The Lord is Jealous and Good

THE LORD IS JEALOUS AND GOOD

An Exposition of Nahum 1:1-8

By Pastor Brian Wilbur

Date:   May 13, 2018

Series: Special Occasions

Note:   Scripture quotations are from The ESV Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version), copyright 2001 by Crossway. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

INTRODUCTION

Sending the Youth Mission Team

This morning we have the opportunity and privilege to send forth our Youth Mission Team with encouragement and prayer. They leave this Thursday for New Brunswick and will then have three full days of activity, work, ministry, and fellowship before returning on Monday. They are conducting this mission trip in coordination with one of our missionaries, Kevin Strout, who with his wife Marcia serves as a missionary with the Northern Canada Evangelical Mission and ministers among the Wolastoqiyik First Nation people in New Brunswick, Canada. This trip also involves coordination with Grant Fawcett, the Director of the Arrowhead Native Bible Center in Cumberland Bay, New Brunswick – about 380 miles to the northeast of South Paris Baptist Church. Grant sees the Bible Center as a tool to help the Church carry out her work. Kevin and Grant visited us the first weekend in February. Between then and now, ongoing preparations have been made for the trip, and you have participated in that preparation in various ways, including in the giving of a surplus of funds so that the team’s expenses are covered and we will also be able to give a substantial gift to the Bible Center for the building of a chapel.

On this Lord’s Day we find ourselves just four days ahead of their departure, and it is fitting that we as a congregation would take time to send them forth. Therefore, I am taking a break from the Philippians Series in order to preach a special message with the mission trip in view. After the sermon you will have an opportunity to gather around the Mission Team and together in prayer we will commit them to the Lord’s grace.

The Coming Judgment

Nahum 1:1-8 is the passage for my sermon, and if I went ahead and read it right now you might wonder why in the world I selected this passage for this morning’s sermon. For that matter, you might think that the title of this sermon – “The Lord is Jealous and Good” – sounds a little strange for a missions send-off! Why not a title like “Go Forth In His Name” or “Make His Glories Known” or “Serve The Lord With Joy” or “Trust Him At Every Turn (and Border Crossing)”?

All such encouragements are well and good, but the truth is that the single greatest reality to consider in relation to any topic, whether that topic is the Church or mission or family or work or leadership or money or technology, the single greatest reality to always consider and understand is the reality of God. And for many churchgoing Americans, and at some level for all of us, our view of God is far too small. Some people may think of God as a kindly grandfather figure who winks at our faults. Other people may think of God as a person whose job is to dispense forgiveness and grace. Still other people think that if God is as fair and reasonable as we are, then surely He must approve of our half-way decent attempts at semi-virtuous living. These folks think that if anyone gets consigned to hell, it would only be a mass-murderer like Hitler or Stalin. They never consider that their respectable neighbor across the street, or their dear children, or they themselves are in danger of the judgment.

As Christians – as Christians in church leadership, as Christians going on a mission trip, as Christians living an ordinary life in Western Maine – as Christians it is possible to grow dull to the weighty reality of God, namely, that He is not only gracious in salvation but also fierce in judgment. The Lord is jealous, avenging, and wrathful, and He will bring His enemies to utter ruin. And God’s avenging judgment is tied closely to our mission.

Have you considered that the promised future judgment upon the ungodly is actually the context in which the Church’s missionary and evangelistic activity takes place? When Paul preached the gospel in the city of Athens, he said:

“… he [God] commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.” (Acts 17:30-31, italics added)

Later Paul had the opportunity to share the gospel with a political official named Felix. We are told that “as he [Paul] reasoned about righteousness and self-control and the coming judgment, Felix was alarmed and said, “Go away for the present. When I get an opportunity I will summon you.”” (Acts 24:25, italics added)

In his First Letter to the Thessalonians, Paul described the transformation that had taken place in these former idolaters who had become faithful believers:

“… you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come.” (1 Thessalonians 1:9-10, italics added)

Wrath is coming! Judgment is coming! And there is only one way to be delivered from it.

Now although a great and final judgment is coming in the future, God also enacts mighty judgments upon unrepentant sinners throughout the course of history. The flood swept away the ancient world. Fire from heaven consumed the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Awful plagues wreaked havoc on the land of Egypt, and the sea swept away the Egyptian army. Joshua and the Israelites were God’s hammer that laid low the Canaanites. The shepherd boy slew Goliath with a sling and a stone. In due course, Israel itself was exiled on account of its persistent rebellion. All these were divine judgments upon the ungodly, and many more examples could be given. One has to wonder why we give such little attention to such a major theme.

In Romans 11 Paul instructs us, “Note then the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen, but God’s kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness. Otherwise you too will be cut off.” (Romans 11:22) Well, our Americanized tolerance-laden leniency-tilting mindset likes to take hold of God’s kindness in a cheapened sort of way, and that same mindset would like to forget altogether about God’s severity. But God’s severity in judgment and His grace in salvation cannot be separated. It is precisely the reality of judgment that establishes the urgency to receive His grace and, having received it, to walk in holiness: “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming.” (Colossians 1:5, italics added)

Nineveh in the Days of Jonah

“[The] wrath of God is coming” – that was the essence of the message that the prophet Jonah preached to the city of Nineveh in the eighth century BC. “Yet forty days, [he called out,] and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” (Jonah 3:4) Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian Empire, was a city characterized by evil and violence, and they were ripe for judgment. Jonah would have been quite happy for judgment to land hard on the wicked city. Jonah’s greatest fear was that Nineveh would repent of their sins and receive God’s mercy – and that’s exactly what happened. Jonah knew that the Lord is “a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.” (Jonah 4:2) Jonah’s problem was that he wanted God’s abundant grace for himself and for his own people, but he didn’t want God’s abundant grace going forth to those other people in Assyria.

Nineveh in the Days of Nahum

However, this sermon isn’t about Nineveh in the days of Jonah; this sermon is about Nineveh in the days of Nahum. Although Nineveh experienced the kindness of God in the days of Jonah, they did not continue in God’s kindness. They returned to the old way of sin. Their pride grew. Their transgressions multiplied. Their cruelty was poured out on other lands. They had no fear of God, they refused His ways, and they rushed headlong into their own schemes – the devil’s schemes – which are a snare unto death. “There is a way that seems right to a man [or to a city, or to a nation], but its end is the way to death.” (Proverbs 14:12) It is true that God is “slow to anger” (Jonah 4:2, Nahum 1:3), but slow is not for nothing. A slow-cooker is slow, hence the name, but after eight hours on low, the cooker is hot and the food is done! And as the sins of unrepentant men pile up on the earth, the wrath of the slow-to-anger God is stored up in heaven – and the day draws near when the fury will be poured out. So, one-hundred or one-hundred-and-fifty years after Jonah, the prophet Nahum stepped onto the scene and thundered forth the coming judgment upon “the bloody city, all full of lies and plunder” (Nahum 3:1).

THE SCRIPTURAL TEXT

So then, let us behold the wrath of God, as well as His goodness, in the first eight verses of Nahum 1:

¹ An oracle concerning Nineveh. The book of the vision of Nahum of Elkosh.

² 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.
³ The Lord is slow to anger and great in power,
    and the Lord will by no means clear the guilty.
His way is in whirlwind and storm,
    and the clouds are the dust of his feet.
⁴ He rebukes the sea and makes it dry;
    he dries up all the rivers;
Bashan and Carmel wither;
    the bloom of Lebanon withers.
⁵ The mountains quake before him;
    the hills melt;
the earth heaves before him,
    the world and all who dwell in it.

⁶ Who can stand before his indignation?
    Who can endure the heat of his anger?
His wrath is poured out like fire,
    and the rocks are broken into pieces by him.
⁷ The Lord is good,
    a stronghold in the day of trouble;
he knows those who take refuge in him.
⁸     But with an overflowing flood
he will make a complete end of the adversaries,
    and will pursue his enemies into darkness.

THE LORD IS JEALOUS, AVENGING, AND WRATHFUL (v. 2-3a)

First, we see that the Lord is jealous, avenging, and wrathful. Generally speaking, 21^st century Americans are culturally conditioned to regard the attributes of jealousy, vengeance, and wrath as bad characteristics that are unworthy of our humanity and certainly don’t belong in our modern conception of God. But as Christians our interest is not in modernized or culturally conditioned concepts of God; our interest is to understand God as He truly is, indeed as He has revealed Himself to be. We must relate to God as He is and on His terms, otherwise we are living in a dangerous illusion that leads to the abyss.

So we need to recover the profound rightness of righteous jealousy, vengeance, and wrath. A definition of jealousy might be helpful, so let me draw upon two dictionary definitions of the English word to capture the biblical concept of divine jealousy:

To be jealous is to be “fiercely protective or vigilant of one’s rights or possessions” (Google) and to be “intolerant of rivalry or unfaithfulness” (Merriam-Webster), thus being fiercely opposed to any rival or traitor who undermines one’s rights or possessions.

Perhaps the best way to illustrate righteous jealousy among human beings is by reference to marriage. The covenant of marriage establishes the right to exclusive spousal affection and devotion between husband and wife. A wife ought to be jealous of her marriage and of her husband’s love and of her husband’s reputation. If her husband begins to prefer the office or the casino or video games or pornography or other women to her, then not only is it okay for her to feel righteous jealousy and anger, she ought to feel it! On the other hand, if her husband is an upright man but others drag her husband’s name through the mud with slander and false accusation, she ought to want to stand up and set the record straight!

Jealousy also befits the domain of parenthood: parents ought to be jealous of their children and their children’s obedience and their children’s safety. If an enemy were to come and kidnap or abuse your child, the proper response would be holy rage and a desire for the authorities to execute vengeance.

Beyond the home, we also ought to have a proper jealousy for the holiness of the church. Note well the words of the apostle Paul:

“I wish you would bear with me in a little foolishness. Do bear with me! For I feel a divine jealousy for you, since I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ. But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ.” (2 Corinthians 11:1-3, italics added)

Righteous jealousy is profoundly right! Of course, since we are sinful human beings, our capacity for jealousy often gets taken captive by sin, and therefore we have improper envy and lust, self-absorbed jealousy, irrational fears, deep insecurities that lead us to be overly controlling, and inordinate anger that seeks vengeance in the wrong way. Sinful jealousies are sinful!

But the holy jealousy of God is never sinful, and always righteous. He is the Creator and Sustainer of the universe, and the universe owes everything to Him. He is altogether lovely in His perfections, and all human beings ought to recognize His worth with gladness of heart. He has designed the world for righteousness, lovingkindness, and goodness, and we ought to live accordingly. But alas, there is high treason, spiritual revolt and moral filth on all sides! The Assyrians in Nineveh, like the rest of mankind, did not give thanks to the God who sustained their every breath. They did not look up and praise the God of heaven, instead they looked down and praised the works of their own hands. They did not seek to conduct their lives with moral excellence and beauty, instead they had violence in their hearts and blood on their hands. They did not serve the Lord as peacemakers who spread the peace of God wherever they went, instead they were troublemakers who afflicted other nations with cruelty and malice. Syria, Babylon, Egypt, Israel, and Judah all felt the menacing power of Assyria.

But while Assyria’s sins piled up, God’s wrath was storing up against them. And why? Because the Lord is jealous: He is jealous for His holy name, He is jealous for His glory, He is jealous for His good world that He made, He is jealous for His image in the human image-bearers that He created, He is jealous for justice and righteousness and mercy, and He is jealous for His redeemed people. When human beings trample on these, and continue to do so with “hard and impenitent [hearts]” (Romans 2:5), be assured that they will meet a bitter end. “God is not mocked” (Galatians 6:7), and justice will be done. God will set the record straight, He will vindicate His honor, His purposes will prevail, His righteousness will be acknowledged, He will “take [vengeance] on his adversaries” and, at the right time, “His wrath [will be] poured like fire” on His enemies. “Behold, I am against you, declares the LORD of hosts…” (Nahum 2:13) And in Psalm 5 David speaks to God: “… you are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil may not dwell with you. The boastful shall not stand before your eyes; you hate all evildoers” (Psalm 5:4-5).

“The LORD is slow to anger,” but His slowness is not the result of any weakness or lack of clarity on His part. He is “slow to anger and great in power.” His wrath is measured; His wrath is mingled with patience. He doesn’t fly off the handle in fits of rage and become subject to unruly emotions. God is in perfect control of Himself, and every rise in anger is profoundly right. And when His righteous anger has reached its fullness, then His great power will be poured out in the just condemnation of sinners: “The LORD is slow to anger and great in power, and the LORD will by no means clear the guilty.”

The Lord stands firm in jealousy, vengeance, and wrath against our sinful world.

THE WORLD TREMBLES BEFORE THE LORD (v. 3b-6, 8)

Second, we see that the whole world trembles before the powerful Lord and Judge. God’s greatness is pictured for us in terms of His sovereign authority over the physical universe.

“His way is in whirlwind and storm…” God is in complete control of what is humanly-speaking uncontrollable. The “whirlwind and storm” picture His great power. “… and the clouds are the dust of his feet.” What a picture! Look up and see the clouds spanning the sky, and those clouds are like dust from the Almighty’s feet! Of course, God is spirit and doesn’t have feet, but the metaphor drives us to consider the bigness of God: if “the clouds are the dust of his feet,” then how big the feet, and how tall the body and legs, and how strong the arms, and how massive the sword and bow in His hands:

“God is a righteous judge, and a God who feels indignation every day. If a man does not repent, God will whet his sword; he has bent and readied his bow; he has prepared for him his deadly weapons, making his arrows fiery shafts.” (Psalm 7:11-13)

One strike of the divine sword turns heaven and earth upside down, breaks “the rocks… into pieces” (v. 6), and topples any nation with which God is not pleased!

Mission Team, your God is not small! And He never misses the mark! When He says to the sea, ‘Dry up,’ it dries up and as a result the flowers and grasses and trees wither and die. When He draws near to the earth, “[the] mountains quake” and “the hills melt” and “the earth heaves” and volcanoes erupt and the whole world is thrown into disarray and sinners seek to run and hide from the Holy One:

“Who can stand before his indignation?

Who can endure the heat of his anger?”

The answer, of course, is that no one can endure and escape the wrath of God. Nahum is prophesying a particular historical judgment that God was about to pour out on Nineveh, and this judgment was poured out in 612 BC when the Babylonians and Medes overthrew the city.

Sobering are the words that described this pending judgment at the end of Nahum 3:

“Your shepherds are asleep, O king of Assyria;

your nobles slumber.

Your people are scattered on the mountains with none to gather them.

There is no easing your hurt;

your wound is grievous.

All who hear the news about you clap their hands over you.

For upon whom has not come your unceasing evil?”

(Nahum 3:18-19)

A great empire comes crashing down! An entire empire crumbles because God took righteous vengeance on their unceasing evil. And frankly, this is “good news” (Nahum 1:15): when a wicked nation is toppled, a sigh of relief and surge of gladness comes to everyone else, and space is given for righteousness to grow again.

The Greater Judgment to Come

The historical judgment of Nineveh in 612 BC is ultimately a preview of the final judgment described in Revelation 20:

“Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. From his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they have done. And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.” (Revelation 20:11-15)

No one can endure the penetrating gaze and perfect judgment of the Holy One. If I may borrow a line of thought from Pastor Daniel Montgomery, do not fret over the fact that Facebook and Google and the government have access to your internet history. Rather fret over the fact that God Almighty has access to all that you have ever done and thought and felt; nothing has escaped His notice; and all will be put on the table when He judges “each one… according to what they have done.”[1] Then “His wrath” [will be] poured out like fire” (v. 6) in “the lake of fire.” And, as it says in Nahum 1:8, “with an overwhelming flood he will make a complete end of the adversaries, and will pursue his enemies into darkness.” Jesus promised that all evildoers would be thrown “into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Matthew 8:12, 22:13, 25:30)

GOD’S JUDGMENT UPON SIN IS THE CONTEXT OF THE CHURCH’S MISSION

Brothers and sisters at South Paris Baptist Church, brothers and sisters on the Mission Team, this reality of divine judgment is the context of the church’s evangelistic mission: “… unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” (Luke 13:3).

GOD’S JUDGMENT UPON SIN IS THE CONTEXT OF THE SAVIOR’S CROSS

Moreover, this reality of divine judgment is the context in which we must understand the cross of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The apostle Peter declared, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree…” (1 Peter 2:24) Do you know what happened to Jesus while our sins were laid upon Him? What happened to Him was Nahum 1:2-6! God’s wrath is what happened! The sinless Son of God carried our sin and, with our guilt transferred to Him, God’s jealous and avenging wrath was poured out upon Him. While Jesus was on that cross, darkness enveloped the land even though it was the middle of the day (Matthew 27:45), and He experienced the desolation of the Father’s absence: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken Me?” (Matthew 27:46)

Jesus died as the sacrificial sin-bearer in order to demonstrate God’s righteousness (Romans 3:21-26): God will vindicate the honor of His holy name; no sin will be overlooked, and every sin will be punished – either on the cross, or in hell. Jesus also died in order to demonstrate God’s love (Romans 5:6-11): God is willing to pardon sinners if they would turn away from their sins and entrust themselves to Him, thereafter following Him in a humble and sincere faith.

THE LORD IS GOOD (v. 7)

To put it another way, Jesus died so that sinners might be rescued from their sin in order to live in the blessedness of verse 7:

“The LORD is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble;

he knows those who take refuge in him.”

Although most of the world abides under God’s wrath, although God pours out previews of the final judgment throughout the course of history (with empires crumbling, economies failing, societies breaking apart, families in disarray, and individuals suffering the consequences of their disobedience), although the world around us in drunk on sin and in that drunken stupor are opposed to God and God’s glory and God’s mission and God’s redeemed people (the church), although our own land is over its head in sin and spiritual darkness blinds the First Peoples of New Brunswick, although the world is faltering in a thousand ways – we have “a stronghold in the day of trouble”! What is our stronghold? Not our goodness, not our innocence, not our ability to rise above the idolatries of Assyria or America, not our religiosity. We, too, have our share of sin and guilt. The only difference is: we have a Savior! It is not we who are good but “The LORD is good” and He is “a stronghold in the day of trouble.” The Lord is good and kind to His people! In the words of a hymn by Joseph Hart:

“How good is the God we adore,

Our faithful, unchangeable Friend;

His love is as great as His pow’r

And knows neither measure nor end.

“‘Tis Jesus, the first and the last,

Whose Spirit will guide us safe home;

We’ll praise Him for all that is past

And trust Him for all that’s to come.”[2]

We trust Him and “take refuge in him.” And as we entrust ourselves to Him and His grace, we have the comfort of knowing that “he knows those who take refuge in him,” he “knows those who are his” (2 Timothy 2:19). The point isn’t that He simply has information about us in His head; the point is that He lovingly cares for us, He never forgets to watch over us, He holds us in His heart and regards us as the apple of His eye.

GO FORTH IN THE WONDERFUL KNOWLEDGE OF OUR GOD

Mission Team, there are many encouragements that we may rightly give you as you go forth, but I can give no greater encouragement than to go forth in the wonderful knowledge of our big God. He is jealous for His glory and for His mission to the nations! He is jealous for the honor of His Son! He is jealous for His name to be hallowed in New Brunswick! He is jealous for His church! Indeed He is jealous for you, that your hearts would be completely His, and that you would glorify Him by loving one another and by joyfully partnering with Kevin and Grant in the work of the gospel and by volunteering as unto the Lord and by relying upon Him at all times. You glorify the stronghold that the Lord is by running into that stronghold, staying there and resting in it, and being anxious for nothing. You also glorify that stronghold by urging others to come into it.

The sober truth is that the day is coming when the jealous and avenging wrath of God will break forth in unremitting terror upon every unrepentant sinner! This sober truth is part of the message that we proclaim. At the same time, our desire is not to be like Jonah who only wanted God’s grace for his own countrymen but didn’t want grace for others. Indeed, we want sinners all over the place to escape the coming judgment by forsaking their sins and trusting in Jesus. You go forth, and we all go forth, with the complete message: the Lord is jealous, avenging, and wrathful to all who continue in their sin; and the same Lord is good, forgiving, and kind – the Savior and stronghold of all who turn away from their sin and “take refuge in him.” Live soberly and joyfully in accordance with this message, and proclaim the glory of the Lord wherever you go.

Let us pray.

ENDNOTES

[1] Years ago I read an article along these lines by Daniel Montgomery, then Pastor of Sojourn Community Church (Louisville, Kentucky).

[2] Joseph Hart, “How Good Is The God We Adore.”

BIBLIOGRAPHY

NOTE: My inclusion of a bibliography reflects my interaction with other teachers in the preparation of my sermon. While the main part of my preparation involves my direct interaction with the biblical text, I find it helpful to invite other “discussion partners” into my preparation process. My mention of these teachers (writers, speakers, etc.) does not imply any particular level of agreement with them, nor does it constitute an endorsement of their work. That said, I am appreciative of those – past and present – who are seeking to faithfully teach God’s Word, and I am happy to benefit from their labor.

Belcher, Richard. “Nahum.” Lecture dated March 21, 2009 and accessed through the online Resource Library of The Gospel Coalition website.

Blanchard, John. “Major Points from Nahum.” Lecture dated January 1, 2000 and accessed through the online Resource Library of The Gospel Coalition website.

Currid, John D. and David P. Barrett. ESV Bible Atlas. Wheaton: Crossway, 2010.

Henry, Matthew. Commentary on the Whole Bible. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1961.

“Jonah” (James D. Smart, William Scarlett) and “Nahum” (Charles Taylor, Jr. and James T. Cleland) in The Interpreter’s Bible [Commentary]: Volume VI. New York and Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1956. 

Ryrie Study Bible (KJV). Published by Moody Press.

The Word in Life Study Bible (NKJV). Published by Thomas Nelson.

NOTE: I also consulted a collection of commentaries on Nahum 1 through Bible Hub’s online resource: www.biblehub.com/commentaries.