Well, good morning to you all. Where are we at here? Well, we'll figure it out. Let's go to Nahum, if you will, with me. And while David's working hard on this, let's ask the Lord to bless our time.

Heavenly Father, I pray that you would, in your goodness and faithfulness to us, equip us to perceive you rightly in this text, especially as this chapter looks so carefully and focuses so tightly on your majesty and your sovereignty, I ask that we would take the lesson which Nahum is declaring here, and that we would worship you rightly as we know you better. Equip us to do so by your spirit, and we ask this in our Savior's name, amen.

All right, let me lay some context for us. This turns on. All right. Open this up here. We've just been in MICA. And MICA... Let's see if I can get the numbers on the top. There we go. MICA was administering during this time period. So, we're now jumping forward about a hundred years, and maybe just a little less, and the Northern Kingdom is gone. The Northern Kingdom was taken into captivity by I think Sargon II down here, king of Assyria. And they were taken and transported, just sort of spread out within the Assyrian Empire. And others were moved into the northern kingdom around Samaria, and they had to quickly learn how to honor the Lord because he didn't appreciate their paganism in his land when he just removed people for practicing paganism in his land.

Then you have all this interesting history afterwards where you've got Sennacherib as kind of the chief King of Assyria. Is that too low for you to see? I'll move that up. Snagreb is the one who comes and takes all of Judah except for Jerusalem. And in the archaeological evidence, he even brags about surrounding Hezekiah in Jerusalem like a bird in a cage. He doesn't brag about taking Jerusalem, because he lost most of his army, because the Lord wiped him out one night. But he doesn't mention that in his archaeological references, because the propaganda wouldn't allow it. Same reason you don't see evidence of the Exodus in Egyptian archaeological evidence, because they're never going to describe their defeats.

And he actually, modern day Nineveh is in Mosul, Iraq. It's actually in the suburbs and it's where sheep pasture. But they found Snack Rib's palace. And most of it that was worth preserving is in the British Museum in London. Like everything worth preserving in the world.

And they actually rebuilt his, this trophy room. where it had these carving reliefs. They would make these brick walls, and then they would cover them with solid stone slabs that they would then carve their history into.

And the most prominent feature on that trophy, display is the destruction of Lachish, which was the, archaeologists say it's the second most important city in Judah at the time, and it's the siege of Lachish, and it really was basically impregnable, but Snakarib had his armies, he's actually, he was there watching from a safe distance as his army just threw a stone a soldier could carry after stone a soldier could carry, built this huge ramp and came up to the city and then conquered it.

And so he brags about destroying that, but he doesn't brag about destroying the capital of Judah. Because he didn't destroy the capital of Judah. He couldn't. But it's just really neat that we have the archeological evidence showing it.

Snakarib is probably mentioned in our text today. If verse 11 of Nahum chapter one, this one who devised evil against Yahweh, a vile counselor who came out of Nineveh, if that's truly Snagreb, a lot of guys think it is, then he's mentioned here. But Snagreb's the one who made Nineveh the capital of Assyria.

And Nineveh's huge. It took, You can see the extent of the walls if you were to go to Iraq or there's videos online where really helpful where they basically just they panned the camera across and just outlined it on the screen for you how big it was, it was massive. And then you had this, you would have had tons of suburbs and stuff that extended outside of it. And so Jonah says it's a three days journey to get across it. And it wouldn't take three days to get across the walled, fortified part, but when you consider how big the city would have been with just the sprawling surrounding areas, it's massive.

This would be, this is the New York of the ancient world, or the London of the ancient world, or the Los Angeles of the ancient world. It's just, it's huge. It's the... It's not only a symbol of Assyria's might and its power, but it's also a symbol of Assyria's economic power.

Assyria, it was the United States of its time. It was the dominant civilization and nation. It was constantly fighting with a nation in the north, Urartu, and a nation, I think that's how you pronounce it, and a nation to its kind of southeast or a little more northeast. You got the whole, let's see, I have a map here somewhere where we could show this. Maybe I don't. That's the wrong way. It's, you've got, you know, if Israel's here, and you got Babylon over here, you got the Euphrates, and then the Tigris does, does it go like this? Something like that. Nineveh's up here, Babylon's over here, and this is the, down here is the desert. I'll just say desert. So it always talks about these kings of the north and all are coming up. You say, well, they're actually east. Well, you had to come up and get over to get to them.

So Assyria just dominated this whole area. And that was predominantly because of these guys to the fall right here. The Ashurbanipal. I think he's considered the last great one, Ashurbanipal. So these are the ones who really brought Assyria to its zenith. And probably the greatest is Sennacherib, though Esarhaddon did a lot as well.

So Nineveh is the symbol and the locus, if you could say it that way, Really, everything is Syrian. It's the capital of a nation that wiped out the Northern Kingdom and removed their people to where the Northern Kingdom, those tribes just disappear. They're not the ones who come back when the kings of Media and Persia give a decree for the exiles to return. They're just gone. And that was because of the Assyrian kings. It was because the Lord used the Assyrian kings for that end, but it was because of the Assyrian kings.

There's just all this world politics happening to where Hezekiah is trying to cozy up with the Babylonians in order to get protection against Assyria, but he's really, up to that point, been a vassal state who owes allegiance to Assyria because his fathers had given a bunch of money to the Assyrians to pay him off in order to kind of secure their help. Ahaz had built an altar like the one in Ashur, the capital of Assyria, in Jerusalem in order to basically say, you know, we're just like you. So there would have been all sorts of Assyrian paganism mixed up in Jewish worship and Hezekiah tries to break from that. And then he ends up, you know, basically trying to curry favor with the Babylonians. So there's all these world politics and stuff going on. And at the same time, the Lord, is actively working and he's using these nations, excuse me, as his instruments.

Where Nahum prophesies, probably, is the end of Manasseh's reign, somewhere into the middle of Josiah. The MacArthur Study Bible says that it's probably a mid-7th century BC date during the reign of Manasseh. That's what the scholars who worked on the MacArthur Study Bible are convinced of. The reason we can't nail it down is he doesn't say that he reigned during the day of any king in the beginning. He just says the Oracle of Nineveh, the Book of the Vision of Nahum the Elkishite, which tells us that it was firstly a book. He's a writing prophet primarily. He probably wasn't a preacher. But also, we don't have the exact date.

So we know from chapter three, Verse... Let's see if I'm getting this right. What is it, chapter 2? Let's see, he pulls it out. They say it here. In 3, 8, and 10, 8 to 10, it says, Are you better than Noah Amon, which sits along the waters of the Nile, with water surrounding her, whose rampart was the sea, whose wall consisted of the sea? And he talks about the destruction of Noaman, and that's Thebes in Egypt. So Memphis is closer to the Mediterranean, Thebes is further up the Nile. Thebes was, should not have, you should not have been able to take it with, at all, you just shouldn't have been able to conquer it, the Assyrians did. And I think that was Tiglath Pileser who did that. And that it was remarkable, it was an amazing military feat of the day, and it showed that Assyria was really the ones who conquered. Okay, that was 663 at the hands of Ashurbanipal, is what it says here.

And, Obviously, the book has to be a prophecy before the fall of Nineveh, because it's saying Nineveh's going to fall. And Nineveh fell in 612 BC to Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, who's the dad to Nebuchadnezzar. That helps us, because who is Nebuchadnezzar? We have no idea. But we know who Nebuchadnezzar is because of Daniel. So somewhere in that period, you have Nahum preaching.

The majority of Nahum is declaring two things. And it's interesting that it's written to Nineveh, but it's part of the Old Testament canon. So this is for God's people, right? So this book is accomplishing two things. It's declaring the total sovereignty of God. I spelled that right. I'm gonna say of Yahweh, or the Lord. Okay. That's what this book is declaring. We're gonna see that very clearly in chapter one here. The other thing it's doing, we'll see this near the end of chapter one, is it's comforting Judah because it's saying that your enemies who are the enemies of the Lord will be judged. So there's comfort in this.

Now, if we were to just read through it from verse one of chapter one all the way through chapter three, you would say, It seems like he starts out at 100 miles an hour about how great the Lord is and how his judgment's surely coming upon his enemies, and he just doesn't stop. It's just that after that after that after that. So you wonder, where's the comfort? Where's the hope? Because there's nothing here that tells me you know, that there's a coming kingdom. I don't see a coming king. I don't see the lion laying down with the lamb or the child playing by the adder's den or that sort of thing. I don't see that happening. The comfort is that the Lord judges sin. That's the comfort. He judges the wicked. 

Now, depending on what your church background has been, that might be comforting or not comfortable. Because in the New Covenant and in the Western Church, let's just think the Portland Church context, because that's what we're used to, the West Coast Church, the wrath of God is played down a lot. Because God, people want to see the Lord primarily as a kind, let's say a nice person. I don't know if that's the wrong word to use theologically, being. And That's sort of the classic theologically liberal dilemma, is the Old Testament God looks angry, the New Testament God looks nice. So these must come from two different traditions or whatever, and they come up with all this sort of reason, which has just been formed from their evolutionary worldview, because they see everything as starting from simple and being expanded into complex, when it usually goes the other way around. 

If you look at verse, From chapter one of Nahum, verse two and three, tell me what this sounds like. A jealous and avenging God is Yahweh. And again, remember, I say this all the time, but I just, because the Legacy Standard Bible is the only Bible that uses Yahweh, that's the Lord in all caps, right? That's this up here, the Lord in all caps. So you see that, it's the name Yahweh, and it's really just, it's a proper name, okay? It has to do with his covenant keepingness, his loyal love and kindness, his powerful self-existence. It's a name that's meant to encapsulate who he is, but then also who he is for his people. 

A jealous and avenging God is Yahweh. Yahweh is avenging and wrathful. Yahweh is avenging against his adversaries, and he keeps his anger for his enemies. Notice this, what does this verse sound like in verse three? Yahweh is slow to anger and great in power, and Yahweh will by no means leave the guilty unpunished. What comes to mind? Exodus 34, is that right? Yeah. So I just wanna show you that this is entirely in keeping with how scripture reveals God to be. And then we're just gonna make some points about the Lord Jesus from the New Testament to show that this is entirely in keeping with who our God is revealed in scripture. 

Exodus 34 verse 5. So that's Yahweh calling upon the name of Yahweh. So there's you see here the the pre-incarnate Christ on the mountain calling on the name of Yahweh. It's pretty cool. The son's the one who wrote the Ten Commandments with his finger, who spoke to Moses face-to-face, who appeared in the cloud, who led the people out of Egypt. It's just really, I find that so, the word is cool, but that's such a terrible way to talk about it. That doesn't do justice at all. 

Verse six, then Yahweh passed by in front of him and called out, Yahweh, Yahweh God. compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in loving kindness and truth, who keeps loving kindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression, and sin, yet he will by no means leave the guilty unpunished. That's what Nahum directly says. Yahweh will by no means leave the guilty unpunished. 

So, from the very beginning, all through scripture, you have the Lord presented to us as, well, the word is this, as holy. If you think of holy in two ways, if you look at the systematics, you're gonna see that it's presented as his majestic holiness. Holiness is separation. It's being separated from something else. So you'll see majestic and then you'll see moral holiness. It's convenient there are two Ms, that's helpful in remembering it. And he's majestic in his holiness because there's no one greater. But he's also, there's also no one who's more pure and perfect and unstained by sin, right? To where he's actually the definition of what purity is. This is how you see the Lord presented in scripture. He's holy.

This is where the contemporary church can, do, well, let's just say what's less than best, because there's probably a huge spectrum of it. But in so emphasizing his, what David Wells would call his imminence, his, the fact that he entered creation in order to save, and he comes down and he meets with us, that sort of thing. And so emphasizing that, you lose the, the total moral separateness of him, that he's actually a God that you can't come to on your own terms, which is why he comes to you, and he himself becomes a mediator between you and him in order to bring you near him, which we saw in the psalm last Sunday morning.

So, If this is what Mayhem is emphasizing here, then how is this experienced by the wicked? It's experienced in their judgment, right? How is it experienced by you if you're here as a believer? in the judgment of your sins still, but by the Lord Jesus on the cross. So you see, he's holy, he's just, he's righteous, he's never not morally pure, but in bringing you near, he deals with your sin, so he brings you from wickedness to righteousness. because he punishes the sin still. But for those who are unrepentant, who aren't believers, who are the reprobate, they will experience the holiness of God in his wrath. Wrath is not a, a few years ago, I thought wrath was an attribute of God. It's not an attribute of God. It's his righteousness, which is his attribute, visited against sin. That's what the wicked will experience. And that's what, and I'm using wicked here to mean those who will not believe, right? Who persist in unbelief all through their life.

So, the Lord has not changed. You get into, let me just mention this. Jude says that this is Jesus. In Jude chapter, in Jude verse five, he says this, now I want to remind you, though you know all things, that Jesus, having once saved a people out of the land of Egypt, when did the Lord save people out of the land of Egypt? What event was that? That was the Exodus, okay? 1446 BC, that's Moses, that's the pillar of cloud and fire, that's the destruction of Pharaoh and his army in the Red Sea, okay? Jude says that's Jesus.

Now, your copy of the Word of God might say the Lord there, because there's a textual variant. So you say, yeah, but James, it just says the Lord, it doesn't say Jesus. Well, then back up to the previous verse and see who's called the Lord most recently. These false teachers deny our only master and Lord, Jesus Christ. So even if we go with the textual variant that it's Lord and not Jesus explicitly here, it should be Jesus. That's the better manuscript tradition. Then you still see in context, it has to be the Lord Jesus. That he, once he saved the people out of the land of Egypt, subsequently destroyed those who did not believe. Subsequently. Those are the Israelites who didn't believe. That's the Lord Jesus. Say, wait a second, that's not the Lord Jesus that our culture is used to thinking about. That doesn't sound nice. Well, it's not, it's certainly kind, cutting you off before you, have an opportunity to incur even worse judgment on yourself. But the Lord's not presented as being nice, he's presented as being holy. He's good, and his holiness is good.

So as you get into Revelation, I'm just going to the end because this is where you see it most clearly. It's the Lord Jesus who takes the scroll, who begins to open it, and as he's opening it, what's happening? the wrath of God is being visited on the world. It's the Lord Jesus who comes in Revelation 19 and brings the wrath, his wrath, and destroys his enemies. It's the Lord Jesus in, I think it's 2 Thessalonians 1.9 if I'm right. Let's see if I'm right. I'll have to back up a few verses where it says, It is, in verse six of 2 Thessalonians 1, it is right for God to repay with affliction those who afflict you. That's very similar to the theme that we're gonna see in Nahum, and I'm taking all my time here in this introduction, but that's fine. I'll just say it's MacArthur did it, I can get away with it.

Verse seven, and to give rest to you who are afflicted and to us as well at the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire. executing vengeance on those who do not know God and to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. These will pay the penalty of eternal destruction away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might. When he comes to be glorified in his saints on that day and to be marveled at among all who have believed, for our witness to you was believed, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So you see the Lord presented as this holy judge as well, the Lord Jesus.

So from cover to cover, the holiness of God is made very clear. So Nahum is not a comfortable book because you see the anger of God. You might not like that terminology, but that just means the righteousness of God visited against sin. He was angry with our sin. that he placed on the Lord Jesus at the cross, that was good for us. So it doesn't ruin our understanding of the Lord. We live in a society that tells you if you're going to be good, you can't be confrontational. That's not the Lord. He confronts us in our sin and he saves us and he deals with the problem of our sin. He brings us to himself. He leads us to confess our sin, to repent, to find forgiveness in him. All of that is good.

So let me read this here in Nahum and you'll see. Just see the Lord presented. There's really two parts here. Verses one through 11 is the Lord's sovereignty being put on display. And then verses 12 through the end are, is the Lord, see how does, how does study, I was just going to steal the study Bible's outline here, is the, in, Okay, they did it a little differently. Verses two to eight, God's power illustrated, and verses nine to 15, God's punishment stated, is how they say it here in the study Bible. And you'll see this from verses two through eight. Those are very much a, let's say, acrostic. It has almost like a hymn-like quality in how it's just describing glory and might to the Lord. And then that shifts to, to Nahum rebuking Nineveh and giving comfort to Judah.

Let me read this here. Okay, we'll start in verse four, because we read two to three already. We'll start halfway through verse three. In whirlwind and storm is his way and clouds are the dust beneath his feet. He rebukes the sea and makes it dry. He dries up all the rivers. Abation and caramel languish. The blossoms of Lebanon languish. Mountains quake because of him. The hills melt. Indeed, the earth is upheaved by his presence. The world and all the inhabitants in it. Who can stand before his indignation? Who can endure the burning of his anger? His wrath is poured out like fire, and the rocks are torn down by him.

Yahweh is good. A strong defense in the day of distress. He knows those who take refuge in him. But with an overflowing flood, he will make a complete destruction of its place, and he will pursue his enemies into darkness.

Now that phrase there, he'll make a complete destruction of its place, the its is actually her place. And it's probably referring to Nineveh. And Nineveh was actually conquered because the river that was flowing through it overflowed its banks. It was a huge flood. And it basically whittled away at the wall. and then the army was able to use that to get in and conquer. Scholars think that that's actually what's being alluded to here, that there's actually an actual overflowing flood that brought about the means for Nineveh to be destroyed.

Okay, verse nine. Whatever you devise against Yahweh, he will make a complete destruction of it. Distress will not rise up twice. Like tangled thorns and like those who are drunken with their drink, they are consumed as stubble fully dried up. From you has gone forth one who devised evil against Yahweh, a vile counselor.

Thus says Yahweh, though you are at full strength and likewise many, even so, Though they are at full strength, excuse me, and likewise many, even so, they will be cut off and pass away. Though I have afflicted you, I will afflict you no longer.

He's probably talking to Judah here. So now I will break his yoke bar from upon you, and I will break your bands apart. And your bands being the Assyria having, you know, as if he's put Judah in handcuffs or that sort of thing. The Lord's gonna give them freedom from Assyria's dominance.

In verse 14, he returns to talking to Nineveh, and Yahweh has commanded concerning you, there will no longer be seed from your name. From the house of your gods, I will cut off graven image and molten image. I will prepare your grave, for you are contemptible.

Behold, on the mountains, the feet of him who proclaims good news, who announces peace, celebrate your feasts, O Judah. Pay your vows, for never again will the vile one pass through you. He is cut off completely.

All right, so there's this glimmer of hope. I don't know if it's a glimmer. There's a statement of hope near the end of the chapter, but that's the only time it happens, as far as I'm aware, in the whole book. But most of the book is directed towards Nineveh, and you get that from verse one, just straight away, the oracle of Nineveh, or concerning Nineveh, or about Nineveh.

And what you see here in verses two through eight is the total power, sovereignty of God. We really like God's sovereignty at this church, right? And the Lord, in his word, declares himself to be that. We emphasize it rightly. And so we're very, you know, we read this and all of us give a hearty amen. Because this is the Lord. He is the Lord, there is no other.

just thinking about last week's sermon that I preached on Psalm 65. Well, it talked about the sovereignty of the Lord in terms of it bringing about your good. Here we have the sovereignty of the Lord and bringing about the destruction of the Lord's enemies. So both of them teach what? That God is God. that the Lord is the Lord, that he is the one who is in providential control, directing all things.

When we get to Habakkuk in a few weeks, we'll see this question come up, which is the question that probably should be in the back of our minds even as we read all of this, which is, if the Lord is good, And then there's all these evil nations operating and conquering each other. And we see what's happening between Russia and Ukraine. And that's not to mention all the other just evils that happen throughout the world that we don't even know about. And you look at those and you go, okay, so is the Lord in control? Because all this stuff is happening. And the answer is yes. He's not culpable for their sin, he's not working the sin, but he will bring about his good purposes through it, and he will certainly not leave the guilty unpunished. So there's nobody who's gonna get away with their sin.

This is the question that comes up with the, the recent murder of Charlie Kirk. And the question is, who did that? What happened? Who was involved? And you could look at anybody online and get a different version from everybody else about what happened. And it's probably just a vain pursuit to even get into. But here's what's certain. The guilty will not be unpunished, right? And the only way that the guilty person could avoid the wrath of God for having committed that atrocity is if they find forgiveness through the blood of Christ.

So the Lord's sovereignty is not just that he's able to somehow figure out how to work things so that his people get a little bit of blessing. or that he's really concerned about making sure Saturn orbits the sun, but he doesn't really care too much about the details of your life, or whether or not the wicked are roaming around on the world, committing atrocity upon atrocity. No, he will judge the guilty. He will, he's said so right here. And his power in verses three, the second half of verse three all the way through eight, I mean, his power is just put on display and described in order to say, You know, he will judge. His wrath is poured out like fire, second half of verse six. The rocks were torn down by him.

Now there's a comfort in this for us because it means that our suffering in this world at the hands of wicked men is not empty. It's not meaningless. It's not meaningless for two reasons. As you go through, especially the New Testament, I think Romans eight would be most clear. It's not empty because it's actually bringing about your sanctification, but it's also not empty because they're not gonna get away with it. The wicked aren't going to, they have their day now. That's what the Lord Jesus says about the Pharisees. They have the reward, right? Like this is all they can expect right here. because when they meet the judge face to face, their destruction will be certain.

So verse seven is very helpful and very encouraging as it should be. Yahweh is good, a strong defense in the day of distress. He knows those who take refuge in him. This just shows up right in the middle of his awesome power and his burning anger being described. And then you have, he's good. and he's a refuge for his people. How is he a refuge for his people? Because he's going to preserve them, even if that means he preserves you in glory, right? Because your life is taken away, but your soul can't be harmed by the wicked. But also because he's going to judge sin. That's comforting. That's not you desiring, in a vindictive way, the destruction of somebody who is mean to you or something like that. That's you saying no. There will be perfect judgment for a wrong done. That's good, right? That's different than, it's not like, well, I can't have my revenge, but God's gonna visit my revenge. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about desiring the goodness of the Lord to be brought by visiting destruction upon those who hate him and so hate his people.

Okay, so specifically for Nineveh, they can expect complete destruction. And verse 10 makes this clear, like tangled thorns, like those who are drunken with their drink, they're consumed, a stubble fully dried up. So you think of these, a fire danger is having a bunch of bushes next to a structure. especially in the really dry seasons, because that becomes extremely flammable. And if that can ignite, then it puts the fire right next to the structure, and so the structure will ignite. And so I think you see something like that here, where like tangled thorns, like stubble fully dried up, like basically like material matter that's just ready to burst into flames. that's being destroyed, and even in verse six, the Lord's anger has been described as burning, as his indignation, his wrath poured out like a fire. Obviously, hell is a hell, and the lake of fire are described in terms of fire. The Lord talked about hell as where the fire is not quenched. So the wrath of God is described in these terms.

If verse 11 is talking about Sennacherib or an Assyrian king, then you see in verse 14 what's going to happen to that king. And I'll read them, I'll read this verse and then I'll read the MacArthur Study Bible note, which I think is helpful. He says, Nahum says, verse 14, Yahweh's commandment concerning you, there will no longer be seed from your name, from the house of your gods, I will cut off graven image and molten image, I will prepare your grave, for you are contemptible. It could be talking about the city just itself, but if it's talking about this vile counselor, then the MacArthur Seta Bible note I think is helpful in what that would mean. It says, three judgments were pronounced. First, the king of Assyria representing the nation would become destitute of descendants. You'll no longer, they'll no longer be seed from your name. Second, the gods by which they received their authority would be destroyed. Third, the king would be put to death. And we found that happened shortly after the fall of Nineveh. where the royal house fled to a different city, but then that was conquered and they were killed. So, this is good news.

Luke 15. On the mountains, the feet of him who proclaims good news, who announces peace. From the New Testament, we're used to that language referring to the hope of salvation from your sins. This language is used for the hope of salvation from those who seek to do you harm and have been doing you harm. a harm to Judah. And so if you have the Assyrian armies really marauding all through the land, and so you're just kind of holed up in Jerusalem and you can't get out and nobody can get in, there's no way the annual feasts are being observed, right? You don't have the livestock and the food. Because of Hezekiah, you have the water, right? Because Hezekiah's tunnel. But people aren't gonna be coming from all across the nation. to come celebrate the feasts at the Lord's house. 

But here, peace is announced such that Judah, celebrate your feasts. In other words, you can travel across the nation. You can leave your city and go to Jerusalem and go home again, and you're not gonna meet an Assyrian army. You can pay your vows at the temple. For never again will the vile one pass through you. He is cut off completely. 

And I think the focus of that is on the king of Assyria. Because you say, well, Nebuchadnezzar rampaged through Judah three times, right? The first time took Daniel, second time took Ezekiel, third time took everything. You say, is that the vile one? I don't think that's the vile one being spoken of here. And actually, there's decent reason to think Nebuchadnezzar trusted the Lord. So, from Daniel. 

So, here's what we saw. Sovereignty of Yahweh, covering of Judah. The sovereignty of Yahweh visited upon Nineveh, which is the wrath of God. We're going to have two more weeks of this same theme. This is not to say that we're not going to learn anything new. But for the next two weeks, things might sound really serious. because we're talking about the Lord's vengeance upon his enemies. But that is good news. And that is part of our hope, is that the Lord will judge sin totally. He judges at the cross for his people. and he'll judge it in the destruction of the wicked, who aren't his people, at the last judgment. That is our hope. 

It's connected back to the Lord being the sovereign Lord over all, that he is the Lord who will bring every deed in the open, we'll judge everyone according to what they have done, and we'll bring righteousness and peace and goodness into, I don't know if I can say into being, but as the rule in the kingdom. That's our hope. It's not just that kind of American revivalism idea of solving my end destination. but it's holistic, it's so much bigger than that. It's the sovereignty of God overall, of this good and holy God. 

So, that is, I talked for a long time, that is the lesson, the lesson, I hope that's encouraging. Let's get some questions first, then comments. 

Yes, ma'am. Should we regard it as symbolic, the fact that the evil Saddam Hussein came from Mosul? Or is that mere coincidence? That's really interesting. I had no idea. I did not know those things. So I guess I could say I'm not prepared to answer that. But if there's a lesson in it, then it'd probably be worth knowing. But I don't know. Yeah. Yeah, there's no such thing as coincidence, but I don't know how big of a lesson there is in that. 

Yes, question? the confusion of God's will as opposed to, he's sovereign. Ultimately, he's going to have the last word. But our behavior and how we cause evil, participate in it, is not his will to begin with. Otherwise, he wouldn't tell us how to act how he preferred. And sometimes people confuse, and they say, well, it's his will. They'll mix it up. that what is happening in the East, for instance, well, that's his will, because he's letting it happen. That doesn't mean it's his perfect will. Had people sought God in how to behave, it wouldn't be happening. 

Right. Right. Yeah, the will of God is three things. You've got his decree. which is where he ordains, pulling from Westminster and the Second Latin Baptist Confession of Faith, ordains whatsoever comes to pass. And that whatsoever is everything, okay? Are you saying that it's his will, what is happening in the East? It's his decree. 

Now, hold on, we gotta go through all of these, because you're emphasizing one of these, which is right, but I just want you to see that I think it's bigger than just one of these. One of these is his prescriptive will. And think of this as 10 commandments. Or moral law. You're gonna say same thing, and I'm gonna say yeah. The final one is his permissible. And this is what we talk about, which is just, it's poor terminology, but we can roll with it for now. It's what he allows. And this is, inside these is, I just learned this. is the voluntary arbitration, or voluntary judgment, which is how we need to think about our free will. We have the freedom to make a judgment upon something and decide what to do. 

we're inclined by our sinful nature to choose the thing that is in rebellion to God. I'm thinking us in terms of just humanity, not as believers. As believers, we have the tension between the desire to please God and the desire to please ourselves. But the decree is whatsoever comes to pass, okay? So there's a sense in which you say, it's not his will, for, I mean, let's just go to the greatest evil we can think of in this world. It's not his will for Planned Parenthood to exist. It's not. Because that is a violation of everything good. That is more wicked than Manasseh passing his children through the fire to Molech. I mean, with just, with how bad it is. It just exists around us and we don't really give thought to it. It's so wicked. 

but it is his will and the fact that if it exists, he'd decreed it. Okay, you say, how does that work? Is he marked by sin? No, because he brought it about through secondary causes, through these wicked people who desire to do this, but what's he going to do with it? We don't even know right now how great a good will be brought about Even if part of that is and part of that will be the destruction of the wicked involved in it, I think a huge part of it will be the millions of babies that we'll meet in heaven who were destroyed in the womb and we'll see all these souls the Lord gathered to himself. 

So the Lord is, it's not just that he allows it and then somehow is like, okay, I guess I'll move these chess pieces this way and then bring some good out of it. It's the whole thing was planned for good. and decreed for good. And you think about that with how could, how was it ever a good thing that God himself in human flesh was murdered? You know, that's the greatest evil that's ever been perpetrated by humanity. but that's the greatest thing that's ever been done for humanity, because it brought about the salvation of sinners. 

So you see both of them happening, and it's the wicked people wrought their will to murder the Lord Jesus, God in human flesh, and God brought about his will to save humanity, and that was his will, his decree, from before he created everything. I guess that makes me a super lapsarian, but there it is. So, That's, I think that's the tension here. I agree with you that it is, there is no way that it could ever be his will considered as his moral will, as what he morally desires to come about for the wicked that happens in the world. But it is part of his decree for him to bring about the greatest good that could possibly be brought about. So, does that help? It's a lot, but hopefully it's helpful.

People, just because something happens, they'll say, well, it's his will. Well, that makes us God, because we made our decision to do evil. So therefore, we're like God, then. If it's his, we say it's his will. We allow him to call it his will. Then that makes us.

Yeah, it can't be used as an excuse to justify sin. Yeah, that's absolutely true. Because He's told us how to live. We have the Holy Spirit living in us. We're God's people. So we should be seeking His perfect will. Right. In response to whatever we see. Right. Because He's not going to have us do evil because evil is, because the Holy Spirit lives in us. So for us to do evil would be for the Holy Spirit doing the evil, tempting.

I give a hearty amen to it. I think that's very true. Other comment or question? Yes, sir. Just kind of a comment, quick to riff on what Sue was saying. Just like we've got to be careful not to establish a doctrinal position on a single verse, or on what we see around us. I have to put it in these terms. This lesson is, stay tuned. Because we're still getting to Habakkuk, where Habakkuk asks the same question. What are you doing? You've got wickedness on us. And there's an answer. And the answer is still confusing. Because it doesn't fit in our new boxes, and our boxes aren't big enough. The answer is what I tell my son all the time. You just trust me. You don't know what's going on. Just trust me.

Just thinking of a couple of examples. The Israelites wanted a king, so he gave them what they wanted, in a sense. And they wanted meat, so he gave them quail. But that would kind of... you know, illustrate maybe how it is ultimate, but at the same time it looks like he's giving them what they're asking for, even though it didn't turn out too well for them.

That's a good point. Yes? So in the timeline of things, Jonah, where is that in relation to Nahum? Jonah was a couple hundred years before. I got a chart here. Here, Jonah is... Jonah's right here. So the yellow. And then Nahum's over there. Yeah, so... Yeah, which is, I mean, I didn't even really mention that because Nineveh repented with Jonah, but then obviously became worse and worse. Nineveh was not the capital of Assyria back then, but they became so, became glutted on their wickedness, apparently, and their doom was secured.

Yes, sir, let's make this the last one. Make it good. I just thought it was interesting what you said. You said yesterday about Babylon taking over Assyria. Yes, so I think that's a good thing to say in closing. That's how it played out. The captivity and everything came after the fall of Assyria because Babylon took over. And Babylon's an interesting one because they conquer and Babylon only exists really as an empire for about 70 years. And it's the time of Judah's captivity. And it's like it exists to basically safeguards God's people on the earth while God's people are taken in captivity. And then once Babylon falls and the media Persia takes over, pretty soon after that, Israel's sent back, Judah's sent back. It's kind of like, what's going on? You just see the handwork of God. It's really amazing.

Okay, I've taken more time than I'm allowed to. So let me pray and we'll take a break.

Lord, we praise you for your goodness revealed in your sovereign might that we see in this text, and we thank you that we can trust you because you are accomplishing your good purposes as the great God over this creation who is working a work of salvation for your people, a part of which we get to be, and is also working a work of judgment and displaying your power through the destruction of the wicked. We praise you for your goodness, your awesomeness, and ask that you would equip us now to worship you rightly in this coming hour as we would consider you even more and our duties, our obligations to you. We ask this through the power of the spirit and through Christ's holy name, amen.