The Lord will never leave the guilty unpunished! His way, His Wrath is in the whirlwind and in the storm, and all the clouds are the dust of his feet. Nahum 1:1-6

Nahum 1:1-6 The Message

God Is Serious Business

1 A report on the problem of Nineveh, the way God gave Nahum of Elkosh to see it:

^2-6 God is serious business.
    He won’t be trifled with.
He avenges his foes.
    He stands up against his enemies, fierce and raging.
But God doesn’t lose his temper.
    He’s powerful, but it’s a patient power.
Still, no one gets by with anything.
    Sooner or later, everyone pays.
Tornadoes and hurricanes
    are the wake of his passage,
Storm clouds are the dust
    he shakes off his feet.
He yells at the sea: It dries up.
    All the rivers run dry.
The Bashan and Carmel mountains shrivel,
    the Lebanon orchards shrivel.
Mountains quake in their roots,
    hills dissolve into mud flats.
Earth shakes in fear of God.
    The whole world’s in a panic.
Who can face such towering anger?
    Who can stand up to this fierce rage?
His anger spills out like a river of lava,
    his fury shatters boulders.

Word of God for the Children of God

Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen, amen.

When the storms of life are dissolving the hills into mud flats.

About 150 years after the time of Jonah, Nahum prophesied about the fall of Nineveh. This city was the capital of what was now the vast Assyrian Empire.

With the great river system that connects the Mediterranean region to the Indian Ocean, Nineveh had access to enormous wealth. In trade and business, the Assyrians accumulated gold, silver, and copper from all over their empire.

But the Assyrians also exploited the people they ruled.

The Bible tells of how Assyria pillaged 10 of the 12 tribes of Israel and took them away as slaves, leaving the 2 tribes of Judah, Simeon, as its vassals.

This injury to God’s people was never undone.

Though Jonah had preached God’s grace to Nineveh and the people had repented back then, the Assyrians had grown proud and corrupt as they expanded their empire.

Nahum preached that Nineveh would fall, and in the end Assyria reaped what it had sown. A bitter civil war saw Nineveh sacked by its former subjects.

Through Nahum, God told his people that they needed to utterly trust in him rather than the ways of the world. The storms of an unwinnable war brought low the greatest empire at that time, and the guilty did not go unpunished.

God alone “is good, a refuge in times of trouble.”

It Is Better to Honor and Respect God | Nahum 1:1-6

Nahum 1:1-6 Authorized (King James) Version

1 The burden of Nineveh. The book of the vision of Nahum the Elkoshite.

² God is jealous, and the Lord revengeth;
the Lord revengeth, and is furious;
the Lord will take vengeance on his adversaries,
and he reserveth wrath for his enemies.
³ The Lord is slow to anger, and great in power,
and will not at all acquit the wicked:
the Lord hath his way in the whirlwind and in the storm,
and the clouds are the dust of his feet.
⁴ He rebuketh the sea, and maketh it dry,
and drieth up all the rivers:
Bashan languisheth, and Carmel,
and the flower of Lebanon languisheth.
⁵ The mountains quake at him, and the hills melt,
and the earth is burned at his presence,
yea, the world, and all that dwell therein.
⁶ Who can stand before his indignation?
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.

There is a mocking of God, His word, and even His authority that takes place today that doesn’t quite make sense to me.

God is the Creator of all things – whether you can see them or not.

God is Lord over what is known and unknown.

As the prophet Nahum points out, the earth answers to Him and quakes before Him! I don’t know about you but such power and authority humbles me in fear.

Because I fear the Lord, I choose to do my best not to make Him upset with me!

What about you?

I believe that all of us should live in a manner where we certainly respect God and His authority.

Yet, many people are disrespectful of God.

Rather than trusting in the Lord and living in a manner not to upset Him, most choose to live in a manner that dishonors Him.

God is a jealous God as He made clear to Israel, and that still stands true today.

If the earth quakes merely at His presence, what do you think you would do in His presence?

This is the question that Nahum asked the people of his day?

God should be honored. God should be respected.

Dishonoring God angers Him and there is nothing that can withstand the indescribable unimaginable fierceness of God’s anger and God’s own wrath.

Galatians 6:6-8 Authorized (King James) Version

⁶ Let him that is taught in the word communicate unto him that teacheth in all good things. ⁷ Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. ⁸ For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.

In our text for today Paul warns us not to deceive ourselves.

We should not think more of ourselves than we ought, and we should be faithful in carrying each other’s burdens.

This means caring for one another and doing good to all people, not taking pride in our own position of strength or health in any area.

If we have health and strength and we are in a position to help someone, we need to realize that God is the one who has given us that position—so that we may honor him in doing good.

If we begin thinking that we have earned that position for ourselves, we are in danger—because God will not be mocked.

Again we are challenged to beware of the path we take in life.

We will reap what we sow, so we should sow what is good and true.

Paul describes two ways of living. Either we will seek to please our own sinful nature and reap destruction, or we will seek to please the Spirit of God.

In Christ, God has provided the way to eternal life.

And because we are given full life in Christ, we can each strive to do good to all people. We love our neighbors as we love ourselves by doing good as we have opportunities. And opportunities abound, so we can do good all of the time.

In the name of God, the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit …

Praying …

Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen, amen.

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