Good morning, everyone. All right, we're going to finish out the book of Nahum. So we're on lesson 11. If you have your book, Nahum chapters 2 and 3. Then we're going to turn next week to Habakkuk. I've heard some say Habakuk. And I didn't go to Multnomah, so I don't say it that way. But that's the proper way to say it. That's fine. But we don't say Yerim Yahu or Yoshi Yahu. or Zephanyahu, so I thought we could say Habakkuk, and that's permissible. Plus I have Pastor Gary on my side.

Let me pray, and then we will begin looking at these final two chapters of Nahum. Heavenly Father, we praise you, the great God of our salvation, the one who judges sin and wickedness, and who accomplished our justification by judging our sin at the cross. We praise you, ask that you would equip us by your spirit to learn from your word, to see you in it, to rejoice in you, and we ask this in the name of our Lord and Savior, amen.

All right, let me ask some questions. The book of Nahum is about what? Anybody? Vengeance. Vengeance. Judgment. Judgment. By whom? Against whom? The Lord against Nineveh. The Lord against Nineveh. OK. Why would Nineveh be the enemy of the Lord? Enemy of the Lord's people. OK. So it's the enemy of the Lord's people. Is that the one reason? How so? What's Nineveh the capital of? Assyria, and Assyria is one of the, I don't think this is overstating it, one of the worst nations that's ever appeared on planet Earth. They were known for their brutality. Even if you pull back their propaganda a little bit and recognize they're going to overstate things to make themselves sound grand in all of their carvings and reliefs and such in their writings. Even if you tone it down a little and say, you probably didn't kill that many people. It was probably a little less than that. Or those sorts of things. They bragged about being especially brutal. They are. they really embodied wickedness in a lot of ways.

We're gonna see in chapter three, there's some specific reasons that they are going to be judged, which goes beyond just their harm of the Lord's people, or their seeking to harm the Lord's people. We'll see if there's some, they've just violated what is good and right, which is instructive for us, because you get to the end and you realize if a nation is wicked, it will be judged. It doesn't just have to be a nation that is in covenant with the Lord, which is helpful for us.

Okay, Nahum is writing, according to the McCarthy Study Bible here, it's just where I pulled this chart from, sometime in the reign of Manasseh and into the reign of Josiah. So at this point, I'll point this out. At this point, the Northern Kingdom has been in captivity to Assyria for about 100 years.

So 100 years ago today, it's 1925, It's the roaring 20s, okay, so think about that for a second. That's how long we've seen a lot of technological advancements. I don't think they would have seen quite as many technological advancements back then in terms of relative to where they began to where they were. But that's just how much time has occurred.

So that's, I mean, that's beyond living memory. Especially when he realized some of these kings only lived to like 40 years old and stuff, so the lifespan wasn't as long. Though Moses does say in Psalm 90, the span of a man's life is 70 or perhaps 80 years if he's strong, which is about the same that it is today.

So, it's been 100 years since Israel's gone into captivity to Assyria, and Assyria is now this, I mean, it's this big bully nation that continues to subjugate and demand allegiance from all these other smaller nations around it. So it's the nation that shows up and says, you know, you're gonna, They're kind of operating like the mob a little bit, right? You're going to pay us to keep you safe from these other nations and then come to find out that just means you're going to pay us that we don't squash you. That was pretty much how they ran the international policy.

And Sennacherib's temple in Nineveh was huge. It was several football fields big. And most of that was these massive treasure rooms where it was just the wealth of the nations on display to show how great the kings of Assyria were. So they made themselves rich off of these weaker nations. And again, we get into chapter three, we'll look at what it means that they've multiplied their harlotries and stuff. And part of that is they sold their military power and then use that as an excuse to occupy and control these other nations.

So let me read chapter two. Chapter two is going to talk about, in very vivid detail, the overthrow of Nineveh, that's what the Nazbi has it as its heading, excuse me. And this is the battle, this is the siege, this is the moment of the city falling and being captured. So it's in very poetic, vivid detail. You'll just see that as I read it here.

So Nahum chapter two, verse one. The one who scatters has come up against you. Man the fortress. Watch the road. Strengthen your back. Summon all your strength. For the Lord will restore the splendor of Jacob, like the splendor of Israel, even though devastators have devastated them and destroyed their vine branches. The shields of his mighty men are colored red. The warriors are dressed in scarlet. The chariots are enveloped in flashing steel when he has prepared to march, and the cypress spears are brandished. The chariots race madly in the streets. They rush wildly in the squares. Their appearance is like torches. They dash to and fro like lightning flashes. He remembers his nobles. They stumble in their march. They hurry to her wall, and the mantlet is set up. The gates of the rivers are opened, and the palace is dissolved. It is fixed, she is stripped, she is carried away and her handmaids are moaning like the sound of doves beating on their breasts.

Though Nineveh was like a pool of water throughout all her days. throughout her days, excuse me, now they are fleeing. Stop, stop, but no one turns back. Plunder the silver, plunder the gold, for there is no limit to the treasure, wealth from every kind of desirable object. She is emptied. Yes, she is desolate and waste. Hearts are melting and knees knocking. Also, anguish is in the whole body. and all their faces are grown pale.

Where is the den of the lions and the feeding place of the young lions, where the lion, lioness, and lion's cub prowled with nothing to disturb them? The lion tore enough for his cubs, killed enough for his lionesses, filled his lairs with prey and his dens with torn flesh.

Behold. I am against you, declares the Lord of Hosts. I will burn up her chariots in smoke. A sword will devour your young lions. I will cut off your prey from the land, and no longer will the voice of your messengers be heard.

I feel like I need to just keep charging ahead, but we'll stop right there. Okay, you notice all the vivid military detail. This is a battle. This is the siege breaking through.

Now, they don't know exactly how Nineveh fell to Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, but there's one of the assumptions or one of the theories is that it was, Water, there's two rivers that go into, that flow right by Nineveh. The Tigris, and then there's the, I think it's the Kassir, is how you say it. And that one flows through the city. And so Sennacherib had built all of these canals and floodgates and stuff in order to control the flow of water, to bring water to the city, to irrigate the surrounding fields and pasture lands, and to control the water during flood season so that the city and everything wouldn't be flooded with water.

So one of the theories is that the Babylonians actually took over that whole irrigation system and somehow used the water either in diverting it so that they could get into the city or in causing all the water to come rushing at the city so that it would eat away at the walls. And when it says here, the palace is dissolved. And in verse six, the gates of the rivers are opened, the palace is dissolved. There's question about whether or not that's literal. And the floodwaters were rushing so violently that it was chewing away at the palace and actually bringing the walls down, the palace down. Because the gates of the rivers were allowed to just were open so that the water would just rush into the city. Some scholars are convinced that that's how the city was breached so that the Babylonians could get in.

I'm not sure. I think what I was understanding, it's difficult to tell from the archaeology. how the city fell. So sometimes you can see that, you can see like there was a huge burn layer on the rocks in a certain city, so it looks like fire, like the city was burned at one point. So they can tell that kind of stuff. But I think in Nineveh, I don't know if it's because excavations are still ongoing or what it is, but they don't know from the archeology what's likely to have happened, so they have to stitch it together from ancient sources. So some of those are Greek historians, and so you wonder, how did the message get to you? The Babylonians don't actually explain how they took the city. They do say they took it in their writings, but they don't tell you how.

It'd be a bit of irony. if the water running through the city was the downfall of Nineveh because the water running through the city was the downfall of Babylon when the Persians took it because they dammed up the river in order to then get into Babylon and destroy and conquer them.

But the destruction of Nineveh is happening because the Lord's going to restore the splendor of Jacob, he says that in verse two, and in verse 13, because he is against them. Behold, I am against you, declares the Lord. That is mentioned in verse five of chapter three again. Behold, I am against you, declares the Lord of hosts. And in verse one of chapter three, woe to the bloody city. If there's a woe, that's, You know, basically, the Lord Jesus uses the same language when he's speaking to the Pharisees and the scribes. And so it's, woe to you, you're in a position of being under the judgment of God. You should expect doom. You should expect destruction. The holy Lord of all creation is against you. It's serious.

So, Why is Nineveh being destroyed? From this chapter we know because of the enemies of the Lord's people and thus the enemies of the Lord. I'll highlight a couple things in this chapter here. In verse three, the shields of his mighty men are colored red. The warriors are dressed in scarlet. The chariots are enveloped in flashing steel. All the spears are brandished, and the chariots are racing madly.

So the color red. There's a question here. And again, this is all we know from the ancient sources just presents questions about what did it actually look like. So the question here is, are they wearing a red uniform? Are their shields covered in a red, like a red-dyed leather? Or are they stained with the blood of their enemies? They don't know for sure.

But soldiers would wear red in the ancient days, partly because it was an intimidation thing, right? This color is like what's going to happen to you, I think is kind of the idea. The chariots are enveloped in flashing steel, it says. Their appearance is like torches, excuse me. They dash to and fro like lightning flashes.

The chariot is the, what's the, the cavalry, it's the, It's the way you charge in and attack the army quickly without them being prepared. It's the way you move fast. And so they're described as being like lightning or rushing wildly, racing madly. They would have had some kind of metal on them. A chariot usually would carry Three people, usually. So they're big. It's not just one person. A driver, and then two people that are fighting from the chariot. So probably on either side. And they were, if there was an open plain, and things are pretty flat, like around, like in that part of Iraq where Nineveh is, they could get around really easily.

And then, let's see here. They're like lightning flashes. You know, one of the commentators said, we describe our fighter jets as screaming across the sky. This is the same kind of imagery. It's like, this is, think of these, they're moving so fast. Nothing moves as fast as a chariot. You can't get out of the way. It's gonna hunt you down. It's like lightning.

Nineveh is called to Basically, get ready, in verse five, he remembers his nobles, they stumble in their march, they hurry to a wall, and the mantlet is set up. Nineveh is described, because this is talking about the Babylonian army, and a mantlet here was, if you're gonna bring, so you got the walls, well just, there's the walls, and you've got a gate here. If you're gonna breach the gate, you're gonna bring some kind of battery ram or something to, let's draw some men, here we go. Hey, look at these. And they're dressed in scarlet. And they're gonna bring this in order to come against the gate. Well, they would have some kind of protection put over them so that things thrown from the wall would protect the guys bringing it. That's the mantlet, a mantlet. So it's set up, so the Babylonian siege equipment is protected, it's coming, and then we see in the next verse, verse six, something to do with the rivers being opened, so the water's occurring, and then in verse seven, Nineveh's captured. and it is fixed. She is stripped, she's carried away.

The question is, who is she? And so some people wanna take the Hebrew of that first phrase, it is fixed, the first phrase of verse seven, and they wanna take that to mean that that's actually the proper name of a woman, like the queen of Nineveh. It's really tenuous, so we're not gonna go there. But it could be that there's a, it could be that the city's personified, which is the most, kind of the most natural reading, at least to our ears, that we're talking about Nineveh in terms of she as a her. So she's stripped, she's carried away. I think this is about, the statues of their goddess, Ishtar. She would have had handmaids to temple prostitutes and priestesses and stuff. And so, I think her statue is stripped, she's carried away, and that is indicative of the fact that her, the glory of Nineveh is is done away with. Nobody was supposed to be able to overcome Ishtar. And Anu, I think, was the male god. She's described in lion-like terms. And in the stories, she has a lion that travels around with her.

In the... Palace of Nineveh, there were these huge statues. Let's see if I can bring one out. Let me save this. Wait a second. I have it here. Give it a sec. Here's one. And that was, they had several of these in the palace, and it's a winged lion. You can see the wings here. It's a lion-like body and then has the head of a man. And that, so everything Assyrian was described in lion-like terminology. They described their armies like lions, that they tore through and devoured their enemies. and even their gods were described that way. So they're totally overcome and that fits the context here.

So it could be that in verse seven it's talking about the goddess Ishtar, or it's just talking about Nineveh being totally plundered, and that's the case in eight, nine, and 10. where you see that everyone's running away from it, no one's stopping to protect Nineveh and try to fight the Babylonians. Plunder the silver, plunder the gold, there's no limit to the treasure, which is not really much of an exaggeration, because Assyria and Nineveh was filled with the treasure of every other nation around. So there's, all of the treasures are being plundered. taken and being plundered. And so you get then to verse 10 where she's emptied.

So I put this line up here to say this fits in verse 11. and 12 and 13, where these lions, these young lions, these, where is the lion? Well, the lion's Nineveh and Nineveh's armies. Where's the strength of Nineveh? Where's this great roaring lion that would certainly devour you if you came up against it? It's gone. Why? Because the Lord of hosts has destroyed it. Lord of hosts, What does host refer to? It's his armies, yeah. The Lord of Armies. And it's really thinking like the angelic host, the angelic armies. In this context, since it's obviously militaristic, That's perfectly fine to see that. Obviously you have the whole host of heaven singing and praising the Lord too. So you have, there's that nuance, that perspective you can put on it.

Here, clearly it's the Lord of his angelic armies and who could stand against him? He overcomes this young lion that, and all these young lions that were how Assyria characterized itself. to the point where at the very end of the last verse of chapter two, no longer will the voice of your messengers be heard.

Okay, everybody remember Rabbi Shecka and he comes to Jerusalem and Hezekiah is there, right? And he's speaking in Hebrew. And the people on the wall say, don't speak in Hebrew because we understand, it was Aramaic, that was the native language of Assyria and Babylon of the Mesopotamians. But he keeps speaking in Hebrew because he wants to have everybody be afraid and not trust Hezekiah and not trust in the Lord. So do you think you think Yahweh is gonna protect you? Like could any of the gods of the surrounding nations protect them? So why would you think that your God can protect you? So don't trust in Hezekiah. Don't trust in the Lord your God. And that's a messenger of the Assyrians. And that's what they did. They came up to your doorstep and said, basically, serve us or die. You pick. 

And when every other nation had melted before them, what choice, I mean, which choices are you inclined to make, right? I mean, just think of this. The United States is a wicked nation. Okay, we'll just say that. But the United States is not a Syria. You think of the United States and its diplomacy saying, it's time for you to do what we're telling you to do. And if you're wondering whether or not that's a good idea, if you don't do what we're telling you to do, you don't have access to the American economy, and there's a aircraft carrier battle group off of your coast, what are you going to do? I mean, just think about that, the ancient equivalent of that kind of idea with the Assyrians. There's no other nation that's as strong as this. And at the time of Nahum, these are the great kings. This is Assyria at its height. And so the blue is where Nahum is living. So this is the United States post-World War II. right, where it's, where it's, there's really, there's really no other nation that could stand in the way. And if the United States had wanted to, it could have just kept rolling. This is, this is the power in the world. And it's right at your doorstep. And the Lord says, basically, that power, that voice is just gonna be gone. Why? Because the Lord is against them. 

Okay, so put yourselves in the shoes of the Israelites here, of the Judeans. And maybe depending on where we're at here, if this is, you have from Ahaz, Ahaz sent word to Tiglath-Balasor to get help from the, Was it the Northern Kingdom of Israel at that time? I forget exactly. It's in 2 Kings 16. So let me just turn there. And this is exactly how the human heart is inclined to act, okay? So this is not just interesting history. This is yours and my hearts on display here. 

they're told to, in the law of Moses, in the law that's given to the children of Israel, It's not to fear any nation, but to serve the Lord. Fear the Lord, right? What you fear is what you obey. That's just a helpful axiom. And that's the case where there's a dog baring its teeth at you and growling, right? He's telling you, don't come near me and leave. So you back away, right? You obey it. 

On a much grander scale, right? If you fear the Lord, This is the Lord Jesus saying, do not fear them that can destroy the body, but have no power to cast into hell. Fear him who can destroy both body and soul in hell. This is that kind of, that kind of, thing that is what was to characterize the children of Israel, where they see all these nations around them that can certainly do them harm. 

Think of Joshua and Caleb and the spies going into the land, and they come back and the people's hearts melt because there's a bad report. And Caleb says, the Lord will go before us and give us victory. Well, it does certainly go up. And the people say, there's no way we can ever beat them. They're too tall, they're too mighty. The cities are too fortified, et cetera, et cetera. Who are they fearing, the Lord or the people? They're fearing the people. 

Well, Ahaz fears the people. And he, in verse three of 2 Kings 16, he walked in the way of the kings of Israel. He's a king of Judah, the southern kingdom, but he walked in the ways of the northern kings, which is just, we can just sum it up and say, that's really bad. and even made his son pass through the fire, that's Molech worship, according to the abominations of the nations whom the Lord had driven out from before the sons of Israel. He sacrificed and burned incense on the high places and on the hills and under every green tree.

Then Rezin, king of Aram, and Pekah, son of Remaliah, king of Israel, came up to Jerusalem to wage war. and they besieged Ahaz, but could not overcome him. At that time, Resing King of Aram recovered Eilath for Aram, and cleared the Judeans out of Eilath entirely, and the Arameans came to Eilath, and they lived there to this day.

Now, at this time, this is, I'm not wandering far afield here, okay, so just stick with me, okay, this is, just stick with me. In Isaiah 7, it came about in the days of Ahaz, the son of Jotham, the son of Uzziah, king of Judah, that Rezan, the king of Aram, of Pekah, the son of Remaliah, king of Israel, went up to Jerusalem to wage war against it, but could not conquer it. Okay, so this is exactly what we're talking about.

When it was reported to the house of David saying the Arameans have camped in Ephraim, his heart and the hearts of his people shook as the trees of the forest shake with the wind. They're scared, okay, terrified. Right? Then the Lord said to Isaiah, you got Isaiah as the prophet here, right? I mean. All right, continue.

Go out now to meet Ahaz, you and your son, Shir Josheb, at the end of the Conduit of the Upper Rule on the highway to the Fuller's Field, and say to him, take care and be calm, have no fear. Do not be fainthearted because of these two stubs of smoldering firebrands on account of the fierce anger of Rezin and Aram and the son of Ramaliah. Because Aram, with Ephraim and the son of Ramaliah, has planned evil against you, saying, let us go up against Judah and terrorize it. and make for ourselves a breach on its walls, and set up the son of Tabeel as king in the midst of it.

Thus says the Lord God, it shall not stand, nor shall it come to pass. For the head of Aram is Damascus, and the head of Damascus is Rezin. Now within another 65 years, Ephraim will be shattered, so that it is no longer a people. And the head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria is the son of Ramaliah. If you will not believe, you surely shall not last.

So then, this is where you get the Immanuel prophecy, where Ahaz is told, ask for a sign of the Lord, that this is gonna be true. And Ahaz is like, I'm not gonna ask the Lord, because his heart's not for the Lord, it's this faint piety, it's this fake piety. And then you have the Immanuel prophecy, the Lord himself will give you a sign, a virgin will be with a child and bear a son, she will call his name Immanuel, okay. And that's looking to the Lord Jesus. But the promise here is the Lord will fight for you. Just fear him.

But in 2 Kings, what does Ahaz do? So Ahaz sent messengers to Tiglath-pelasar, king of Assyria. saying, I am your servant and your son. Come up and deliver me from the hand of the king of Aram, from the hand of the king of Israel who are rising up against me. Ahaz took the silver and gold that was found in the house of the Lord and in the treasuries of the king's house and sent a present to the king of Assyria. So the king of Assyria listened to him and the king of Assyria went up against Damascus and captured it and carried the people of it away into exile to cure and put resin to death. 

Okay, so from that point on, the relationship that Judah has with Assyria is vassal to Lord, okay? Because Ahaz takes the people from serving the Lord God to serving the Lord Tiglath-Pileser, the Lord, the King of Assyria. Okay, that's the historical context. 

Hezekiah breaks away, but he ends up trying to curry favor with the Babylonians, so he still doesn't stay faithful entirely to the Lord. Manasseh just seems to switch back to the Assyrians. He names his son after Ammon-Ra, so he has no interest in the Lord at all until he's in exile and then, then he repents and, or maybe I just overstated that and it's not him in exile, it's one of these guys that I'm thinking about. 

And then Josiah, his heart fully turns to the Lord, but there's been so much damage done by Ahaz, so much damage done by Manasseh, that the people are guaranteed to go into captivity and that happens with the Babylonians. 

So at this time period, at the end of which Nahum is prophesying, You've got, you have one dominant world power, Assyria. And it would be very natural to say, we just have to do what they say. We have to obey them. They are the ones that are going to destroy us if we don't do what they say. And the threat of their judgment looks a lot more real and present than the threat of the Lord's judgment, right? Especially if you haven't been listening to the law of God. 

But the Lord says that they will just be silenced. That's remarkable. 

Okay, in chapter three here, let me summarize this. I'll make a few points here. Nineveh's complete ruin is how the Nazbi puts the heading here. And the ruin of Nineveh is guaranteed because of their wickedness. And so it's not just that they've come up against the Lord's people, but it's that they're really spreading their wickedness around. 

So in, In verses 1, 2, and 3, the city is described as just the dead laying about, the invading army running amok and destroying and to the point where they're stumbling over the dead bodies, so it's just a total devastation. And verse four, why? All because of the many harlotries of the harlot, the charming one, the mistress of sorceries, who sells nations by her harlotries and families by her sorceries. 

Two things going on here, okay? Harlotries are both literal and metaphorical, both the same time. They, metaphorical in this way, the Assyrians sold themselves as the army you can pay to come and protect you, which is what Ahaz did. That's why I read that, because I wanted to emphasize that as well. 

So Ahaz doesn't trust the Lord, but he looks at these Assyrians and says, you know, they could deal with my problem. So let me pay them to come deal with my problem. The issue is, then they're right at his door. And Hezekiah finds that out when he tries to break from their power and return to the Lord. And then you have that whole situation with Sennacherib's army right there. All the cities of Judah are taken except for Jerusalem. Sennacherib describes in his treasure rooms that he had Hezekiah, king of Judah, surrounded or trapped like a bird in a cage in Jerusalem. So, And for Ahaz to invite this, paying this nation to come, he really invited the downfall of his nation, is what he was inviting. Which is similar to how Proverbs describes the forbidden woman. She promises a really wonderful time, she guarantees your death. That's how Proverbs describes it. That he goes to her until an arrow pierces his liver. He does not know that the dead are in her house. 

And so there's, on a political side, a geopolitical side of things, that that's like a metaphor for that. The other side is literal. Harlotry was rampant. Prostitution was rampant, especially in their worship system. Ishtar, the goddess, is described as a prostitute. in Gilgamesh, actually, the Epic of Gilgamesh, which is the Assyrian creation and flood myth. So you had temple prostitution. That was part of the worship practice of worshiping this prostitute goddess. So literal and figurative. 

Also, the mistress of sorceries. That's also literal. Witchcraft was very common in Nineveh. So you see rank wickedness, moral depravity, gross moral depravity, and thus their destruction is guaranteed. 

Now there's a lesson there because you get to the last verse of the book. There is no relief for your breakdown. Your wound is incurable. All who hear about you will clap their hands over you. For on whom has not your evil passed continually? Think moral evil. not just, the Hebrew word for evil, it's in Jonah all the time, where it talks about calamity, it was a great evil. When Jonah sees the people repent, he considers that a great evil. So evil is used as not just in moral terms, but as something that's bad. So if we were, using the Hebrew language to describe Hurricane Katrina or something, we would call that an evil, meaning it's a calamity. 

I think we should understand this as they're based on what we've seen, on whom has not their moral evil passed continually. They are just as wicked as can be. And therefore, There is no relief for your breakdown. Your wound is incurable. Their destruction is certain. 

So what's the lesson here? And then we're gonna take questions. What's the lesson here? Lesson. The Lord will Judge. Let's just say evil, because it's going to fit right there. I want to say wickedness, but I would have had to cram all the letters right in the margin. The Lord will judge evil. Will certainly. Oops. Certainly. Judge evil. He's holy, he's righteous. We talked about this last week. I spent 20 minutes just talking about this, this point. The Lord is a holy God, he's a righteous God. He will judge wickedness, okay? 

Now, there's lessons here. There's a personal application, a personal application and a national application, even for us. One of the things that bothers me in political discourse from a Christian worldview is we think we're not allowed to say that America has an obligation to be righteous and holy because we're not a covenant nation. Assyria was not a covenant nation. Why were they judged? Because of their wickedness. The Canaanites were not covenant nations. Why were they judged? Because of their gross moral perversion. It's in Leviticus 18. So the national application is we need to repent and return, that's the same thing, to the Lord. The personal application is the same, but in here I'm trusting that at least the vast majority of us are in a state of walking in holiness with the Lord, right? And if we sin, we do repent. So the application is to, if in sin repent, okay, but fear the Lord. I'm gonna use that as a catch-all phrase for, therefore, if you fear the Lord, then you obey him, you serve him, you pursue him, you trust him, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I think that's a personal application. Obviously, there's a national version of that, too. Repent and return to the Lord, fear the Lord, right? Don't fear AI, don't fear the Chinese, don't fear the Russians, don't fear illegal immigration. All these things are problems we can deal with, but fear the Lord, right? That's the one that is primary. So that's my quick summary of the lesson here.

The Lord will judge evil. And so, So there's a warning, scripture gives us these, where it says, recognize the judgment of the Lord, respond accordingly, because that's guaranteed for you if you persist in wickedness. Is that turn or burn? Yes, but scripture gives you that, okay? It also presents the Lord as a loving, gracious, forgiving Lord who desires you to turn and delights in your returning and you're seeking him for forgiveness. So the way people don't like the turn and burn is because it's as if there's only an angry face that God has, but his anger is against sin and he delights in righteousness. And so if you return and trust him, He's a forgiving God. So we don't need to be worried about that.

All right, I got a few minutes. I thought I was gonna have like 20 minutes of questions, but why would I think that? I'm used to talking this long. Yes, ma'am?

Do scholars make a connection between the wicked ancient Assyrians and the adoption of Islam 1,000 years later? I wasn't seeing that in the commentaries I was reading, but there could be guys out there. I just didn't come across any articles like that. Yeah, yeah. Other questions or comments? Yes, ma'am.

Boy, that's a big subject. The concern, judgment begins at the house of God. Right. If we accept Christ and his teachings, and we turn or we reject his teachings instead almost worship Israel above Him, then are we not just as guilty of following that as they were in this passage of name? Yeah, I think if we worship and follow anybody over the Lord, that is wrong. That's evil. Because we believe violence is okay, apparently. But Christ's words did not teach that. Yeah, it's... With the new covenant. Yes. And the way Israel is acting right now, Is it another God? I mean, it's possible. God will judge. I know he'll do the judging, ultimately. But we make our own pick. Right. Yeah. There's a lot of lines we could go down with everything you just said. But the point that I'm hearing from you is worth noting, that if there's anything that is what you are, fearing and therefore obeying that supersedes the word of the Lord, that's wrong. Are we Christians or are we Zionists? Right. It's just a question. Yeah, that's all over the internet right now. Most of the people who use the term Zionism have no idea what they're talking about.

Other questions or comments? Yes, sir. It occurs to me, And this is just a comment, but it When we say that it was by faith in the Old Testament we point to all this to you know the Lord is calling for trust and faith from The nation it's a simple point, but it just yeah if we if we name it faith and That's what God's love languages, or whatever, is faith. Stock and trade. His currency is faith. So it just occurred to me that the Old Testament and the New Testament, we always point to Abraham because of his faith, but you could point to Hezekiah, you could point to except that, you know, of course, he sold out to Babylon, but he did have a lot of faith in the prophets. We could see weakness in his faith, but there was faith. Yeah. Which is encouraging to us, because there's a lot of weakness. Not a big point. Yeah. It's a very good point, though. Yeah, the Old Testament is not contradicting the New Testament.

And you think of Nahum, you know, this is written about Nineveh to Nineveh, but who are the ones that received it and read it? Israel. So that's encouraging. And what would be their, you know, what response are they supposed to have to this? A trust in that the Lord's gonna judge the wicked. And so, you know, a response of trusting and believing in him. So it's exactly what you're saying. Yeah, that's very good.

Questions, comments, other ones? I know they're out there. Yes, sir. It kind of brings to mind, or at least if you think of when Abraham was visited by the pre-incarnate Lord and some angels, and was questioned about Sodom and Gomorrah, and he said, will you destroy it if there is, you know, 50 and then all the way down to one? And the response was, No, but then he took them out and then destroyed it. But there was a remnant left in there and the Lord would destroy it.

And I look at Israel today and the Bible says 144,000 in the future from the 12 tribes will come out of Israel. So the point is, in my mind, we shouldn't destroy it. It may be evil, in its current governmental structure were people in there, but that is a promise that God made. And that's a covenant promised. He always has a remnant. He has a remnant. Romans 9, 10, 11 make that point, that the Lord always has a remnant. And he's speaking specifically of remnant of believers who are Jewish. It's his point there. That's not me, but that was the Apostle Paul. He presents himself as an example of that. I too am an Israelite. I'm a tribe of Benjamin.

That's good. All right, anybody itching to get one last one in there before I close us? Final question, comment? Okay, I'm gonna close in prayer.

Heavenly Father, we praise you that you are a holy God, a just God. God who does not delight in evil, who judges evil, who deals with it, if we just could say it that way. We praise you that our sin, the sins of all of your people who trust in you and will trust in you have been paid for and justified at the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. Lord, we are here in him and we look to his return and the end of all of this age and the destruction of the wicked, the bringing in of his kingdom. And we ask that you would come quickly to put this world to right. And until then, Lord, I pray that you would give us the means to trust in your promises and to worship you rightly and to persevere in our faith. And we ask this in the name of Christ Jesus. Amen.