"Making Cross Connections"

This has been automatically generated, and therefore may contain some unintended inaccuracies.

Right. If you'd like to take your bibles and turn to Jonah chapter three. It's on page 929. So we're gonna read from Jonah chapter three and then we're going to switch over to Nahum chapter one. So you might want to stick your finger in that and that's on page nine three seven.

Page nine to nine, Jonah chapter three starting at verse 10. And when God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened. But to Jonah, this seemed very wrong and he became angry. He prayed to the lord, isn't this what I said, lord, when I was still at home? This is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish.

I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate god, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. And then Nahum chapter one. A prophecy concerning Nineveh, the book of the vision of Nahum, the Elkoshite. The Lord is a jealous and avenging God. The Lord takes vengeance and is filled with wrath.

The lord takes vengeance on his foes and vents his wrath against his enemies. The lord is slow to anger but great in power. The lord will not leave the guilty unpunished. His way is in the whirlwind and the storm and clouds are the dust of his feet. He rebukes the sea and dries it up.

He makes all the rivers run dry. Bashan and Karma wither, and the blossoms of Lebanon fade. The mountains quake before him, and the hills melt away. The earth trembles at his presence, and the world and all who live in it. Who can withstand his indignation?

Who can endure his fierce anger? His wrath is poured out like fire. The rocks are shattered before him. The Lord is good, a refuge in times of trouble. He cares for those who trust in him.

But with an overwhelming flood, he will make an end of Nineveh. He will pursue his foes into the realm of darkness. Right. Before we go on, hopefully you've all got Bibles. Have you ever looked inside the inside cover?

Because there's a really cool map of the Middle East at the time of Jonah and the prophets. You can see three of the four cities on that grid in Susa, Nineveh and Babylon. Just like to do. I know some people do when they get, wonder, their minds wonder during a sermon, they look at this, look at the maps. But it's there for you to use.

Nineveh's story doesn't finish in Jonah chapter three, doesn't finish in Jonah chapter four. It's completed in the book of Nahum. Now we're not going to do all three chapters, we're just going to focus on the passage David read and some elements in chapter three in the third part of the talk. Now, do my sheet distributors have their second sheets to go? There's a coloring opportunity on sheet two.

So some of you might want to avail yourself of that if you're not in red class. There should be enough for people to color in. There are plenty of pens still available if you want to color in some of the picture. Just make sure I've got my sheet ready. We've gone from portrait to landscape.

So we don't want one. Adults, you're allowed if you've got any spares. Coloring in apparently is an adult thing now. Am I right? A relaxation exercise?

Okay. Right, so Why is God now so angry with Nineveh? Now, the generation of Ninevites who repented when Jonah delivered his message are gone. The people who turned from their evil ways repented. They've gone.

We're over a hundred years on with the message of Nahum. And what we know is, or it appears, the future or the following generations from those Ninevites in the time of Jonah ignored the message of Jonah and they ignored what their parents had done and they went back to their evil ways. They were seen as a very evil empire. Now, how do we know this? There is evidence later on in Nahum, but you can also see evidence if you go down the road 15 miles.

Because Nineveh, we're not that close to Nineveh but the British Museum, all teachers promote educational visits, the British Museum has a Nineveh section, brilliant collection of things from Nineveh, particularly a series of stone carvings similar to this, showing Nineveh conquering cities, armies victorious, killing people, leveling cities, taking people from the cities, making them slaves and stealing their goods. Nineveh was now again a conquering evil empire and an enemy of God and God's people. Hence, Nahum's message. And that's what we're going to look at in detail now. So if you close your Bibles, we're going to focus on Nahum rather than Jonah.

Just Jonah to show the continuity. So back in Nahum and we're on page nine-seven, we're going look at the first eight verses. Verse one sets the scene. It's a prophecy which is a message from God. The city of Nineveh is the subject.

Nahum is the messenger. Nahum's name means comfort. That seems strange in a book full of anger. One the things that really strikes you, certainly in the first part that David read, is there's a lot of anger expressed. There's a lot of anger expressed in the end of Jonah.

But now it's God's anger that is expressed here, not his compassion. Nahum means comfort to God's people, but not to the Ninevites. Comfort to God's people, but not the Ninevites. We learn of his hometown. He comes from I think is how you say it, his hometown.

And in this passage, there are lots of words for anger and there are lots of words for compassion. Now, if you have a sheet, on the top right hand side there is a tick box. Whenever a word of God's anger is mentioned, you can tick it off. Whenever a word of God's compassion is mentioned as we go through, please tick it off. So the prophecy is introduced and then in verses two to eight, it goes through things.

And in this section, there are many things we're told about God. His person, His character, His attributes. It shows God is powerful, He is kind or compassionate, but He is also capable of a just anger. So let's look at the passage in detail. Verse two, we're given in verse two, the name of God.

Notice it's in capitals, it is the Lord Yahweh. Remember any all age slots on the names of God? Hope you do. It means the Lord I am, the self existent, the unchanging. It's God's special name for His people.

So He's writing to His people, not directly to Nineveh. He's writing to His people reminding them of his covenant, his contract, his relationship with them. And he describes himself as jealous. Remember the old age lot? Jealous God?

God is not envious, because to be envious, you want something that others have. God has the whole world. He cannot envy. But He can be jealous of the things that are his. Jealousy to us can be a bad thing, its associations are with bad thoughts, bad behavior.

But with a righteous God, jealousy is right, it is correct. God is jealous because He deserves the world's worship that belongs to Him, but the world sometimes refuses to give it to Him. He is jealous of His relationship with His people. His people, including us, often turn away from him and follow other gods or idols. He's also jealous of his name.

His name is to be honored and not dishonored. So we're told that God in verse two is a jealous God. The people of Nineveh are doing things to His people, they're dishonoring His name and He is righteous in His anger. It's also in that verse, we're told that he is avenging, avenging, vengeful and wrath. Again, if we apply those words avenging, vengeance and wrath to ourselves, these are bad things.

It suggests that we're getting even with someone or maybe getting even and then a bit more or in some way we're out of control. But if you apply these words to a righteous God, to the Lord, It's his response, it's his just response to sin and evil in the world. It's the response of the holy righteous God. When I was preparing this, I was reminded of a book that's been with me from my earliest days as a Christian. It's been a major comfort to me.

It's a book called Knowing God. Who's got a copy? Excellent. Who's read it in one go? You have, Steve.

There'll be a test later. It's a brilliant set of essays. It's not a book you can read in one sort of go. You go in and look at the chapters and you learn so much. It's a series of beautiful essays and Jim Packer is very helpful when we look at God and His anger.

He says this, and I'm gonna quote it. Would a God who didn't respond adversely to evil in the world be morally perfect? Surely not, but it is precisely this adverse response to evil, which is a necessary part of moral perfection that the Bible has in view when it speaks of God's wrath. Moral perfection and God's wrath. Okay.

So, I hope you feel a little bit more comfortable. Amos, not Amos, that's another minor prophet, we'll leave him to one side. Nahum is telling people to take comfort that God is angry because it's a just anger at Nineveh. And here we come to a not my key. Key verse.

If you've got a sheet, there's a key verse to fill in down on this side. This is a key verse because it's a comforting verse. It says, The Lord is slow to anger and great in power. The Lord will not leave the guilty unpunished. So we have some Nahum words here, some comforting words.

God first said these words to Moses on Mount Sinai. And Jonah used those words in the reading we had at the start of part two. This is Words of Comfort. It tells us about the Lord, He is slow to anger but He's great in power but He will not leave the guilty unpunished. For Nineveh, God's shown His patience and grace to them when He spared them from immediate destruction in the days of Jonah, but He will not leave the guilty unpunished.

And He's comforting God's people by saying that the evil Assyrian empire will not continue. They will not continue to be oppressed by this evil force. So what do we make I seem to have lost my slide. Let's go back there. So what do we make of these words?

These words comfort us. They should do because it reminds us we live in a moral universe. A universe which is under God's control and he will ultimately right all wrongs. And for those who don't acknowledge God or his son Jesus, who don't admit their sin and recognize the need for forgiveness yet, there's still time. Again, these verses seem to be echoed in Peter, the second letter of Peter.

The Lord is not slow in keeping His promise as some understand slowness. Instead, He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everybody to come to repentance. Think about it for a moment. We've learnt that God is angry, vengeful, wrathful but it's righteous wrath, righteous jealousy. He is powerful but He is a comfort to those who know Him, who have repented and acknowledged Him as God and His Son as our Savior.

Nahum moves on. Let's look at three, sorry, not chapter three yet. Verses three b, actually of chapter one through to verse six. And again, how am I doing on my tick list? We got most of them.

I think we're probably one away from the anger side. Have we done Ignatian yet? No, we haven't done Ignatian yet. But we should have done at least flow to anger and we're gonna have some more compassionate comforting words in a second. But first, we're gonna show how powerful God is.

Again, if you've got a sheet, bottom left hand corner. Opportunity to draw if drawing is your thing as we go through this section showing God's power over creation. God's power over creation. So, what is God showing power in? We don't need reminding about this, the weather.

If you look at verse three, His way is in the whirlwind and the storm and clouds are the dust of his feet. God is in control. He controls the weather. He rebukes the seas and they dry up. Most of the earth is covered in water and that's an amazing power, isn't it?

To dry up a sea. There are seas that have dried up, rivers that are drying up as well. But the Lord can do this because He is the Lord of creation. He is powerful. Anyone been to Bashan and Carmel?

I'm told these were areas of amazing agricultural productivity. Lots of food was grown or lots of livestock were raised there. It was incredibly fertile country. He can cause it to wither. Again, we've got the image of withering plants in our minds because of this incredible summer we've had.

And again, the blossoms of Lebanon fade. Again, a very fertile area. He has the power to make those places wither. And the earth trembles, earthquakes tremble. They tremble at his presence and the world and all of us who live in it.

Mountains quake before him and hills melt away. Things that seem permanent to everybody can be laid low by the power of the Lord. Things that we think are permanent in his eyes are easy to remove. He is powerful, he is permanent. So who can withstand his indignation?

That one gets ticked off the box. Who can understand his indignation? His power is combined with this indignation, anger and wrath. So, what do we do about this type of passage? Reminds me of a jigsaw.

Who does jigsaws? Hands up. It's not for everybody. I did one once. It was during lockdown.

It's the only opportunity I ever had to really do a thousand piece jigsaw and it took a while. But we've all done jigsaws, haven't we? Even basic ones. Sometimes, when it comes to knowing God fully, it feels like a jigsaw. There are many things we need to know about God.

There are many things about Him, many attributes, characteristics we know about Him. Have you ever done a jigsaw and said, Well, it's finished. We've left pieces out. Ever done that? You don't do that, do you?

It looks dreadful. It is incomplete if you don't complete the pieces. If you've lost a piece, I understand that. That is so frustrating. If you've lost a piece, ever had that experience?

Thousand pieces? Yeah, lost a piece. But if the piece is there, you don't leave it out, you put it in. You complete the picture. We are told to know God in all his fullness, not the bits that we like, not a composite God, not a bit a God of pieces that we've chosen, that we want and the rest is disregarded.

There are things about God we need to acknowledge, we need to understand, to know who He is, to know His holiness, to know his power, to know his love. If we take bits out, we ignore bits we've been the Bible has revealed to us about him. We are incomplete in our understanding. We're selecting God, the God that we want, not the God who is. So we need to put all the pieces together and not leave bits out that are uncomfortable or too challenging.

And it will give us a sense of balance as well. We'll understand God more fully. What is power without compassion? What is compassion without power? Those things will make sense if you put them together when it comes to understanding the Lord.

Okay. So, if we choose to be incomplete in our understanding and seeking to know the Lord, it will affect us as well. Not just our knowledge of God and our relationship, but the way that we pursue holiness, sanctification. If we make for ourselves a customized, comfortable view of God, it will weaken the challenge of repentance and the challenge of growing in holiness. So we need to know God in His fullness, not partial understanding.

As we're going to the end of the section and some more Nahum comfort words. You should be able to complete your tick list, think now, if you haven't already done so. The Lord is good, a refuge in times of trouble. He cares for those who trust in Him. All age slot, anyone?

The Lord is a strong tower. The Lord is a refuge. The psalmists love to talk about refuge in the Lord and I think that's a great message. A message of comfort that God is our shelter in troubling times and he cares for us, that care says he knows us intimately. He has an intimate knowledge of us and he brings us security when facing life's trials that the world cannot give.

The end of this section talks of floods and darkness. We'll look at more of that later on. Thank you. Thank you, Stephen. Right, here we go.

So the story of Nineveh and Jonah doesn't stop at chapter three, it goes on to chapter four. The story of Nineveh doesn't stop there, it goes on with the prophet Nahum. In the first part of his message, which we spent time in this morning, we've seen that the Lord is a God who is compassionate or kind but is also all powerful and is righteous. He has a righteous jealousy, He has a righteous anger and wrath. The message of the first section that we've looked at is God is the righteous judge of Nineveh.

The rest of the book or the prophecy goes into foretelling the judgment of Nineveh and the reason for its fall. Now we're not going to go into this in great detail. It's very graphic language, it's very strong language and there are only a few things I want to draw out with you today. The city of Nineveh did fall, that's why we've got bits of it in the British Museum. It fell in six twelve BC to the Babylonian Empire, then the Babylonian Empire fell to the Persian Empire, then the Persian Empire fell to the Greeks, then the Greeks fell to the Roman Empire.

We come to the time when the gospels were written. Now if you've got an activity sheet already, you will have I had those highlighted, not to worry. You will have had a question at the bottom of first sheet. Are there any connections between the message of Jonah and Nahum and the gospels? I think the answer is definitely yes.

Any of you have a copy of sorry, we seem to anybody got a copy of this? Excellent. I never had a copy. I'll speak to my mom when I see her next. There's a strapline in the book.

I don't if you can see it on the screen. You should know it anyway if you've used it or had it read to you. It's the Jesus Storybook Bible and it says That's his name. Every story whispers his name. Now, I don't have a copy of this book but I have checked it out and it doesn't have Nahum.

I'm so disappointed. I don't think it has Jenner either. Go home and check. Let me know. It doesn't have that but Is Jenner in there?

Excellent. When Nahum isn't, maybe I should write to Who is it? Sally Lloyd Jones and tell her, put Nahum in please because I believe this book whispers the name of Jesus. There we go. Every story whispers his name.

That's what they do in comic books. But people still read comic books. The whisper would be dotted lines rather than bold lines. So if you've got the sheet, my sheet distributors, need you again. I hope these sheets have been helpful.

What should you write, if you got a sheet, what should write in that speech bubble? Write Jesus in please. Just realized I left my Bible on the chair. It's the beauty of having a radio mic. Wander around.

Didn't notice me leaving the stage. Nahum three, when I was looking at this, I think it whispers the name of Jesus. Assyria or Nineveh in particular, the capital city of the Assyrian empire, their sins required God to act righteously in judgment and punishment. We, like the Ninevites, we have also sinned and God is perfectly holy and cannot ignore those sins. They have consequences.

The consequences are His judgment and punishment and we need a rescuer whom God has sent to face the punishment we deserve. He faced it on the cross. I think there are whispers of the cross in Nahum chapter three. In particular, there are elements, if you turn to it, there are elements of it from verse five to verse seven. Not all of the section, I think, echoes or whispers across, but it is, I think, there.

And we're going to go through it very quickly. But very importantly. In prophecy by name against Nineveh, God says, I'm against you Nineveh. I've become or I'm your enemy. On the cross, Jesus spoke these words, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

The Son of God felt as if God the Father had become his enemy because of the sin He was bearing on the cross. In Nahum three:five-seven, God says, I will pelt you Nineveh with filth. We know from the gospel accounts that they hurled insults. Now, when people are publicly punished, it is a tradition, I think it's worldwide, for people to throw things at you. If you're being punished, they throw things at you, not just insults, throw rotten fruit and other stuff to make your punishment even worse.

On the cross, we know for sure that people held insults at him. This doesn't quite come out. In Nahum chapter three, God says, I will make you a spectacle. Of all the punishments that have been devised, the one that is probably the most designed to make a spectacle of the punishment is crucifixion. It is the worst thing that they could come up with, to make a person's death a spectacle and Jesus was crucified.

Then Nahum in chapter three says, All who see you will flee. People would flee when they saw Nineveh falling. We know that all the disciples fled when Jesus was arrested and crucified. Some stayed close by, his mother and some of the women and the disciple John were there but basically, they fled. All those who supported Nineveh when it fell, fled.

God says of Nineveh, Who will mourn for you? We know that when Jesus was buried, very few people were around to publicly mourn for Him. The women went quietly to the tomb, a small group went to show they were mourning for Him. God says of Nineveh, Who will comfort you when you fall? Jesus on the cross was offered wine vinegar twice.

It's often interpreted as a way of dealing with thirst but also it may have eased some of the pain. He refused it the first time but just before he died, he took some wine vinegar. That was the only comfort he had on the cross. So the destruction of Nineveh reminds me of what Christ faced on the cross. At the cross, God's righteous anger and compassion were clearly displayed.

In the fall of Nineveh, having shown compassion, God's righteous anger was displayed. With the fall of Nineveh, because of its sin, God's perfect justice was executed. On the cross, God's perfect justice was executed, but His extravagant mercy was always there. Through the cross, we are forgiven. Jesus never did anything wrong, but He was separated from God on the cross.

He was mocked, shamed, suffered, so that we wouldn't have to. Within that very strong prophecy, you see whispers, I believe, of the cross. So what do we do with this? For those who don't know Jesus as their Lord and Savior, this could be a moment of realization. For those of us who do know him and follow him as our Lord and Savior, It's a reminder of the desolation Jesus experienced.

Nineveh was desolated. Christ was desolated for us on the cross. We know about Christ on the cross, it's familiar to us, but sometimes we begin to forget what it actually involved, the desolation it involved. That's where we leave Nahum. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, do thank you for the books of Jonah and Nahum. We do thank you for the messages they have for us that speak through the ages. Help us to seek to know you better Lord, to know you fully, not to just learn about You in the bits we like, but learn about You as a whole, so that we might have a full relationship with You, a fuller knowledge of You and that we might live lives in response to that, that seek to be holy as You are holy. Help us, Lord, also not to just become familiar and blase about the cross, but to remind ourselves of what it involved. It wasn't just a thing, it was a major desolation.

It was a major sacrifice for our sins. In Jesus' name. Amen.