The Bible Recap - Day 216 (Nahum 1-3) - Year 3

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble, and I'm your host for the Bible recap. Today we finished our 23rd book of the Bible, The Minor Prophet Nehum. His words are directed toward the city of Nineba, which is the capital city of Assyria. We've read a lot about Assyria lately. Yesterday they planned an attack on Jerusalem after all ready attacking 46 other cities in Judah, but were thwarted by the angel of the Lord. And before that, they attacked and destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel and took its people into exile. And we've also read about Assyria's capital city Nineveh before. It's the city

Starting point is 00:00:42 God sent Jonah to rebuke roughly a hundred years ago. At the time, they repented, although Jonah wasn't too happy about it. But here we are a hundred years later, and they fall in back into their wicked ways, as evidenced by their actions toward both kingdoms of gods people. Nehom only explicitly mentions Nineveh a few times in this book. He mostly uses general terminology, which has an added benefit for this prophecy. It allows it to not only serve the immediate purpose of warning a Syria, but also holds that second level, meaning many prophecies do, of being able to apply

Starting point is 00:01:15 to future scenarios too. Nahum's message is that God will always judge evil. There have been, and will continue to be, evil empires throughout time, and none of them will outlive God and his judgment. Specifically here, God is judging a Syria for the way they've treated his people. He starts out with a reminder of who he is in chapter 1, verses 2-3, and this passage sounds a lot like Exodus 34, 6-7, which has been a common refrain throughout the Old Testament. 34 6 through 7, which has been a common refrain throughout the Old Testament. In fact, we talked about it just four days ago on day 212. It's where God tells Moses his name. I want to read the Exodus version to you, then I'll read the Nehum version. But first, I want to point out something I think could help us understand this a little

Starting point is 00:01:59 bit better. Do you ever read ingredient labels on food packaging? According to the FDA, product labels have to list the ingredients in order of prominence. So that means the thing listed first is what that product contains the most of, and the thing listed last is what's least prominent. So if you pick up a can that has water listed first, awesome. But if the second ingredient is high-frucced corn syrup, then uh-oh. The point of all this is that the particular order of a list can often reveal what's being emphasized in that particular situation. With that said, let's look at these two verses. In Exodus 34, 6-7, God describes Himself to Moses like this,

Starting point is 00:02:42 describes himself to Moses like this, the Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger in a bounding instead fast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children

Starting point is 00:03:01 to the third and fourth generation. Here, God is talking to one of his people and giving him a message to pass along to the rest of his people. And he starts with all these incredible qualities he possesses. But then he tax on a reminder at the end that basically says, oh, but by the way, lest you think I'm a pushover, I do still punish sin. With that in mind, here's Nehum 12-3, where Nehum is talking to the enemies of God about who God is.

Starting point is 00:03:29 He says, The Lord is a jealous and avenging God. The Lord is avenging and wrathful. The Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies. The Lord is slow to anger and great in power, and the Lord will by no means clear the guilty. Here, Nehum references the Exodus 34 passage, but he reverses the order. This is certainly intentional, and I think it's brilliant. How you view God and how God relates to you is entirely based on whether you know him or not. By the way, this Exodus passage that we keep seeing throughout the Old Testament

Starting point is 00:04:03 is one of the sections we chose to offer as a memory-versory source in this month's bonus content for our Patreon supporters. So, if you want to commit those awesome characteristics to memory, click the link in the show notes or visit the BibleRecap.com. Throughout this book, Nehum offers reminders that God has his eyes not only on the wicked people he's going to punish, but also on the remnant of his people that he plans to restore and bless. He encourages Israel with reminders that they'll be set free and will be able to celebrate their feasts again, which is something they couldn't do while a Syria

Starting point is 00:04:36 was oppressing them. Their cities were destroyed and they were exiled. But that's never stopped God before. God undoes the undoing done by our enemies. Near the end of the book, Nehom says that the Assyrian leaders all fail to serve their people well. Their princes inscribes flee, and their royals are asleep at the wheel. The people of the land have no one to lead them, and they scatter. Meanwhile, the other nations around them,

Starting point is 00:05:03 the ones who've been victims of their oppression, rejoice that they're being stopped in their tracks. So what happened after Nehum wrote this book? A Syria did fall, just like Nehum foretold. The river that flowed through the city overflowed its banks and brought enough destruction that it made it easy for the Babylonians to come in and take over. And interestingly, in the Babylonian Chronicles, an ancient text that tells their version of events, they report that a fire broke out in Nineveh in the midst of the flood and the siege, which Nehum prophesied in 315 when he said, there will the fire devour you. It all happened in 612 BC.

Starting point is 00:05:43 The theme of this short book was my God shop for today. Nehum is a heavy book for sure, but ultimately it should encourage us because it points to the fact that our God is a defender of his people, and our God addresses injustice. If you live in a country that has some form of systemic injustice or oppression, which honestly is most, if not all countries, be encouraged to know that God will deal with it. It does not escape him. It may seem to take longer than you want. It may not be resolved in your lifetime,

Starting point is 00:06:16 but our God is not blind to it. It may seem like no one cares or speaks up about it loudly enough, but nothing is lost on our God. When leaders mislead, God can still be trusted. It's just another reminder of why we can't put our hope in nations or powers, because only God can rule in complete righteousness. I'm glad He's my king forever. He's where the joy is.

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Starting point is 00:07:13 chronic problems people experience. We're the place where you know what to expect and what is expected of you. Some of our groups are connected to a local church and others are made up of people from different churches. We start new studies every six weeks and we would love to have you join us as we launch our next session. Just click the link in today's show notes for more info or visit mydegroup.org. you

The Bible Recap - Day 216 (Nahum 1-3) - Year 3

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