into the lion’s den. That would be exactly what it would be like for Jonah to go into Nineveh. He is going into the heart of darkness here.

He is going right exactly where no sane person would want to go. And yet God has told him, you go to Nineveh and you stand in the middle of the city and you tell them what I’ve told you to tell them that because of their wickedness, I, the God of Israel, am going to take down their mighty city. And we know the story that he gets on the boat and goes to Tarshish, which is probably in what’s now Spain, about as far away in the known world as you can get.

And there’s a storm. They realize the storm is there for him. He’s thrown overboard and he’s swallowed up by a great fish.

And I’ve always been taught and have always seen that as sort of a punishment from God. But as I began to read the story again, I realized it was God’s providence. Yeah, I’m sure it was not pleasant being in the belly of the whale or the great fish, but at the same time in the storm he was in out in the middle of the ocean, he would have drowned otherwise.

And I see it was God’s provision and God’s protection to get him safely back to shore so he could accomplish what God sent him to do. and Jonah goes into the city of Nineveh. Finally, sometimes don’t we have to be spanked by our father before we’ll obey?

I know I do. And so finally, Jonah gets the idea, okay, God is in charge here and he spit up on the shore and he goes to Nineveh and tells them 40 days and God is going to overthrow the city. And I’ve said this before and I double checked this morning just to make sure I wasn’t saying something incorrect.

I don’t see anywhere in the book of Jonah where he says, repent or I’ll overthrow the city. As far as what’s recorded in the book of Jonah, they are not given a command to repent and said, if you will do this, then I will turn away my wrath. God just sends Jonah and says, tell them their time is up.

These people are not responding. This is what tells me that the repentance of Nineveh was genuine. They are not responding to an offer of mercy.

The message here was simply, I’m going to destroy the city because of your wickedness. And the people don’t, in order to get God to change course, in order to get God to turn away his wrath, repent and say, we’re sorry, we’re sorry. It’s not because they’re trying to get out of the consequences.

I believe that when Jonah came and said, God is going to destroy your city, period, because of your wickedness, and they repented, and they were sorry, and they changed course, it was because they realized they were wrong. They were genuinely convicted that they had sinned against God. And folks, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with coming to repentance because God has sent consequences.

I think that’s the reason sometimes he sends consequences. I, as a five-year-old child, was taught about hell in children’s church, and because of that, I started asking questions about the gospel and ended up being saved. And basically what I knew was that I loved God and wanted to be with Him and not go to hell.

And so I was sorry for the things that I had done that were going to send me to hell. Folks, there’s nothing wrong with responding to the consequences that God sends us, but sometimes we need to get to a point where we respond to what God says, not because of what He is or is not going to do to us or for us, but because it’s right and we love God and we want to be on His side. And I believe that’s what happened in Nineveh under Jonah’s ministry.

Well, about a hundred or so years later, their children and their children’s children had gone astray, as happens so often, doesn’t it? They had gone astray, and so God sends Nahum back to the city of Nineveh, because Nineveh had repented for a while, but it didn’t last forever. And so it says in Nahum chapter 1 here, the burden of Nineveh, the book of the vision of Nahum the Elkishite.

So Nahum was from this little village in Israel, and he sent to Nineveh. And what I thought was interesting about this, first of all, the only other place I remembered offhand in the Old Testament, it’s saying the burden of so-and-so in a prophecy was in Habakkuk, where he’s writing to the people of Israel about the Babylonians, and I won’t go into all the history there, but he says the burden of Habakkuk. He says, I as the prophet, this word from God is my weight to carry.

But I notice in Nahum, Nahum starts out by telling the people of This is the burden of Nineveh. The word that God has spoken, this is your weight to carry around. This is something that’s going to be for you like a ton of bricks that’s fallen on you.

He says in verse 2, God is jealous, God is jealous, and the Lord revenged. The Lord revenged and is furious. The Lord will take vengeance on his adversaries, and he reserveth wrath for his enemies.

And you may be thinking there just a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute.

the Bible says God is love. This doesn’t sound anything like what we know about God. We’ve gotten off balance sometimes, I think, in our view of God.

God is love, but He’s not only love. And for the Bible to say here that He’s jealous, folks, we don’t need to think about people who are jealous because so oftentimes, you know, we’ll be jealous of something somebody has or the attention somebody gives another person. And what we’re really doing is lusting after something that we don’t have and don’t deserve.

Nobody owes me their attention. Nobody owes me their stuff. And so for me to be jealous is completely out of line.

And yet God here is jealous. And it’s because God is deserving of the things that they are not giving him. God is deserving of the worship.

God is deserving of the obedience. So don’t think of God’s jealousy in terms of our jealousy. God is not at all out of line here because he’s only asking for what he deserves.

And it says the Lord revenge it. Now, we don’t want to be vengeful people. God doesn’t want us to be vengeful people.

We shouldn’t want to be vengeful people. I don’t want to be around vengeful people. And I’m having trouble saying the word vengeful, if you can tell.

I don’t like myself when I’m thinking vengeful thoughts. The reason revenge is not okay for us is because we’re trying to get even out of a sense of self-righteousness. Well, I’m the innocent party here who was victimized.

When we really get right down to it, none of us are innocent. We’ve all sinned against God’s law. God is the only perfect one.

God is the only one in place to judge whose right it is to judge. And so when the Bible says that God will revenge or avenge or bring vengeance, God is not doing anything out of line. See, we apply these words to ourselves and they sound like such vile characteristics.

But when you get past when you get past our characteristics and think about who God is and what he deserves, there’s nothing out of line about God saying, I’m jealous and I revenge. The Lord is furious. The Lord will take vengeance on his adversaries and he reserveth wrath for his enemies.

Folks, this is not stuff you’re going to hear on Joel Osteen probably. This is a different, this is a more balanced view of God than what we see a lot of times on television. The Lord will take vengeance on his adversaries.

Who are his adversaries? The ones who stand against him in his word. When we get right down to it, the Bible tells us in other places that friendship with the world is enmity with God.

Romans chapter 5 says that because of Christ, we have peace with God. And I’ve mentioned to you before that the human race is at war with God because the Bible says he’s our king, and we have rebelled against the king. We’ve rebelled against the lawgiver.

There’s been a war going on between God and man for 6,000 years, and we fired the shots in it. We’re the violating party. And it says, God reserveth wrath for his enemies.

That’s you and me. It’s a sobering thought, but that’s you and me. It says in verse 3, the Lord is slow to anger.

Now, this is a good one. This is good for us. The Lord is slow to anger and great in power and will not at all with the wicked.

The Bible says basically here that God is patient when it comes to exercising his justice. He is a just God. He is going to be just. He is going to be punished, or he is going to punish wrongdoing, but he’s slow to anger.

He’s great in power. And what that tells me, the slowness to anger and the greatness in power, he’s got this incredible power. Folks, we can’t even begin to understand the power that God wields, the power that God has, the power that God is.

And yet, He’s slow to anger. He’s so powerful that he restrains even that incredible power. Now, I believe firmly what, I want to say it was Lord Acton.

I don’t know who he is. I’ve just heard the name. A British figure from the last century, I believe, who said that power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Any person who had even a fraction of the power that God has would not restrain themselves. We look at the people in the world over the last hundred years who have had the most power, who wielded the most power in whatever country they lived in. We look at men like Stalin.

We look at men like Hitler. We look at men like Mao Zedong. These men were almost, please understand, I don’t mean this blasphemously, they were almost godlike in their own country in terms of the power that they wielded and the view that people had of them.

People worshipped. I was watching a documentary yesterday on Stalin’s time in Russia, and one of the women who grew up during his time, said, we looked at him as an idol. These people worshiped these men as though they were gods, and they had power that you and I can only dream of.

And you know what? They didn’t restrain themselves. They oppressed the people and did exactly what they want.

And yet God, who has even greater power, greater sounds like such a weak word to refer to the power that God has, infinitely greater power, and yet he’s slow to anger with it. God is patient, even though he has the power to punish sin right now. He’s patient.

But, he says, he will not at all acquit the wicked. He’s telling the people of Nineveh, don’t think that just because God is patient, that that means God is not just and that we’re going to get off scot-free here. He says, the Lord hath his way in the whirlwind.

The Lord has his way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet. The clouds are the dust of his feet. This is something, this is a picture that they would have understood better than we do today.

And when I was a kid, there were all sorts of cliches. You probably had the same things when you were growing up. ClichŽs that kids would say to each other trying to explain the world, you know, when it’s raining, it’s because God is crying.

The crescent moon is God’s thumbnail. And I heard, you know, the clouds are the dust of God’s feet. And I thought, okay, just kid clichŽs.

You grow up, you realize it’s not, that’s not how it works. I read this and it says the clouds are the dust of God’s feet. Now, is it saying that God is walking around in heaven and he’s kicking up dust and that’s where the clouds come from?

No, that’s not what the Bible is saying here. I believe in a literal interpretation of scripture unless the passage gives us some reason to realize that he’s using a metaphor. And the poetic language and common sense here tell us he’s not saying that God kicks up dust and that’s where clouds come from.

Although, interestingly enough, the clouds do and the raindrops do form around particles of dust that collect condensation. But I won’t go into all that. What they would have understood because of being such a huge military power at that time.

And their main weapon of choice was what, do you think? What was their main vehicle for getting around? Chariots.

Pulled by what? Horses. Horse and chariot was sort of the mainstay of their army.

Now, they would have, of course, had infantry and things like that. men who marched around, but the really bad, scary troops were on horseback or on chariots. And they would have the cavalry come through, and that’s one of the reasons why the Assyrians and some other empires like them were so successful.

They had these massive cavalry forces that they could send to just wade into the enemy and cut them down. And you would know when your city was about to be attacked, or when your village was about to be attacked by the Assyrians and their chariots, because you would begin to hear the rumble like thunder from a distance, and you would begin to see the dust from the horses and the chariots like clouds. Remember, they lived in a desert area.

Nineveh is in what’s now the northern part of Iraq, and between there and Israel, it’s just mostly desert and scrub, and they would have seen the dust coming, and the dust would have been like clouds. And what he’s saying, you look at the clouds and you look at the wind and all you see is clouds and wind, you see natural forces. He said, I want you to be reminded that God is in control of even those things.

And lest you forget, he’s telling the people of Nineveh who knew better because they’d repented once before and turned to God once before and yet had turned away from God again. It’s not like they didn’t know what they were supposed to do. They turned away from God again.

He says, when you see those things, when you see the things like the clouds in the sky and the wind that blows, the things that you think everything is normal, I want you to be reminded of the judgment of God because He controls even those things. And the wind and the whirlwind, I want you to be reminded of the thunder of the horse’s hooves. And when you see the clouds, I want you to be reminded of the chariots.

And it might as well be the judgment of God about to descend on you like a mighty army. Folks, that was an exciting thing for me to understand, to understand what He was trying to say to them, but it’s also a sobering thought, ladies and gentlemen, that the judgment of God would fall on them like a mighty army, like an irresistible army. The Assyrians themselves were an irresistible army, and yet they would be powerless to stand against the judgment of God.

He goes on in verse 4 and he says he rebukes the sea and makes it dry. God has the power to rebuke the sea and make it dry. We saw that.

I mean, we didn’t physically see that, but we see that in history at the parting of the Red Sea. Folks, if God put the waters where they are in Genesis and moved them around in Exodus, and the same God is doing all the things today, folks, he still has the power to rebuke the sea and make it dry. And dries up all the rivers.

Bashan languisheth, and Carmel, and the flower of Lebanon languisheth. Talking about some of the things that, the lush areas, and saying that when God judges, when God says so, when God snaps his fingers, those things can dry up. And the mountains quake at him, and the hills melt, and the earth is burned in his presence.

Yea, the world and all that dwell therein. And what he’s giving here to them is a picture. They would look out at the wind, or they would hear the wind, see the effects of it.

They would see the clouds. They would see all of the lush land around them, because it was mostly desert, but there would have been some nice places. And all the things that looked normal and made them look prosperous, because they were the richest, most powerful people in the area.

The mountains, obviously, are things that that don’t change very easily. I mean, we just in the last 200 years or so figured out how to move mountains with dynamite. They didn’t have that.

Mountains were pretty permanent. And yet he talks about the mountains shaking at the presence of God and the hills melting. Everything to them.

All of this would have said to the people of Nineveh. All of this would have said to the people of Nineveh. Everything you’re trusting in.

Everything right now that makes sense, that makes you feel safe and secure and makes you feel prosperous and makes you feel like everything’s always going to be okay and we can do what we want and thumb our nose at God and nothing is ever going to change because here we are. How could we, you know, we’re invincible. He said everything around you falls apart at God’s command.

And so he says to them in verse six, who can stand before his indignation? When God stands there in righteous indignation and accuses them for their sin, he says who can stand before him? In other words, who can, who can stand up and give an answer, give an explanation or justification or an excuse and say, well, God, it’s okay because, uh-uh.

Sorry, it doesn’t work that way. When the judgment of God falls, we don’t stand there in excuse. We tremble.

And who can abide in the fierceness of his anger? His fury is poured out like fire and the rocks are thrown down by him. Pretty encouraging so far, isn’t it?

But then we get to verse 7. The Lord is good. Folks, in the fire, in the wind, in the whirlwind, in the clouds, let us never forget that God is good.

The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble, and he knoweth them that trust in him. But with an overrunning flood, he will make an utter end of the place thereof, and darkness shall pursue his enemies. And so he tells them that all the things you’re trusting in for your peace, for your security, all the while you’re disobeying God and mocking God, he says all of those things are eventually going to come crashing down around you.

And there’s no place of safety, but he says there is a place of safety that is invincible, and that’s in God. Three things that I want to point out from this passage, and then we’ll be finished for this morning. First of all, that God is patient, but his patience will run out.

Now, we’ve already seen in verse 3 how he says, the Lord is slow to anger and great in power. And as I’ve already mentioned, they are prosperous, they’re strong, they felt invincible. And I read this, and I think that’s a lot of how we feel today.

And we as a country feel like we were invincible and nothing can hurt us. And so we’re okay with ignoring God. And they probably felt like because God hadn’t punished them, there had been no discernible consequences to this point.

We’re okay. We’re okay. It’s always going to be this way.

Folks, it was because of God’s patience. It wasn’t because God wasn’t going to punish. It wasn’t because God wasn’t just or that there would be no consequences.

It was because God was patient. When I sin, there aren’t always immediate consequences. You know, when I sin against God, He would be completely justified in snuffing me out.

But He hasn’t. Not because He can’t or because I don’t deserve it. It’s because He’s patient, because He’s good.

But eventually, the patience runs out. It says in 2 Peter, Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days, this is 2 Peter 3 if you’re wanting to turn there, that there shall come in the last days scoffers walking after their own lusts and saying, where is the promise of his coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation.

People would come in the last day as much as they do now and say, you know, where are these promises that God made? Where are the promises that he’s going to return and judge everything? Because everything’s pretty much been going on the same way since the beginning of creation.

We skip forward here a few verses and Peter writes, the Lord is not slack concerning his promise as some men count slackness. God He hasn’t forgotten all that he said he would do, as some men accuse him of. It says, Ladies and gentlemen, there are consequences for sin.

There are consequences for ignoring God. And just because we haven’t suffered those consequences immediately doesn’t mean they’re not coming. It means that God is loving and patient in the midst of that justice and gives us time and says just a little longer that they might have a chance to repent.

Just a little longer that a few more might be saved. Just a little longer that a few more of my children might turn to me. Folks, let’s not mistake God’s patience for God not paying attention or God being slack with his promises.

Nahum teaches us that God is patient but that his patience will run out one day. Second of all, God is powerful and his power is matchless. As I’ve mentioned before, they would have felt safe and secure in their fortresses and their cities like Nineveh.

They would have felt safe and secure with their armies, with their chariots. They would have felt safe and secure in their position because there was nobody in the world who would dare challenge them at this point. I mean, they had just, we know from a reference in chapter 3 of the book of Nahum that the Assyrians had just overrun part of Egypt.

They had just sacked the Egyptian capital. And the Egyptians were pretty tough too. There was nobody who wanted to mess with the Assyrians. And they probably thought, there’s nothing that’s going to hurt us, nothing that’s going to come at us.

They were incredibly powerful. I wouldn’t want to tangle with the Assyrians. It would be like the us of the ancient world.

Very few people, yeah, people want to kick America around, but very few people want to tangle with the American military. And it’d be very easy for us to sit here and think we’re invincible. Folks, for all our power, for all the Assyrians’ power, God was even more powerful.

We see a picture of matchless power. When we look at his control of the wind and the whirlwind and the clouds, the melting and quaking of the mountains, the burning up of the waters, folks, there’s nobody else who can accomplish things like that. He built it all in a week, and he can take it all down like that.

You know, I don’t know that God needed a whole week to build everything. I think he probably just moved at his own pace. But I think if he’d said all at once, let it be there.

It could have been there. Folks, we serve a God of matchless power. And let us not think that, well, I can ignore God and I’m secure in my bank account.

I’m secure in my job. I’m secure in my family and my home. Folks, God can take it all away.

It can be gone in almost an instant. It’s amazing how things change. And I’m not saying that I think I did anything wrong.

I would tell you if I did, because I’m upfront about the fact that I am a sinner. My name is Jared, and I am a sinner. And I’ve told you before, when I was pastoring in Fayetteville, I really believed that where I was, I was at the center of God’s will.

I was doing what He told me to do. And that’s why all of this was so unbelievable to me. But the point I want to make is that we don’t realize how quickly everything in life can turn upside down, and that’s why we don’t want to put our trust in things besides God.

I had a wonderful job. I never got into ministry to get rich. Anybody who gets into ministry to get rich is a crook or crazy.

But I was making more money than I thought I ever would. I had a church that I loved, loved the people, had a great family, beautiful home, all these things. And I thought I could stay here and do this for 30 more years and retire and be happy.

And that would have been fine with me. And within just a couple short months, everything’s gone. And I had to sell the house.

I resigned the church so I could move back and have help with my kids. And everything turns upside down. And again, I don’t think it was God’s punishment that I’d done anything wrong.

But the illustration there was, I’m glad that it wasn’t my bank account that I was trusting in, or my home, or my job, or even the church, or my family, because we don’t realize how quickly a