Let's turn tonight in our Bibles
to one of the minor prophets we very seldom preach from, Nahum. Nahum. All the scripture is given by
inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for correction,
for instruction and righteousness that the man of God may be thoroughly
furnished. So we believe all the word of
God is God's word, don't we? When you open up your Bibles
and began to read, Genesis chapter 1 and verse 1, first we read
about creation, the first two chapters. And then when we come
to chapter 3, we read about the entrance of sin into God's creation. And we might think of sin like
the locomotive, a locomotive that pulls the train, pulls the
train of various cars and the cars might represent the various
consequences of sin. Sin came in and so death, the
curse, enmity with God, hatred among men, it all came in with
sin and as a result of sin. Then immediately we read of the
promise of the deliverer. Right after we read of the entrance
of sin, we read God speaking and declaring that the seed of
the woman would come who would bruise the head of the serpent. And these first few chapters
of Genesis are so important. And many religious groups today,
they will tell you, well, that's all allegorical. That's all allegorical,
those first seven chapters of Genesis. No. This is all the
revelation that God has given us concerning creation, concerning
the entrance of sin, and concerning the promise of the Savior. And then, of course, a few chapters
later, we find that God called a man by the name of Abram and
promised that that seed of the woman would be his seed. His seed in whom all the nations,
all the families of the earth should be blessed. Then God sent
Abraham's grandson and his sons down into Egypt and they became
a family, 70 souls went down into Egypt. Then they developed
into a nation and constituted a nation when God brought them
up out of Egypt and made the covenant with them at Mount Sinai. And over the history through
the Old Testament, we read of various nations that the nation
of Israel, in which the promised seed was, that is the seed of
Abraham, was going to come through that promised nation. Someone
in that promised nation, of course, as we go on in the scriptures,
it's revealed it's going to be through Jacob's son, Judah. And
then as we read further in the scriptures, we realize it's going
to be David's son. And we see progressive revelation
here concerning the promised seed. But we find out that the
nation of Israel itself had many other nations that they came
in contact with, which I will call enemy nations. Now, Israel brought their trouble
upon themselves. There's no question about that.
But we read about Egypt, first of all, that was a great nation
at that time. But it was turned into a very
poor nation by the judgment of God. And then comes the Assyrians
along, and then Babylon, and then Greece, and Rome. And all of these had some relation,
or Israel had some relation to these nations. Nahum, the prophet,
we are going to look at one of his prophecies here tonight. He prophesied during the time
that Assyria, the nation of Assyria, was the most powerful world power
at that time. And the capital of Assyria was
Nineveh. You notice in the first verse,
the burden of Nineveh. Nineveh was the capital of Assyria. And Assyria, or the Assyrians,
I should say, were a very powerful people at this time and a very
cruel people. To show how cruel they were,
the archaeologists have uncovered drawings in Tal, I guess you
would say, of them actually staking people to the ground and then
stripping their skin off their bodies alive. You can't imagine
people being any more cruel than that, I don't think, of skinning
a person alive. And that was the Assyrians. And they were a very powerful
nation. We know that Assyria is the nation
that defeated the northern tribes, that is, Israel, the ten tribes,
after the nation divided into the ten tribes and the two tribes. Well, it was Assyria that conquered
and carried off into captivity the ten tribes of Israel. They
were about to capture Jerusalem and take over Judah at the same
time. But remember, God sent an angel,
one of his angels, one night and killed 185,000 of the Assyrian
army, delivered. I believe that was King Hezekiah
who was delivered. He cried unto the Lord, and the
Lord heard him and delivered him out of all his troubles. Nineveh, as I said, was the capital
of Assyria, and it might be best known to most people today as
the city to which God sent Jonah. Remember, God called Jonah and
told him to go to Nineveh. He did not want to go to Nineveh.
He bought a ticket and headed in the opposite direction, but
he went to Nineveh. God took him there. And of course
he came into Nineveh preaching, 40 days and Nineveh shall be
destroyed. And Nineveh was such a large
city, most commentators explain how it was that he traveled across
the city, took him, I believe it was three days crossing the
city. It was that large and land area. And that same message, 40 days
and Nineveh shall be destroyed. And we know that they, repented,
but their repentance was superficial. It wasn't real. It was only superficial,
but it did stay the judgment of God at that particular time. And now when Nahum is prophesying,
it's been about a hundred years since Jonah visited Nineveh. And the Assyrian nation was defeated
by the Chaldeans, which or part of Babylon, the Babylon, Babylonians
rather. And the time was about 612 BC. So about 612 years before Christ
came into this world, Nahum lived and prophesied. The writers that
I've read, they divide his prophecy into two divisions, and they're
both poems. They're both poems. The first
poem is the first chapter and it speaks of the greatness of
God. And the second poem is the next two chapters, the final
two chapters, and it depicts the complete and utter destruction
of Assyria, of Nineveh. But tonight, I want us to look
at Nahum's words about the Lord in verse seven. Chapter one in
verse seven. The Lord is good, strong tire
in the day of trouble, and he knoweth them that trust in him."
Three grand and glorious truths about Jehovah. And you notice
the Lord, and we recognize that is Jehovah because each letter
is capitalized Three grand and glorious truths about Jehovah. That's his name, of course, which
reveals him as the self-existent eternal being that he is, and
especially his name that he used in relation to covenants. Three grand and glorious truths
about our God. Amen? Can you call him your God? three grand and glorious truths
about our God. And each one of these could serve
for one message, but I want us to look at all of them tonight.
And the Lord is good. And what a good outline. I like
this. I like these outlines. The Lord is good. The Lord is
a stronghold in the day of trouble. The Lord knoweth them that trust
in him. Let's look at these three things.
First, the Lord is good. The Lord Jesus Christ told that
rich young ruler who came running up to him, saying, good master,
what must I do to inherit eternal life? And the Lord said unto
him, there is none good, but one. There's none good, but one. The Lord is good. And as I looked
this past week at these three statements of Nahum, I saw what
I'm going to say, two of them have qualifications. Two of them
have qualifications. The Lord is a stronghold when? In the day of trouble. The Lord
knoweth them who? that trust in Him. The Lord is
good. There is no qualifier. The Lord is good without any
qualifiers and His goodness is essential to His being. In other
words, He would not be God, He would not be the Lord if He ceased
to be good. If He were not good, He would
not be God. Turn back with me, keep your
place here, but look back with me into Exodus chapter 33. Exodus chapter 33. In these two verses we're looking
at here, verses 18 and 19, we have Moses beseeching the Lord for special
blessing, for special privilege. Verse 19, I beseech thee, show
me thy glory. You know the amazing thing about
that? What seems to be amazing? Think
of what Moses had already seen. Think of what he had already
seen, all those 10 plagues on Egypt, the bush burning was not
consumed, the Red Sea opens up and they go through. But now
he prays, Lord, show me thy glory. And he said, God did, God said,
I will make all my goodness pass before thee. Our text says the
Lord is good. God told Moses, I will make all
my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name
of the Lord before thee. Now, the Lord told Moses there,
we just read it, that he would make all his goodness pass before
him. But how, how would God make his
goodness pass before Moses? Well, we know how he did that. He put him in a cleft of the
rock and he passed by and Moses saw his hinder part and he proclaimed,
that is the Lord proclaimed his name. In proclaiming his name,
now get this, he asked to see his goodness. or his glory, and
God said, I'll make all my goodness pass before thee. But look in
chapter 34 when this actually took place, beginning with verse
5. And the Lord descended in the
cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name of the
Lord. This is how the Lord caused his
goodness to pass before him. He proclaimed his name. And the
Lord passed by before him and proclaimed, the Lord, the Lord
God, remember this is his goodness, right? This is his goodness,
I'll make all my goodness pass before thee. How did he do that? By proclaiming his name, and
he proclaimed, The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious,
long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy
for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and
that will by no means clear the guilty. He proclaimed his goodness,
not a single attribute, Not a single attribute, but His goodness,
included in His goodness, we see, is His mercy. Aren't you thankful today that
God's good, that He's merciful? He's merciful. I remember hearing the story
of a ship captain, he fogged or He meted out severe punishment
to someone on his crew. And someone asked him to show
mercy. And he said, I never show mercy.
The man said, you'd better never need any mercy then. God is merciful
to the merciful. That's what the scripture says.
So he's merciful. Grace, oh, how we thank the Lord
for grace. Grace greater than all our sins. Long-suffering, how He suffered
long with us. Not willing that any should perish,
the Apostle Peter says. suffers long with his creation,
those of his chosen people, even in this world, who are lost tonight. They're his sheep, but they're
lost sheep, and many of them, no doubt, are fighting against
him, some even taking his name in vain, cursing God, and yet
the Lord is long-suffering, not willing that any of them should
perish. And none of them will. because
he's long-suffering. And until that last sheep of
Christ is called, the gospel is going to continue to go out. Long-suffering, truth. He's a God of truth. He is the
truth. He is the truth. Faithfulness. Our God is faithful. Even when we deny him, He's faithful. And he's just. He's just. He will by no means clear the
guilty. You say, well, that's kind of
disturbs me because I'm guilty. Well, that's the whole gospel
right there. That's the whole gospel, my friends.
Yes, we're all guilty, but Christ took the place of the guilty,
paid the penalty. suffered the righteous justice
of God for all of his sheen and holiness. His goodness is not
a distinct, or is not rather distinct from his essence. His
essence, he's good. The Lord is good. He's essentially
good. There's nothing in him but goodness. Nothing in God but goodness. You know, in the chapter one,
and I believe chapter two, chapter one, the week of creation, after
several days, the Lord would, at the end of each day, would
say, and God saw that what he created was good. But then on
that sixth day, after all things were created, that are created,
it says, God saw everything that he had made. Who made the sun? Who made the moon? Who made the
earth? Who made everything? God did. God did. And he saw everything that he
had made, and behold, it was very good. And that includes
man, doesn't it? He was created in that week.
Created in the image of God. We know, as the scripture in
Ecclesiastes says, he was made upright, but man has sought out
many inventions. Man was created in the image
of God, but then Adam, we are told, had a son in his image. And that image of God in which
Adam was at first created had been marred, if you please, had
been marred by his sin. And yes, it is true that we too
are all created in the image of God, all men are. But that
image is certainly not as it was when God created Adam. He was upright, perfect, holy. There is, when we look at this,
the Lord is good. There is in the distribution
of God's goodness what men call his general goodness, which is
over all his creatures. The Lord is good to all, the
scripture says. Men call his general goodness
and the effects of it and his special goodness and the effects
of it. And I'm going to leave those
two subjects for another day. But I want to move on to say,
before I move on to Nahum's second grand truth about the Lord, I
want us to look at another verse that speaks of the goodness of
the Lord. And that verse is found in Psalm
34. Before we move on to the second
grand truth, I want to say this about the goodness of the Lord. In Psalm 34 and verse 8, the
psalmist said, Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. You know, God uses our various
senses to picture faith, doesn't he? The sense of hearing. Hear, and thy soul shall live. The sense of sight. Look unto
me, all ye ends of the earth, and be ye saved. Touch, come
unto me, lay hold upon me. We know all of these are symbolic,
aren't they, of faith. And so is taste. Oh, taste and
see that the Lord is good. Someone said, well, I don't believe
the Lord is good. Because if he was good, this
wouldn't happen, and that wouldn't happen. Let me ask you something.
Have you ever tasted? Have you ever tasted? By faith,
have you ever trusted in Christ, looked to him only? Oh, taste
and see that the Lord is good. He's good. A person sees a beautiful
chocolate cake and, yeah, I don't believe that cake tastes good.
Have you ever tasted it? No, no, no. I haven't tasted
it, and I don't want to taste it. Well, you're not qualified
to say whether that cake tastes good or bad. And if you've never
tasted of the Lord, you're not qualified to set in judgment. But, oh, if you've tasted, I
know what your judgment is. The Lord is good. The Lord is
good. Now the second truth that we
see here in Nahum's statement is, the Lord is a stronghold
in the day of trouble. What is a stronghold? Well, I
want us to look back to 2 Samuel. The first time we have this term
used in the scripture, 2 Samuel chapter 5. Yes, 2 Samuel chapter
5. And verses six and seven. Verse six begins, and the king,
that is David, and his men went to Jerusalem unto the Jebusites. Who in the world are the Jebusites? Well, the Jebusites were one
of those six nations that Israel was rather to drive out of Canaan. Now, when David became king,
I would say at least 400 years had passed since Joshua had brought
the nation of Israel into Canaan. But the Jebusites, at this particular
location at least, they were so strong that the Israelites
had not yet driven them out. And the king and his men went
to Jerusalem unto the Jebusites, the inhabitants of the land,
which spake unto David, saying," now look at their boastful saying,
these Jebusites, "'Except thou take away the blind and the lame,
thou shalt not come in hither, thinking David cannot come in
hither, except you take away the blind and the lame." What
does that mean? When David went to fight the
giant, remember what he said, I come unto you in the name of
the Lord God of Israel. When he came to battle, to fight,
he came in the name of the Lord God. These Jebusites had their
idols, which they believed in, which were blind, as they said
here, blind, and you call our gods blind and lame? Well, let's just see you take
them. Let's just see you take care
of our gods. David said, I come in the name
of the Lord God of Israel, the only true and living God. Now
notice the next verse. You see, they thought, it says,
thanking David, the Jebusites, thanking David. He cannot come
in hither. And why did they thank that?
Because they had a stronghold. They had a stronghold outside
the city, actually, and it was, in their mind, impossible to
take the stronghold, so it was certainly impossible to take
the city. Nevertheless, David took the
stronghold of Zion. The same is the city of David. And then he and his men went
on to take the city. What is a stronghold? Well, the
word which is translated here, stronghold, is also translated
in the scripture, strength, a fort, fortress, and rock. Remember in those old cowboy
movies we used to see and they'd have the fort, that was a place
of safety, wasn't it? They'd get into the fort for
safety. A stronghold, it could be translated
strength, fort, fortress, and rock. Could be translated rock. In the day of trouble, the Lord
is a rock. There's no moving him. In the
day of trouble, the Lord is strength. There's none more powerful than
Him. In the day of trouble, the Lord is my fortress. There is
no penetrating this wall. Well, what day of trouble is
it when the Lord is a stronghold? Well, as many of you know, and
if you don't, you probably will, A child of God may have many
days of trouble in this world and find God the Lord to be a
stronghold. The reason I said you may find
many days of trouble because Job said man that is born of
a woman is a few days and full of trouble. And even Christians
are not exempt from that truth. Turn with me to 2 Corinthians
1. Look at Paul, what he says about
a day of trouble that he went through. Day of trouble that he experienced,
and he found the Lord to be a stronghold, his stronghold, a fortress, strength. Here in 2 Corinthians 1 and verse
8, he wrote, for we would not, brethren, have you ignorant of
our trouble. We're talking about a stronghold
in the day of trouble. Paul said, I wouldn't want you
to be ignorant of our trouble, what we've been through, which
came to us in Asia, that we were pressed out of measure, above
strength, above our strength. We had no strength. In other
words, we might say, we, and this is true of all believers,
we are perfect weakness. in ourselves. We are perfect
weakness. The Lord Jesus said, without
me, you can do nothing. Well, this is our trouble here. We were pressed out of measure,
above strength, insomuch we despaired, even of life. We thought, this
is it. This is it. There'll be no tomorrow for us.
They despaired of their life. But we had the sentence of death
in ourselves. Now notice, that we should not
trust in ourselves, but in God, which raiseth the dead. In other
words, that we would trust in the Lord, our stronghold. All this difficulty and trouble
came upon him to teach him not to trust in himself. And we learn
that, don't we? We learn as we go through life,
and we experience one trouble, and another trouble, and another
trouble. And it's a constant learning. You'd think we'd know
by now. But it seems like every time
a new trouble comes, we have to learn again, don't we? He's
our strength. He's our stronghold, who delivered
us from so great a death. and death deliver in whom we
trust that he will yet deliver us. But as I thought about this,
this text, this truth, the Lord is a stronghold in the day of
trouble. I had to think of these two particular
days that will be a day of trouble for all men. The first is the
day of our death, the day of our death. And God's children,
we have his word, we have his promise, and he's faithful and
he's true. And that day, we will learn just
how blessed it is, my brother and sister, we will learn just
how blessed it is in that day, the day of our death, to have
and to know the Lord is our stronghold. The Lord is our stronghold. And
then another day I thought about is the day of judgment. The day
of judgment when the scripture tells us men will be praying.
And it's the strangest prayer meeting. I remember Brother Ralph
Barnard making that statement. He said, I want to talk to you
about a prayer meeting. The strangest prayer meeting
that ever was held. Men were praying for the rocks. Praying for the rocks to fall
on us. and hide us from the face of
Him that sitteth upon the throne. When a stronghold, what a stronghold,
will the Lord Jesus Christ be in that day when men are crying
for the rocks to cover them, to hide them from the face of
the Lamb that sitteth upon the throne, and we will find Him
to be a stronghold to confess us unto the Father. What a stronghold He is. Accepted in Him, in the Beloved,
and confessed by the Father. In just a few seconds, notice
the third, the Lord knoweth them that trust in Him. Now here's a statement, I want
you to listen to me. There are people in this world
that the Lord knows. He said, well that's, everybody
knows that. Everybody knows that preacher.
God's omniscient. God knows everything. God knows
everyone. Yes, I agree. But at the same
time, the word of God declares there are people in this world
that God knows. In Amos chapter three and verse
two, he told the nation of only, you only, You only have I known
of all the families of the earth. In other words, of all the nations
of the earth, you only have I known. The nation of Israel, the family
of Israel, God had distinguished by his special blessings. He gave them his word, the oracles
of God. Paul says that was the chief
blessing, the word of God. He had chosen them to be a particular
people to Himself. An earthly people, that's true,
but still a particular people to Himself. But my point is,
this verse says, the Lord knoweth them that trust in Him. There
are people in this world that the Lord knows in a special way. And that special way is He knows
them, He loves them. for whom He did foreknow, He
also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son. He knows them because He loves
them with an everlasting love. He knows them because He chose
them in Christ before the foundation of the world. And bless them
at the same time with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places
in Christ. There are people in this world
that the Lord knows. You say, who are they? I'm glad you asked. I'm glad
you asked because Nahum tells us, the Lord knoweth them that
trust in him. The Lord knoweth them that trust
in Him. Do you trust in Him? That's the
only way that you may know that He knows you, if you trust in Him. The Lord
knoweth them that trust in Him. He said, I know my sheep. I know
my sheep. And they hear my voice. and they
follow me. Have you ever heard the voice
of the shepherd? Not audibly, obviously, I'm not
saying that. But when you hear my voice, I
pray and trust that you hear his voice, his word, as he calls
his own. Three glorious truths, right?
The Lord is good, the Lord is a stronghold in the day of trouble,
and the Lord knoweth them that trust in him.