Now it's always to me something,
a sober reminder, I'm not sure
of the right words, but it is an important thing when someone
gets up to preach or when you invite someone to preach. And for that reason I brought
something. I don't know if any of you are
familiar with the name Moose Parks. Very, very dear friend of mine
and great pastor. Well, he was preaching in October
2013 at a church there and I had heard this sermon and he started
with something that I just thought should be said. to any church
that invites a preacher. And I have read this to several
places, and I'm going to read it to you now. This is a transcript
of just the first couple of minutes of what he was preaching. He
says, Our dear friend Maurice Montgomery in Madisonville, Kentucky,
has been unable to preach from his own pulpit for some months
due to failing health at the time. says, and therefore he
has found it necessary to have a visiting preacher every Lord's
Day to come and to minister to the church. I am subscribed to
the email version of their bulletins, and so I receive their bulletin
a day or so before it is presented to the church. And I always look
to see who's preaching. My son gets to go up there and
preach quite often, so I read in there, Brother Deep Hearts
will preach to us the unsearchable riches of Christ. Or Brother
Bob Coffee will preach to us the unsearchable riches of Christ.
Or Brother Luke Coffee will preach to us the unsearchable riches
of Christ. But every preacher is always
introduced in the same way. He will preach the unsearchable
riches of Christ. Well, I'd like somewhat to be
precise and to know of which I speak. So I telephoned my son. And I said, son, it says you
are to preach the unsearchable riches of Christ. Did Maurice
telephone you and assign that subject to you? And he said,
no, never does. Did you telephone him and tell
him that's what you would be preaching? And he said, no, did
not. And yet there it is, no matter
who the preacher is, he's going to be preaching the unsearchable
riches of Christ. So still wanting to be precise
and knowledgeable of what I speak, I telephoned my dear friend,
Maurice Montgomery, and I said, Brother Maurice, every week I
see the same thing, that such and such brother will preach
to us the unsearchable riches of Christ, and I have it on good
authority that you have not assigned the subject, and I have it on
good authority that you have not been informed that's what
the subject will be. And Maurice said, Nobody gets
invited to preach in this pulpit unless it's known that's what
he preaches. And I thought, that is a very
good teaching to live by. So when you invite preachers,
you make sure that's what they preach. Now, I do have a message
on the unsearchable riches of Christ, but that's not what I'm
going to preach today. We'll actually be in the book
of Nahum, the book of Nahum. For those of you who are like
myself, who have trouble remembering where the books in the Bible
are, it's toward the end. Now, what we're going to be preaching
about and listening and studying is about that day of wrath and
about wrath. I didn't actually try to tie
the Bible study into this. It just kind of worked itself
out that way. But we're going to be approaching it from a different
angle. And I don't know about any of you, but when I was a
child, I sometimes provoked my folks to anger. I got in trouble,
sometimes even on purpose. Now, I wanted a reaction. I just
wanted some attention, whatever it was. And I would do something
bad, like scream or holler or aggravate my sister, whatever.
Whatever you do as a child. Sometimes I would even do what
I knew I was not supposed to do. And my parents warned me
and then I kept doing it and then I got punishment. I got
a spanking. Paddle, belt, hand, didn't matter. I was punished by angry parents,
but I had kindled that anger. And we believers, we have another
father in heaven. And he not only sees what we
do during the day like our parents can, he sees what we do at night when
we think no one else can see us. In fact, he knows our hearts. He knows what you're thinking. Now, has not every believer performed
some deed or had some thought that would provoke God the Father
to anger? I had a thought just this morning.
I had thoughts on the way here. After I leave here, I'm going
to have some more thoughts. It doesn't stop. Yet, how many believers here
today have been wiped out by God's wrath. You don't have to
raise your hand. I already know the number. How many believers here today
don't know what God's wrath feels like and instead enjoy the blessings
of hearing God's gospel? That's what you are right now.
You haven't felt his wrath. Instead, you're here. Do you know why that is? You
know your thoughts, you know your heart better than anybody
else here, save for God. How are you still here, still
standing and not just a pile of ashes? The reason is because God's mercies
are lightning fast. Yet his wrath is shut up somewhere
forbidden from getting out. That's why you're here. He is
slow to anger, slow to wrath. How slow? How slow is that anger? That's
where we're going to read starting in verse one of chapter one. It says the burden against Nineveh,
the book of the vision of Nahum, the Elkishite. God is jealous
and the Lord avenges. The Lord avenges and is furious. The Lord will take vengeance
on his adversaries and he reserves wrath for his enemies. The Lord
is slow to anger and great in power and he will not at all
acquit the wicked. That word anger means both anger
or wrath. It can be translated either way.
Now has anyone measured that anger or how slow it comes? Or perhaps have you asked how
many sins does it take before God just can't hold back that
wrath? Are there any lesser sins? Are
there any greater sins? Perhaps it takes fewer greater
sins for God's wrath to come out. than it does the lesser
sins. And what if a man hears God's
wrath coming? Can he hide? Is there a place
to escape where God's wrath cannot reach him? Is there some action that that
man can do that will cause God to relent and put away the fires
of his wrath once they have been let loose? Well, for these answers,
we need to start at the beginning in the book of Genesis. We'll
be in Genesis three. And we'll read just a few verses
here, starting in verse eight of Genesis three. Talking of Adam and Eve, it says. This is just after they had sinned. It says, And they heard the sound
of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.
And Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord
God among the trees of the garden. Then the Lord God called to Adam
and said to him, Where are you? So he said, I heard your voice
in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid
myself. And he said, Who told you that
you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree
of which I commanded you that you should not eat? Then the
man said, The woman who you gave it to be or gave to be with me,
she gave me of the tree and I ate. And the Lord God said to the
woman, What is this you have done? And the woman said, The
serpent deceived me and I ate. So the Lord God said to the serpent,
because you have done this, you are cursed more than all cattle
and more than every beast of the field on your belly. You
shall go and you shall eat dust all the days of your life. And
I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your
seed and her seed. He shall bruise your head and
you shall bruise his heel. To the woman, he said, I will
greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception in pain.
You shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your
husband and he shall rule over you. Then to Adam, he said, because
you have heeded the voice of your wife and have eaten from
the tree of which I commanded you, saying you shall not eat
of it. Cursed is the ground for your sake and toil. You shall
eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles
that shall bring forth for you and you shall eat the herb of
the field. Now, God knows, of course, what
happens or what has just transpired before he goes to meet them.
But they are worried when they hear him. But what do they hear?
What is that sound that they heard telling them that the Lord
was coming? It's not the sound of wrath.
They actually have no idea what the sound of wrath sounds like.
They've never heard it before. What they heard was the sound
of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of
the day. They know that sound, the Lord coming in peace, not
in wrath. No, they heard the sound of love
and mercy And of course, as they confess their sins, everything's
laid out for the Lord. He knows what happened. And even
though there's a lot of finger pointing, regardless of the fault,
they have sinned. Every one of them. They have done the one thing
that God asked them not to do. So you can see this and think,
well, this is the first sin. God must wipe it out. Everything
he has made start over again. Wrath must be coming. But let's
read verse 21. It says, Also for Adam and his wife, the
Lord God made tunics of skin and clothed them. And in the
preceding verses, we saw what he had declared. It wasn't wrath.
It wasn't wrath. Wrath is destruction. That's
the Lord's wrath. Instead, here's what we have. We have, you must work and eat
of the fields. There'll be painful childbearing.
That didn't sound like wrath. That's going to be very uncomfortable.
That's not wrath. No, what they heard was actually
part of his mercy. He kept his wrath stored up.
And look, in case you missed it, verse 21, that's mercy. He covered their shame. He covered
their guilt with someone else's blood, essentially. Something
else's blood. Now, what if a man or even mankind
commits more sins? This was just the first one that
mankind committed. What will God do if there are
more? Turn just a few chapters to chapter six. Genesis six, and we'll just read
verses five through eight, it says, Then the Lord saw that
the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every attempt
of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And
the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth and he
was grieved in his heart. So the Lord said, I will destroy
man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man
and beast, creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry
that I have made them. But Noah found grace in the eyes
of the Lord. Now, shouldn't his wrath be kindled
even more now? There had been sixteen hundred
and fifty years for sins to pile up since Adam and Eve. That's
a long time. And mankind only populated the
earth more in those times. There are many people to commit
sins. And they did. It's recorded. Now, perhaps there
were greater sins or lesser sins that they could have committed.
How many? Bible doesn't tell us. And guess
what? It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. There are
no such things as greater sins or lesser sins. It says here,
every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil
all the time. Sin is sin. It's just a flat
line. Now, as God's full wrath brought
about by this time, we know the story of the ark. We know what
happened. Well, no, we're still here. Thousands
of years separated from when these events took place. We have
a record. We're reading about it because
God has more people to save. His wrath wasn't poured out right
then, not the full wrath. Because when the full wrath comes,
the heavens will be made new and the earth will be made new.
But we are here today because the full wrath didn't come at
that time. But we see here and we know before the wrath came,
God waited for the ark. He declared his wrath. He said,
I'm done with everything that has the breath of life in his
lungs. But he waited. He waited for
that ark to be built. And while the wrath of the flood
was great and fierce and nothing that had the breath of life survived.
God did not deliver such a powerful wrath that it overcame the Ark.
That Ark withstood all of it and the people inside were saved.
So his mercy that allowed the Ark, that was first. That came
first. And his wrath that beat against
the Ark, but didn't tear it down, didn't destroy it. That was second. There's a pattern here. Mercy
always precedes wrath. Lot was rescued before God burned
down Sodom and Gomorrah. The Israelites crossed the Red
Sea before God allowed the waters to come together. And the Lamb was slain before
we committed any sins to require that slain. Mercy comes first. So then what? What if we commit
a very grievous sin? Perhaps there's one that says,
well, I just can't forgive that. God might say that. There is
one that will not be forgiven, says Jesus, and that is unbelief.
What if we have that? We'll turn to 1 Samuel 8. Starting
in verse 1. It says, Now it came to pass
when Samuel was old that he had made his sons judges over Israel. The name of his firstborn was
Joel, the name of his second Abijah. They were judges in Beersheba. But his sons did not walk in
his ways. They turned aside after dishonest gain, took bribes and
perverted justice. Then all the elders of Israel
gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah and said to him,
Look, you are old and your sons do not walk in your ways. Now
make us a king to judge us, like all the nations. But the thing
displeased Samuel when they said, Give us a king to judge us. So
Samuel prayed to the Lord. And the Lord said to Samuel,
Heed the voice of the people and all that they say to you.
For they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me, that
I should not reign over them, according to all the works which
they have done since the day that I brought them out of Egypt,
even to this day. with which they have forsaken
me and served other gods. So they are doing to you also.
This must be the worst sin that mankind could commit. Rejecting
God unbelief. They don't want him as their
king. They want a man as their king. One of them. Someone they
can relate to. Now he promised them that he
would be their king. forever and that they would be
his people. And he would rule over them.
But when Samuel hears this, he feels rejected. But God corrects
him. Turn to Luke real quick. Chapter 10. This almost plays
out word for word when Jesus is on earth. And so it should,
because he is God in the flesh. Luke 10 and verse 16. He says,
he who hears you hears me. And he who rejects you rejects
me. And he who rejects me rejects
him who sent me. Now they were rejecting Samuel,
but they were rejecting Samuel because of what Samuel was saying. Because That's who he spoke for. He spoke for God. He was a prophet. Now, a man named Saul becomes
king. They get a man. They get their
king. And it was prophesied to them, though, that it would be
the worst for them. It would not be better than having
God as their king. But they did it anyway. However, If you keep reading,
who comes after Saul? That would be King David, a man
after God's own heart. So it is not wrath that God shows
his people at that time. It's more mercy. Mercy just keeps
coming. It's like God can't help it. Now, we have established that
we're sinners. We've been sinners since Adam
and Eve. That's easy to see. That's something actually everybody
can understand. Even the atheist knows when something's
bad. So we're sinners and God must
have wrath stored up. He's already said he does. So
where is it? And when it does come, how do
we avoid this wrath? Is there a place to hide? And
what is that place? We'll turn to the book of Malachi. These are in somewhat chronological
order. And Malachi is the last prophet,
the last messenger for the Israelites for 400 years until the next
one. Let's read Malachi chapter one,
verses six through nine. It says a son honors his father
and a servant, his master. If then I am the father, where
is my honor? And if I am a master, where is
my reference, says the Lord of hosts, to the priests who despise
my name? Yet you say, in what way have
we despised your name? You offer defiled food on my
altar, but say, in what way have we defiled you? By saying the
table of the Lord is contemptible. And when you offer the blind
as a sacrifice, is it not evil? And when you offer the lame and
sick, is it not evil? Offer them to your governor.
Would he be pleased with you? Would he accept you favor? Favorably, says the Lord of hosts.
But now and treat God's favor that he may be gracious to us
while this is being done by your hands. Will he accept you favorably,
says the Lord of hosts. These people, these priests,
these. Followers, they all thought they
could hide behind their genealogy. They were Israelites after all,
God's chosen people. They were known. They had their
tribes. They had their genealogy. There's nothing God could do.
They were protected because of their blood. They would hide
behind their DNA. Except they are not God's people
in their hearts. And that's where God looks. Now, surely by now there have
been enough sins that God must pour out of his wrath. I mean,
even his people are sinning every day. His priests, those who should
uphold the word, tell it to people, show them the right path. Even
they are sinning. And we haven't witnessed even
1% of the sins that have happened up till now. We skipped over Sodom. We skipped
over the men of Gibeah. We skipped over all the kings
that were leading Judah, that were leading Israel. They were
brought down by God, yet his wrath doesn't come then. It didn't
come then. It doesn't come now. Go to chapter
three of Malachi. Here's the mercy. Behold, I send
my messenger and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord
whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger
of the covenant in whom you delight. Behold, he is coming, says the
Lord of hosts. He sends a messenger, that would
be John the Baptist. 400 years later, that's just
like the day of our Lord as the thief in the night. Those Pharisees
were surprised when they saw John. Nobody knew he was coming. But God did. God knew God has
his appointed time. And in case you missed it, his
wrath doesn't come. And in fact, there's mercy. His
wrath is held back again. He sends a messenger and he sends
himself. Jesus Christ, God incarnate,
the lamb that was slain from the foundation of the world,
that was the promise. So you might be thinking to yourselves,
well, does it ever come out? I mean, this wrath kind of sounds
like thin air, a threat, and that's it. People can threaten
you to make you do something. In fact, a lot of world's religion,
a lot of man's religion is that way. Tim James calls it whips
and biscuits. If you don't do right, you get
a whip. If you do right, you get biscuits. They threaten. They do whatever they can to
make you behave outwardly as doing right. But we know God
looks on the heart. So where is this wrath? Turn
to Luke. Luke 24. This wrath must be poured out
somewhere on something. You might think all of the sacrifices
that we had in the Old Testament, and there were countless. Even that innermost chamber of
the temple where they offered sacrifices once a year and only
by the high priest, that place was covered in blood. The whole
temple was a bloody mess. There were so many sacrifices,
but none of them put away since. So where could his wrath land?
We see that starting in verse 44 says, then he, then Jesus said
to them, these are the words which I spoke to you while I
was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which
were written in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms
concerning me. And he opened their understanding
that they might comprehend the scriptures. Then he said to them,
thus it is written and thus it was necessary for the Christ
to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day and that repentance
and remission of sins should be preached in his name to all
nations beginning at Jerusalem. And you are witnesses of these
things. It says there the Messiah will
suffer. That's where God's wrath landed. No one here, not me, not anybody
else, has felt that on their heads. Now we see the reason that he
held it back all those many, many years. What a long-suffering
God we have. And it wasn't just sins that
we think are small. It was sins that we think are
big. Every one of them. The wrath was stored up. The
wrath that fell on our Lord wasn't God's full wrath. It was just
His full wrath for you and me. There was enough to satisfy God's
wrath in His Son. There's still enough wrath because
there's still hell. That wrath is burning, waiting
for some to whom it is appointed. And to whom it is appointed,
that wrath is for those who will never call him father. Never
call him father. Now, have you ever felt forsaken
by God? And I ask that very specifically,
not have you been, but have you felt forsaken of God? And when
you thought about it, when you considered your feelings, was
it true that you were forsaken of God? David says in Psalm 9 that God
never forsakes those who seek Him. Did you know Jesus was the
only one besides Adam and Eve that had communion with God?
He was the only one. While He walked, He had communion. So it is no wonder that He cried
out on the cross while suffering the agony of God's wrath. My
God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And by the mercy made manifest
in the Son, you will never know what that feels like. Jesus felt it. He had communion. He had a connection with God
and it was broken for you. And it does not say that the
children will suffer. It says the Messiah will suffer
for the children. So you here today, I don't know
your hearts. I sometimes hardly know my own.
Do you fear God's wrath? Is that something that scares
you? Because know this, when it comes, you'll have nothing
left. You'll have nowhere to go. And
if you fear it, if you need a place to run to, seek His Son. If you need shelter from the
Father's wrath, seek Jesus. He's the Christ, the Messiah. And if you ask yourself if you've
committed sins, whether great or small, in your mind, If you ask, can I even pay my
sin debt? If that's the question on your
heart, then go to Jesus, lay it at his feet. When you seek him, he will not
forsake you. He will not turn your sins away. He will take them on himself. I don't know how that is, a perfect
being. Becoming a sin offering. I don't
know how that happens. There are a lot of things we
don't know and Won't know while we're still here unless by divine
Revelation and maybe we can never understand it because we are
flesh and the things of God are spirit All we need to know is
that it works the whole thing works so you take your sins to
Jesus and you lay them at the cross and Because God the Father
promises that in Jesus, his son, you will find your hiding place
and you will never feel his wrath. May God bless you.