Regardless of relatives, the Lord will rightly respond to those who choose to take refuge in Him or who choose to rebel against Him with justice...

This week we have been looking at a letter that is recorded for us in the Old Testament of the Bible called the book of Nahum.  We have looked on as Nahum proclaimed the character of the Lord. We looked on as Nahum proceed to proclaim that even though the Assyrian Empire was at its height of power and prominence, the Lord was about to act in a way that would remove them from the world stage. Even though the Lord had used the Assyrian Empire to execute His right and just response to the wrongdoing and rebellion of the Jewish people, the Jewish people would no longer experience their affliction.

Instead, the Lord would remove the bondage of the rule of the Assyrian Empire from the Southern Kingdom of Judea. The Lord would act to execute justice and judgment against the Assyrian Empire for the wrongdoing and injustice that flowed from their rebellion against the Lord. We looked on as Nahum proclaimed to the Assyrian Empire that the Lord was about to use the Babylonian Empire to exercise His justice and judgment against them for the wrongdoing and injustice that they had committed against the Jewish people.

The Lord would respond to the cruelty of the Assyrian Empire that flowed from their willingness to commit spiritual adultery by worshiping false gods instead of the One True God by bringing death and destruction on a massive scale. The destruction would be so severe that the Empire would become a spectacle to those who observed its demise and destruction. The cruelty and moral corruption of the Empire would be exposed for the rest of the world to see.

And in response, the rest of the world would flee from the Assyrian Empire so that no one would be left to grieve for its destruction. Nahum then pointed the Assyrian Empire to another nation that experienced invasion and destruction that they would be very familiar with to hammer the Lord’s point home in Nahum 3:8-11:

 Are you better than No-amon, Which was situated by the waters of the Nile, With water surrounding her, Whose rampart was the sea, Whose wall consisted of the sea? ⁹ Ethiopia was her might, And Egypt too, without limits. Put and Lubim were among her helpers. ¹⁰ Yet she became an exile, She went into captivity; Also her small children were dashed to pieces At the head of every street; They cast lots for her honorable men, And all her great men were bound with fetters. ¹¹ You too will become drunk, You will be hidden. You too will search for a refuge from the enemy.

Here we see Nahum point the Assyrian Empire to the Egyptian city of Thebes that was conquered by the Assyrians in 663 B.C. Like the city of Nineveh, the city of Thebes was located on a major river. Like the city of Nineveh, the city of Thebes had relationships with other nations that pledged to help them in their time of need. And here Nahum predicted and proclaimed that the city of Nineveh would experience the same fate from the Babylonians that the city of Thebes experienced from the Assyrians.

Just like the Egyptians, the Assyrians would be brought into exile. Just like the Egyptians, the Assyrians would experience cruelty as they were conquered. However, unlike the Egyptians, the city of Nineveh would be razed to the ground, not to rise again. When Nahum uses the phrase, you will be hidden, he was predicting and proclaiming that the city of Nineveh would be so destroyed that it would be hidden from sight.

And is 612 B.C., this prediction was fulfilled to the point that the city of Nineveh was so destroyed that it was hidden from historians until it was discovered in 1842. We see Nahum conclude his description of the siege and destruction of the Assyrian Empire in verse 12-19:

 All your fortifications are fig trees with ripe fruit-- When shaken, they fall into the eater's mouth. ¹³ Behold, your people are women in your midst! The gates of your land are opened wide to your enemies; Fire consumes your gate bars. ¹⁴ Draw for yourself water for the siege! Strengthen your fortifications! Go into the clay and tread the mortar! Take hold of the brick mold! ¹⁵ There fire will consume you, The sword will cut you down; It will consume you as the locust does. Multiply yourself like the creeping locust, Multiply yourself like the swarming locust. ¹⁶ You have increased your traders more than the stars of heaven-- The creeping locust strips and flies away. ¹⁷ Your guardsmen are like the swarming locust. Your marshals are like hordes of grasshoppers Settling in the stone walls on a cold day. The sun rises and they flee, And the place where they are is not known. ¹⁸ Your shepherds are sleeping, O king of Assyria; Your nobles are lying down. Your people are scattered on the mountains And there is no one to regather them. ¹⁹ There is no relief for your breakdown, Your wound is incurable. All who hear about you Will clap their hands over you, For on whom has not your evil passed continually?

What is so interesting is that, upon finding the ruins of the city of Nineveh in 1842, archeologists discovered that fire helped destroy the city. The Babylonian Empire, like a hungry man shaking the ripened fruit off a tree for food, would shake the Assyrian Empire to a place of total destruction. Just 120 years after hearing the message of the prophet Jonah and repenting to the point of worshipping the Lord, the Assyrian Empire, at the height of their power, would soon experience God’s right and just response to the wrongdoing and injustice that flowed from their rebellion and rejection of the Lord. 

And, it is here, when God speaks, that we discover a timeless truth about the nature and character of God and God’s activity in history. And that timeless truth is this: Regardless of relatives, the Lord will rightly respond to those who choose to take refuge in Him or who choose to rebel against Him with justice. You see, the point of the book of Nahum is that the Lord, in His very nature and character, is righteous and avenges those who have been wronged as a result of wrongdoing and injustice. The Lord, in His very nature and character, is both longsuffering and all-powerful. The Lord, in His very nature and character, is just and executes justice.           

And the Lord, in His very nature and character, is morally good. The Lord, in His very nature and character, is a stronghold of strength in the face of trouble and difficulty for those who trust and take refuge in the Lord. The Lord, in His very nature and character, knows and cares for those who trust and take refuge in Him.

By contrast, for those who place themselves in opposition to the Lord, the Lord will overwhelm them with a flood of justice and judgment.  The Lord, in His very nature and character, is able to destroy the plans of those who oppose Him in rebellion against Him. And because of that reality, just as it was for the Assyrian Empire, the Lord will execute justice and judgment against the wrongdoing and injustice that flows from a rebellion and rejection of the Lord.

And that justice and judgment will be executed regardless of relatives. You see, even though the Assyrian Empire once knew and worshipped the Lord, those who worshipped the Lord did not pass on their knowledge of the Lord to the next generation. And within three generations, the Assyrian Empire found themselves in opposition to the Lord in a way that engaged in wrongdoing and injustice from their rebellion and rejection of the Lord.

And just like the Assyrian Empire, every human being is responsible for their response to the Lord. Just like the Assyrian Empire, every human being is responsible for their actions to the Lord. Just like the Assyrian Empire, every human being will answer to the Lord for how they lived life here on earth.

And just like it was for the Assyrian Empire in Nahum’s day, the Lord will not judge anyone for how their great grandparents responded to the Lord and lived their life before the Lord. Just like it was for the Assyrian Empire in Nahum’s day, the Lord will not judge anyone for how their grandparents responded to the Lord and lived their life before the Lord. Just like it was for the Assyrian Empire in Nahum’s day, the Lord will not judge anyone for how their parents responded to the Lord and lived their life before the Lord.

Instead, just like it was for the Assyrian Empire in Nahum’s day, the Lord will judge everyone for how they responded to the Lord and lived their life before the Lord. Just like it was for the Assyrian Empire in Nahum’s day, the Lord, in His very nature and character, is a stronghold of strength in the face of trouble and difficulty for those who trust and take refuge in the Lord. Just like it was for the Assyrian Empire in Nahum’s day, the Lord, in His very nature and character, is knows and cares for those who trust and take refuge in Him. Just like it was for the Assyrian Empire in Nahum’s day, the Lord will overwhelm them with a flood of justice and judgment those who choose to rebel against Him.  Regardless of relatives, the Lord will rightly respond to those who choose to take refuge in Him or who choose to rebel against Him with justice.

So here is a question to consider: How are you responding to the Lord?  Are you responding to the Lord by trusting and taking refuge in Him? Or are you responding to the Lord by rebelling against Him? Is your relationship with the Lord based on how your relatives viewed and responded to the Lord? Or is your relationship with the Lord based on your response to the Lord? Are you passing on your relationship with the Lord and what it means to have a relationship with the Lord to the next generation?

Because, as we have discovered, regardless of relatives, the Lord will rightly respond to those who choose to take refuge in Him or who choose to rebel against Him with justice.