God Speaks of Himself PT-2 (Nahum 1:2-8)

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/19/2016 10:58 PM

My Worship Time                                                                  Focus:  God Speaks of Himself PT-2

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Nahum 1:2-8

Message of the verses:  “2 A jealous and avenging God is the LORD; The LORD is avenging and wrathful. The LORD takes vengeance on His adversaries, And He reserves wrath for His enemies. 3 The LORD is slow to anger and great in power, And the LORD will by no means leave the guilty unpunished. In whirlwind and storm is His way, And clouds are the dust beneath His feet. 4 He rebukes the sea and makes it dry; He dries up all the rivers. Bashan and Carmel wither; The blossoms of Lebanon wither. 5 Mountains quake because of Him And the hills dissolve; Indeed the earth is upheaved by His presence, The world and all the inhabitants in it. 6 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 broken up by Him. 7 The LORD is good, A stronghold in the day of trouble, And He knows those who take refuge in Him. 8 But with an overflowing flood He will make a complete end of its site, And will pursue His enemies into darkness.”

We talked about God character of having jealously, vengeance, and anger in our last SD on these verses as all of them are seen here and in today’s SD we want to look at these verses in more detail.

In verse two we see that God is furious as seen in the  KJV, while in the NIV it is said that He is “filled with wrath” and in the NASB it says that He is ‘avenging and wrathful.  Verse six speaks of his indignation (righteous-anger) is a synonym for indignation along with fury.  Now let us look at verse three to give some balance where we read “The Lord is slow to anger.”  By reading this we see that God is not having a temper tantrum, or having a fit of rage. 

Dr. Wiersbe writes “God’s anger is so powerful that if His anger were not a holy anger, and if He were not ‘slow to anger,’ He could easily destroy everything.  He controls the forces of nature (Nahum 1:3); He opened the Red Sea for the people of Israel to march through, and he can turn off the rain and make the most fruitful areas of the land languish (v. 4).  At Sinai, He made the mountain shake (Ex. 19:18), and when He pleases, He can cause the people of the world to tremble (Heb. 12:18-21).”

I don’t know if what I am about to say is an absolute truth, but the way that I see the attributes of God is like looking at a grapefruit, or an orange, a fruit that when you peal it there are natural dividers in it, but when you look at the fruit it is an orange or a grapefruit.  I have mentioned different attributes that God has and we can see that Nahum has mentioned several here showing that not only God is jealous, vengeance, has anger, but He also controls these attributes and does not in a fit of rage.  Dr. Wiersbe writes that “He is also a good God who cares for His people (v.7).  Nahum invites us (as Paul put it) to ‘consider the goodness and severity of God’ (Rom. 11:22 NKJV).  ‘God is love’ (1 John 4:8, 16), but His is also light (1:5), and His love is a holy love.  He is a refuge for those who trust Him, but He is an ‘overwhelming flood’ to those who are His enemies.”

The flowing is a list of God’s attributes that on most mornings I praise Him for during my prayer time:  “Praise the Lord for His attributes.  God is good, holy, glorious, pure, sovereign, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, truth, measureless, omnipresence, omnipotent, omniscience, all wise, immutable (unchangeable), wrath, God who pardons, God who is Jealous, faithful, who is love & just.”

1/19/2016 11:23 PM