God’s Word to the World January-February Sermon Series Kenwood Baptist Church Pastor David Palmer January 24, 2021

TEXT: Nahum 1:1-8

Good morning, beloved. We have a great privilege this morning that should not be taken for granted, and that is to open the pages of Scripture and listen to the voice of our Heavenly Father speak to us directly. This morning we listen attentively to two prophets. We hear the prophet Jonah and the prophet Nahum – two minor prophets with a major message for us. These two prophets are sent to the same city, but 100 years apart. We must begin with a Word from the Lord that we need desperately this morning. It's a Word that will help us understand what's going on around us today. It's a Word that will teach us how to live, as we relate to our neighbors and to our society today, because this Word is not an idle word. It is a powerful Word from the living God that was spoken then and reverberates and teaches us, both who God is and how we are to live today.

I want you to find the book of Jonah first, and we will then make our way to Nahum. We read in Jonah 1:2 that the Word of the Lord came to Jonah and told him: "Arise, go to , that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me." Jonah was sent to the great city of Nineveh to call out against it, for the evil of the city had come up before God. Nineveh was a tremendous and extraordinary city, the largest city in the ancient world at the time. It was a

Page 1 of 13 city built alongside the Tigris River. It was a city of vast temples, of palaces and of impregnable city walls. It was a spectacular city with over 100,000 people living in its urban core. Nineveh's greatness was sustained by feats of monumental engineering. Perhaps the greatest of these civil engineering projects was a series of canals and aqueducts that brought water over a 50-mile distance across ravines and through the mountains. The remains of this great aqueduct can still be seen today at Jerwan in northern . The Jerwan aqueduct was comprised of over two million dressed limestone rocks, built by the king of centuries before the Romans built anything. Cuneiform inscriptions appear along the base of the aqueduct. The inscription reads: " king of the world king of Assyria. Over a great distance I had a watercourse directed to the environs of Nineveh, joining together the waters.... Over steep-sided valleys I spanned an aqueduct of white limestone blocks, I made those waters flow over it.” The aqueduct at Jerwan brought water to the city of Nineveh, and Sennacherib decorated his city with one of the wonders of the ancient world, the Hanging Gardens of Assyria. The Greco-Roman tradition reports this as the Hanging Gardens of . Our forefathers mistakenly confused these two cities. Archaeologists searched the ruins of Babylon for the famous Hanging Gardens and found no evidence of them. Once cuneiform was deciphered in modern times, scholars realized that it was actually the kings of Assyria who had built these famous Hanging Gardens.

Sennacherib boasts of a wonder that he created for all people. He brought water 50 miles to the city. He raised it to extraordinary heights with hydraulic screws and then built this hanging garden with trees in the midst of a desert region, and it could be seen for miles. Nineveh was a great city, indeed a spectacular city. Sennacherib built a palace and called it the palace without equal. Just the foundation of this palace required 160 million bricks.

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The Lord told Jonah in Jonah 1:2: “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before Me.” Go to that great city, immense in size, scope and splendor, but “call out against it, for their evil has come up before Me.” Despite the economic prosperity of the city, despite the engineering marvels, despite the architecture and the walls, in God's eyes, the city was great with evil and wickedness. The God of the Bible sends His prophet Jonah to speak the Word of the Lord to that city. Jonah's name in Hebrew means “dove,” and this man is sent to offer an olive branch, if you will, to this great city, to call out against it because its evil is great.

The evil of Assyria was extraordinary as well. It was a city gripped with the power of idolatry and temples for the gods of Assyria. Guardian creatures, maybe the most impressive of the idols in Assyria, these Lamassu figures, extraordinary in size, stood at the doorway of the palace. As you enter into the palace of 80 rooms, these guardian creatures protect the king. Some of these statues can be seen even in our own country. The University of Chicago excavated Assyrian palaces, and they brought one of these Lamassu figures to Chicago. It was so large that they could not get it inside the Oriental Museum in Chicago. They actually tore down the wall of the building in order to get this Lamassu figure inside. The figure is so large that when groups visit, they are dwarfed in the shadow of it. Not only was Nineveh filled with extraordinary idolatry, it was filled with a vision of political power where concentration of rule was focused in one person, and that is always dangerous. One ruler with total political power concentrated in his person then exercised that power through violence.

The Assyrian palaces were decorated with reliefs. Archaeologists have discovered 10,000 linear feet of these reliefs, decorating the palaces, and they show Assyria’s political and military power. The king is depicted often in subduing chaos. One relief shows a ritual lion hunt, where the king’s soldiers guarded and created a perimeter like an ancient Assyrian coliseum. Lions would be drugged and then released from cages, and the king would ritually slaughter them, subduing the forces of chaos with his own bare hands. The palace reliefs show not only a country in the

Page 3 of 13 grip of idolatry, but also a country in the grip of political corruption and a culture of violence. They also show a society that is built on the economic exploitation of other people. The social pyramid of Assyria goes up with steep sides, and the walls of the palaces are decorated with reliefs showing peoples who have been conquered and subjected. You can see them being taken out as plunder, along with goods, silver and gold, and people being taken away.

When the word of the Lord comes to Jonah to go to that great city, that evil city of Nineveh, Jonah goes the other direction. When God tells us to go and speak a word of repentance to the most sinful people around, we are tempted to say, “Oh, the gospel doesn't go to them, does it?” These are the people that should be condemned. Identify your enemy right now in your mind and heart. Maybe it's a political party. Maybe it's a social movement. Maybe it's an individual. Maybe it's a foreign country. It’s whoever you hate and are tempted to think that the gospel certainly cannot be extended to them. That's what we have in Jonah. But the Lord God Almighty, the God of all nations, tells Jonah, the man whose name means “dove” or “peace,” to go. And Jonah says, “I'm not going there,” and he gets on a boat and goes in the opposite direction. Have you ever done that? When God told you to extend His mercy to someone that you were tempted to hate, did you think, “I'm not going to do that”? When God stirs in you and says, “Forgive, as you been forgiven,” have you ever been tempted to say, “Lord, I just want to receive your forgiveness for me, but I'm not sure I want to extend it to them”?

Jonah boards a ship to Tarshish, 2500 miles in the opposite direction. Now the text gets really interesting. The Lord sends a judgment, and the seas begin to churn. The sailors sailing with Jonah recognize that the disaster must be the judgment of a god. They ask him, “Who are you and where did you come from?” In Jonah 1:9, Jonah says: "I am a Hebrew, and I fear the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land." The sailors sailing with him said, “What have you done?” They cast lots on the boat, and the lot fell to Jonah as the one responsible for this disaster. In Jonah 1:12, Jonah answered: "Pick me up and hurl me into the sea; then the sea will quiet down for you, for I know it is

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because of me that this great tempest has come upon you." Jonah said, “I am fleeing from the Lord, because He has sent me to preach compassion to a wicked city.” Sailors around Jonah call out to the Lord in Jonah 1:14: "O LORD, let us not perish for this man's life, and lay not on us innocent blood, for You, O LORD, have done as it pleased You." They throw Jonah overboard, and we read that the men on the boat feared the Lord and offered sacrifice and made vows to Him. The sailors on the boat come to faith, even as they throw Jonah overboard.

Now the text gets really interesting. After Jonah is thrown overboard, he sinks like a stone into the deep, and in the depths of his despair, Jonah calls out to God. In His kindness, even to the disobedient prophet, the Lord sends a great fish, the Hebrew text tells us. For those of us who first met the story of Jonah in Sunday School, this is indelibly imprinted on our minds as a whale, and that’s okay. The Hebrew text tells us it is simply a great fish, and in Hebrew that includes whales. From the belly of the great fish that was sent to rescue him, Jonah calls out to God and repents inside the whale. In Jonah 2:8-9, we read: “Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love. But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to You; what I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the LORD!" The Lord hears his cry, and the great fish vomits him up onto the dry land, and the Word of the Lord comes a second time. The God of the Bible gives Jonah a second chance and is unrelenting in His compassion for the Ninevites. Aren't you glad, when God calls you to do something and you are initially unwilling to do it, that oftentimes He will give you a second chance? In Jonah 3:2, God tells Jonah again: "Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you." God's prophets do not invent the message. They speak the message that God gives them. Jonah then goes 500 miles to Nineveh, the great city. The text of Scripture can be trusted, even in these details, when it tells us that it took three days to walk around the city. Nineveh proper was a walled city, built in a quadrilateral with other major cities that formed the center of Assyrian power. It does take three days to walk around the perimeter. Jonah travels to this hostile power, the bully of the ancient Near East, and makes a stunning announcement in Jonah 3:4: "Forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!" Then the text surprises us, yet again. In Jonah 3:5, we read: “And the people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth,

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from the greatest of them to the least of them.” The people of Nineveh believed God. This corrupt, violent, decadent, exploiting, wicked city gets one message from God, and they call for a fast, sackcloth, and repentance. The people and the king of Nineveh, probably Adad-nirari III or one of his sons, humble themselves before God, remove the royal robes, cover themselves with sackcloth, sit in ashes, and fast. The entire society humbles itself. It is stunning, isn’t it? It is so unexpected that this wicked people, getting one Word, stop in their tracks. When the Lord saw what they did, turning from their evil way, God relented and did not bring disaster.

Brothers and sisters, I want to tell you this morning from God's Word through Jonah that no matter what you have done, if you turn and repent before God, you will be received. This Word, this action of the Ninevites, is what our Lord references in Matthew 12. In Matthew 12:40-41, we read: “For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.” Jesus says that the men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment day with Jesus' generation, and they will condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now One greater than Jonah is here. I'm looking forward to talking with these Ninevites. Jesus says they will be there. They repented and believed.

The final move of Jonah takes another surprising turn. We should rejoice, shouldn’t we? When a sinful person repents, it should cause us to rejoice. When a sinful society prostrates themselves before God and says, “God have mercy on us,” as a nation, we should rejoice. Instead, Jonah is upset, and not just a little. In Jonah 4:1, we read: “But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry.” Jonah was very angry, and he said in Jonah 4:2: "O LORD, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that You are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.” How did Jonah know God would do this? He knew because of the revelation of God's character in Exodus 34:6 -7a where He says to Moses: “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity

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and transgression and sin. . .” Jonah quotes these words, the revelation of God's person and character to Moses at Mount Sinai, while our ancestors were sitting at the base of the mountain making the golden calf. Instead of destroying us, God came and spoke to Moses, saying that He was the Lord. The Lord is merciful, compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love. This was John Calvin's favorite passage in the entire Bible. This is the Lord. His mercy is greater than we would imagine. And Jonah said, “I knew You would do this, and I wanted them destroyed.” They repented at his preaching, and the book of Jonah ends with a rhetorical question. There are only two books of the Bible that end with a rhetorical question. In Jonah 4:11, the Lord says: “And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?" This is the biblical idiom for “they don’t know up from down.” They are confused and lost. God asks rhetorically, “Should I not have compassion?” The answer, beloved, is “Yes.” The Lord should have compassion on a sinful society, and that compassion is released with repentance. The book of Jonah ends with this question.

We turn to the second book of the Bible that is sent to Nineveh. The second book of the Bible sent to Nineveh is the prophet Nahum. Nahum is sent to Nineveh 100 years later, and, oh, what a great deal transpires in 100 years. Imagine if someone came later in history and asked, “Was there anything that really happened in the United States between 1920 and 2020?” Most of us feel that over that 100 years there was quite a bit that happened: the Great Depression, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, economic development, Facebook, a turbulent 2020. A lot happened. And a lot happens between Jonah and Nahum. What happens is the emergence of the neo-Assyrian Empire. The Assyrians move forward with a plan to extend their culture and rule to the known world. We see a series of powerful kings, Tiglath Pileser III and Shalmaneser V, who expanded their rule, even attacking Israel. Then Sargon II ruled, completing the siege of Samaria, scooping the ten northern tribes of Israel, and deporting them into exile. We see kings like Sennacherib, who came and conquered 46 cities of Judah, surrounded Jerusalem, and imprisoned Hezekiah “like a bird in a cage.” His successor, Esarhaddon, took over Egypt, followed by Ashurbanipal, who reached the farthest extent of Assyrian power. The city of Nineveh grew into a global empire, and this empire brought havoc on the earth. Assyria and Assyrian power form a critical backdrop to the ministry of Isaiah and to the ministry of Micah. Assyrian kings come in the book of Kings, and they devastate the land.

Assyria’s repentance at the preaching of Jonah proves to be short-lived. When we come to the book of Nahum, we receive the second part of Exodus 34:6 and 7. Remember that what God said to Moses was that He was the Lord, “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in

Page 7 of 13 steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.” And we say, “Hallelujah!” And then the Lord says at the end of Exodus 34:7b: “[He will] by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation." The God of the Bible is merciful to those who repent, but He is a just judge for those who do not. Dear beloved, we need this full quotation.

Jonah shows us that God honors repentance. Nahum, whose name means “comfort,” is a prophet through whom God comforts us in that He sees the evil of the world and will rightly condemn it. Nahum quotes Exodus 34 in Nahum 1:3: “The LORD is slow to anger and great in power, and the LORD will by no means clear the guilty. His way is in whirlwind and storm, and the clouds are the dust of His feet.” Filled with Exodus allusions, Nahum says, “He rebukes the sea … the mountains quake before Him … Who can stand before His indignation? …The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; He knows those who take refuge in Him.”

Just as God brought salvation to our ancestors out of Egypt at the very same moment that He rightly judged the Egyptians, we need this. We need to know this morning that God does see evil that's overwhelming, and He will act. He will judge, and He will act, and that is why He tells us not to take vengeance into our own hands. God's people function like the prophets: like Jonah, offering forgiveness through repentance, and like Nahum in society, comforting us that God holds all people accountable. We cannot look past sin and say, “Oh, it's nothing.” Sometimes as Christians, we are too ready to overlook the sin of the world or of society. We hear only the message of Jonah and forget that repentance is critical. Nahum speaks a word of comfort that God holds all people accountable, and God's judgment in the Bible is, in fact, a source of great comfort. God will sort this out. God will reckon in the end, and it will be a right reckoning. The arrival of God's judgment in Scripture brings great comfort to those who have suffered. When we see evil in our society, as believers we have to identify with the suffering and those who have been exploited or are the victims of sin. Sometimes we are not willing to do that. Nahum speaks, and this Word from the Lord through Nahum is stunning. It is beautifully expressed. Nahum is only 47 verses long. It takes about nine minutes to read it out loud. It is located in a very specific chronological frame. Nahum 3 references the Assyrian siege of Thebes in Egypt, which happens in 663 BC, and Nahum prophesies the destruction of Nineveh, which happens in 612 BC. So the book happens within this very specific historical period. Nahum prophesies judgment, and it's not a capricious judgment. It is the judgment of a God who is slow to anger, but who will not clear the guilty. Do you know what it's like when

Page 8 of 13 someone has committed a heinous crime and then comes before a judge? Others have been exploited or suffered or, even worse, great evil has been perpetrated against them. Finally, the case is brought before the judge, and hope rises in the hearts of many, particularly those who have suffered, that the judge will judge justly. Can you imagine the heartbreak, if the case is brought forward and all the facts are known, and the judge simply acquits? It’s devastating. It’s evil upon an evil. We long, deep down, to worship a God who will judge justly.

We sang the song “Ancient of Days.” The image of the “Ancient of Days” is a courtroom scene. In Daniel 7, when the nations of the world are acting with violence and exploitation and Daniel lifts his eyes up to heaven, he sees the heavens open, and he sees God as Ancient of Days. The books are opened, and God judges justly. He condemns evil, and He bequeaths an everlasting kingdom to the Son of Man.

In Nahum, Nahum prophesies the destruction of Nineveh. Nahum's oracle against the city is emotional. It is vivid; it is filled with gripping imagery. It is expressed in beautiful, elevated poetry. Those reading the Hebrew text of Nahum start to listen and notice that it is an acrostic in the first several verses. The first verses begin with the letter A. The next verses begin with the letter B. The next verses begin with the letter C. Then the D is missing. Them there is H, then I, but the J is missing. It's a controlled, emotional way of saying that this city is breaking apart. The attacker will be attacked. Idolatry will be cut off. In Nahum 1:14, the Lord says: "No more shall your name be perpetuated; from the house of your gods I will cut off the carved image and the metal image. I will make your grave, for you are vile." Assyria, whose military technologies made them the superpower of the ancient Near East, is the attacker who becomes attacked. In Nahum 2:1, Nahum says: “The scatterer has come up against you. Man the ramparts; watch the road; dress for battle; collect all your strength.” Assyria developed technologies for attacking cities that included mobile battering rams. They had tanks. I've walked up the Assyrian siege ramp at the city of Lachish. When they attacked the city, not only did they plunder it, not only did they lead the women and children out into slavery, but they impaled the victims on posts and even put them up on stakes, which is a precursor to crucifixion. They decorated their walls with this. You can see these men, our ancestors, in Judah on stakes. Nahum says that the attacker will be attacked. The one who overpowered the waters will be overwhelmed by a flood. In fact, when Assyria is attacked, the waters of the Tigris River are diverted, the city is flooded, and the walls collapse from

Page 9 of 13 underneath. Assyria the plunderer will be plundered. In Nahum 2:9, Nahum sees the attacking armies plunder the silver and the gold. Assyria, the hunter, will become the hunted. The Lord says in Nahum 2:13: “Behold, I am against you … and I will burn your chariots in smoke, and the sword shall devour your young lions. I will cut off your prey from the earth, and the voice of your messengers shall no longer be heard.” In Nahum 3:1, we read: “Woe to the bloody city, all full of lies and plunder—no end to the prey!” Beloved, the judgment of God in Scripture is comforting. It's comforting that God sees the evil and acts. God refuses to be mocked forever. He is slow to anger. He is patient. He honors all who turn towards Him and repent, and yet He will not clear the guilty, and so it is safe and right for us to worship Him this morning.

Just as Jonah ends with a rhetorical question, Nahum is the other book that ends with a rhetorical question. In Nahum 3:19, the Lord speaks to Nineveh: “There is no easing your hurt; your wound is grievous. All who hear the news about you clap their hands over you. For upon whom has not come your unceasing evil?” There is a clapping of hands in the Bible in adoration and worship. There is also a clapping of hands in the Bible when God justly condemns evil. Trees of the field will clap their hands, in Psalm 96 and 98, when the Lord comes with a right judgment. I know we don't often talk about it this way. But it's really important that we have this full picture. You can't have just the first part of Exodus 34. You need all of it. I need all of it. God is slow to anger, gracious, abounding in steadfast love, merciful, compassionate, and He will not clear the guilty. Nahum ends with a rhetorical question: “For upon whom has not come your unceasing evil?” Everyone has suffered.

I’ve spent many, many hours looking at the palace reliefs of the Assyrians. I happen to be married to someone who can read the captions. The captions are there in cuneiform and tell what's happening in each scene – unceasing evil. When I think of the evil of the Assyrians, two images come to my mind. This one is an image from Sennacherib’s attack on Lachish, just southwest of Jerusalem. It's zeroing in on the aftermath when women and children and goods are being paraded before the Assyrian king. There is a pile of human heads nearby and men recording the headcount. There are people who are suffering greatly, and I

Page 10 of 13 already showed you the men impaled. Again, these men are our ancestors. These are the people who heard the preaching of Isaiah. They have been stripped naked. They are being thrown down to the ground, and they are going to be nailed to the ground and skinned alive. “Upon whom has not come your unceasing evil?”

I hope, as a people, that we could all say, “That's wrong. That should never happen.” And part of the heartbeat of a committed Christian is to have the moral foundation to look out at evil and say, “That's wrong. I'm so sorry that he did that to you.” God holds all people accountable. That's what the Assyrians did to us. Ashurbanipal celebrated after his battle at Til-Tuba. This is the other image that's always in my mind. He celebrated the completion of his battle victory against the Elamites. He gathered the plunder. The people brought in musicians and feasted. This is the king, feasting under the vine that provided shade, aromatic incense burning before him, and eunuchs behind him, waving fans to keep him cool. If you look over the shoulder of the musicians, you see a head hanging from a tree. It’s the head Teumman, the king he has just defeated. “Upon whom has not come your unceasing evil?”

Brothers and sisters, we worship a God this morning who is holy, who is just, who receives those who repent and turn to Him, but who will not clear the guilty. He will judge justly. The whole storyline turns on the power of repentance. These two rhetorical questions are questions that we must ask this morning. The Lord asked us through Jonah: “Should I not have compassion on 120,000 people who don't know their right from their left?” And I want to commission you this morning to go out into a society that is also gripped with idolatry, with political corruption, with violence, with economic exploitation. Go with the Word of the Lord that says that He receives anyone who repents. Go out with that Word, that God, the God of the Bible, not the God that people make up in their own image and imagination, but the real God, the One who speaks, who made us, who created the world, speaks to you: “You must repent, turn, confess your sin.” Go out into the public square with your own testimony. As Jonah said: “I fled from the Lord. I was unwilling to offer forgiveness to you, and I discovered in the belly of a big fish that God even honored my cry of repentance.” Go! I want you to go. I want you to go out, and I want you to be willing to offer forgiveness to all who repent and turn to God. But I want you also to go out with Nahum, so that you can identify with people who

Page 11 of 13 have suffered, been lied to, been mistreated, exploited, and have really experienced human evil. Go out with them and say: “God holds all people accountable. I'm so sorry that that happened, and I want to join you in saying, ‘That's wrong. That's wrong.’” Sometimes we are so ready to receive forgiveness that we lose the ability to say, “That's wrong.” Yet the hope of worshiping a God who will judge justly means that we can say, “That's wrong, and God will address it.” God's justice and righteousness in judgment is another path that turns people to faith.

After twenty years of ministry, I've met people who have come to faith in Christ from both of these two different directions. It doesn't really matter which direction you come. You can come from the direction that says, “God loves you and forgives you,” and you hear the Word of repentance, and you come running to the cross of Jesus Christ. Praise God. You can also come from the direction that God sees, knows, holds all people accountable, and will judge justly, and that can cause you to come running to the cross. It's in the cross of Christ that we meet a God, who is both just and the justifier of the ungodly, because He does judge sin. The cross is not just a moral example. It's God's judgment, poured out on Christ instead of on you and me. It’s our sin that brought Him there.

Dear beloved, this morning, don't we need both of these prophets? Should I not have compassion? Yes, Lord. To the question, “Upon whom has not come your unceasing evil?” we can say with Nahum, “Lord, that's wrong; that conduct is wrong, and you hold all people accountable.” The judgment is right, and it really happens. In 612 BC, the Babylonians and Medes come and divert the Tigris River. The walls of Nineveh collapse. The city is plundered, besieged, and it is never rebuilt – ever. So we trust the Lord today. We trust Him to go out with a full gospel of forgiveness for all who repent. We trust a God who judges rightly. We trust the Lord, and we receive those who repent, even our worst enemies. We are also unwilling to brush away sin, as though it never happened. We are unwilling to call evil “good” or “not important.” We stand with those who have suffered, and we trust God's right, measured judgment. We ourselves are quick to repent and willing to receive all who do. We are willing to condemn what's wrong but willing to wait for God to carry out His right judgment. We need Jonah. We need Nahum. We need God's Word to teach us who He is and how to live. Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, we stand before You, King of kings, Lord of lords. Lord, that language was first used by Assyrian kings, but they were not the King of kings. You are. Lord, I pray this morning for myself. Lord, I pray that you would help me to make sure that my heart is turned toward You always and that I would walk in humility as a forgiven sinner. Thank you, Lord Jesus, for Your bountiful forgiveness of me. Lord, I did things that I didn't even know were wrong until Your Holy Spirit convicted me, until that moment when the Word of Christ, the Word of the gospel,

Page 12 of 13 came to my life that God receives all who repent, and I turned. Thank you, Lord, for receiving me. Lord, thank You for showing me Your righteousness and comforting me with Your just judgment. Thank You, Lord, that You see, You know, You hear every word. You know, not only the actions and the words, but the motivation. Lord, You know the suffering of many, and we trust You this morning. We thank You that You will not be mocked forever. We thank You, Lord, that You have entrusted judgment to the One who is worthy and capable. So, Lord, we stand before You, trusting You this morning. We trust you, Lord, to receive us when we turn in repentance. We trust You, Lord, when you tell us that “vengeance is Mine and I will repay.” We trust You when there is a seeming delay, and we know from Your Word that Your delay makes room for repentance. So we trust You, Lord. We trust You. Lord, we are living in a complex time with situations that are overwhelming and beyond our understanding. We trust You. Lord, we stand. Nahum asked, “Who can stand?” Lord, we do stand. We stand in your presence, Lord, as a community of forgiven sinners with good news of the gospel of a God who is just and the justifier. We stand, Lord, in Your presence to confess our trust in You. Jesus, we ask now that our trust in You, our faith in You, would grow, would grow large, and that the majesty of what You accomplished on the cross would be vivid before us. We trust You. We trust You, Lord.

Hallelujah! Amen.

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