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God's Word to the World

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God's Word to the World 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 Nineveh, 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 Iraq. The Jerwan aqueduct was comprised of over two million dressed limestone rocks, built by the king of Assyria centuries before the Romans built anything. Cuneiform inscriptions appear along the base of the aqueduct. The inscription reads: "Sennacherib 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 Babylon. 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. Page 2 of 13 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 Page 4 of 13 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.
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