SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/20/2016
10:44 PM
My Worship Time Focus: God Speaks
to Judah
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Nahum
1:12-13, 15
Message of
the verses: “12 Thus says the LORD, "Though they are
at full strength and likewise many, Even so, they will be cut off and pass
away. Though I have afflicted you, I will afflict you no longer. 13 “So now, I
will break his yoke bar from upon you, And I will tear off your shackles.’ 15
Behold, on the mountains the feet of him who brings good news, Who announces
peace! Celebrate your feasts, O Judah; Pay your vows. For never again will the
wicked one pass through you; He is cut off completely.”
I want to say that this is the Lord speaking to
Judah, telling Judah that He is done afflicting them, and will begin to afflict
the Assyrians. I suppose that this is
one of the times when the Lord is speaking to me from this passage as well as
the passage that I looked at this morning that is John 3:10-21. In that SD I quoted a rather long section
from one of John MacArthur’s sermons that he spoke in Feb. of 2013. One may wonder how his sermon from the gospel
of John would have anything to do with what we are looking at this evening, but
it does as he was speaking about “Twin Truths:
God’s Sovereignty and Man’s Responsibility.” MacArthur was teaching about the twin tracks
that have one track as God’s sovereignty, and the other track as Man’s
responsibility and they cannot cross or you cannot harmonize these truths. He gave an example from the book of Isaiah to
make his point and the portion from Isaiah is about how God was going to use
the Assyrians to discipline Israel, and then God was going to destroy the
Assyrians, which is what the book of Nahum is about. For those of you who read this other post I
made this morning you may not want to re-read this quote, but it is an important
quote that goes along with the section in John and this section in Nahum.
““Let me give you a couple of illustrations to
help you with your comfort. Turn to Isaiah 10, and this might seem a bit of a
different angle on this but I want you to show, to be able to see how God shows
us these things in maybe surprising ways.
“God has a will. We know that. God will do His will, or
whatever the Lord wills, He does; whatever He purposes, He brings to pass.
The will of the Lord cannot be thwarted. He is absolutely sovereign. He does
what He wills in every life. He does what He wills among men. He does what He
wills in the world. He brings His own purposes to pass. That aspect of the sovereignty of God is clearly
revealed all over Scripture.
“But here’s a very interesting illustration of how
that goes together with responsibility. In the tenth chapter of Isaiah, God
introduces Assyria, the nation of Assyria, the people of Assyria. And he
introduces that pagan, idolatrous nation in a very interesting way. Verse 5,
Isaiah 10, “Woe to Assyria.” Okay, a judgment is coming on Assyria, a judgment
from God: “Woe.” “Woe” is
an onomatopoetic Hebrew term. We say, “Woe” in English. It actually in
Hebrew, oyeeyaa,; it’s
that kind of groan. That’s why I mean onomatopoetic; that’s a word that
sounds like its meaning. So it’s a word of terrible distress that signifies
destruction and judgment. God
is going to destroy Assyria. God is going to bring divine judgment on Assyria.
“Then from there we read, “The rod of My anger and
the staff in whose hands is My indignation.” God says I’m going to judge Assyria, and then He
identifies Assyria as the rod of His anger and the staff of His indignation.
In other words, Assyria is
a weapon in the hands of God. Assyria...God is picking up Assyria like a weapon
to use Assyria to unleash His wrath.
“On whom? Verse 6, “I send it against a godless
nation and commission it against the people of My fury.” That’s a sad designation because
He’s talking about Israel. God, and it happened in history, picked up
Assyria and sent Assyria as a destroyer against an apostate idolatrous Israel.
God says, “I am going to pick up Assyria, the rod of My anger, the staff of My
wrath, My indignation, and I’m going to send it against a godless nation,
against Israel.” And that’s what He did. Assyria was God’s tool. You know the
story of the Assyrian invasion of the northern kingdom in 722—took them
captive, massacred them, and they never returned from captivity; the northern
part of the divided kingdom. Assyria was the weapon. And He says in verse 6,
“To capture booty, to seize plunder, to trample them down like mud in the
streets,” and that is exactly what happened.
“Then you come to verse 7, most interesting. “Yet,
it does not so intend, nor does it plan so in its heart.” I’m going to use Assyria to do
this and this is not Assyria’s plan. This is not what Assyria is
choosing, this is what I am choosing for Assyria to do. This is not Assyria’s
intent. This is not its plan. Rather, it has its purpose—to destroy and cut off
many nations.
“Assyria is targeting all kinds of nations and
their names in the next verse, verse 9, that identify some of those. Assyria
has its plan, but I have My plan, and I without their planning it, or intending
to do it, I’m going to pick them up and use them as My weapon.
“Well, this is amazing. Assyria has no intention of doing this. God
literally, sovereignty picks them up, drives them at Israel to accomplish His
will, and then He says in verse 5, “Woe to Assyria.” Woe to Assyria, a nation
to be destroyed for doing something they didn’t choose to do, doing something
they didn’t plan to do, doing something that was not their intention to do.
“Assyria had its own plans. God had different
plans. But Assyria will be destroyed. Verse 12, “It will be when the Lord has
completed all His work on Mount Zion, representing Israel and Jerusalem, He
will say, ‘I will punish the fruit of the arrogant heart of the king of Assyria
and the pomp of his haughtiness.’” And then He goes on to quote what the king
of Assyria said when he became proud and launched against Israel. God says,
“I’m going to destroy him.”
“Verse 16, “I’m going to send wasting disease.
Under His glory a fire of kindle like a burning flame. The light of Israel will
become a fire, his Holy One a flame and burn and devour his thorns and briars
in a single day. He will destroy the glory of his forest and fruitful garden,
soul, and body as when a sick man wastes away,” etc. This is an amazing juxtaposing. God punishes a
nation for doing what God picked them up and made them do. There’s no explanation. There’s no way to harmonize
those things. Full responsibility for pride fell on the king of Assyria.
Full responsibility for evil intention and massacre fell on Assyria. Even
though they were acting by divine decree, they bore full responsibility for
what they did. This again
is an illustration of those parallel realities: human responsibility and divine
sovereignty. And they will always run parallel, and they will always
have to be understood that way. Sinners bear the full weight of responsibility
for their acts of defiance against God, even when God is using them to
accomplish His purposes. And
yet all things are decreed and determined by God as to their final end.”
Another coincidence comes from the following endnote
from Warren Wiersbe: “Isaiah 10:5-18
explains that Assyria was God’s tool (‘the rod of My anger’) to chasten Judah
because of her idolatry, but the Assyrians had gone too far and been too
ruthless. In his pride, the king of
Assyria had boasted of his past victories, so the Lord announced that He would
humble him. This God did when His angel
destroyed 185,000 Assyrian soldiers in one night (37:36-38; see 10:16).”
Dr. Wiersbe writes “In ancient days, news was
carried by couriers, and the watchmen on the walls scanned the horizon hoping
that messengers would bring good news.
In this case, it was good news indeed:
the courier would announce that Nineveh was fallen and the Assyrian army
defeated and in disarray (v. 15). Judah
could now live in peace and enjoy her annual feasts and regular religious
festivals.” Dr. Wiersbe points out that
Nahum 1:15 is 2:1 in the Hebrew Bible.
Verse fifteen is similar to Isaiah 52:7 and Paul
quotes that verse in the book of Romans 10:15 where he applies it to the
proclamation of the Gospel to lost sinners.
Feet are not usually looked upon as being beautiful, but when feet carry
someone who is giving the good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ they are
indeed beautiful. Looking from Judah’s
perspective they know that the message contains the defeat of the Assyrians,
but as believers look at this it means that He has completed and defeated sin,
death, and Satan, and now we are free to enjoy God’s blessings.
1/20/2016 11:11 PM
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