Thy God Reigneth

Let's open our Bibles to Nahum, little prophet Nahum. I remind you that Nahum's name means comfort or consolation. And the comfort that we have is in Christ and what he did to put away our sin and enable us to come boldly before the throne of grace and find our help. We are a needy people. And what a blessing it is when the Lord reveals Christ to us from his word.

I want to focus our attention on verse three. Nahum is prophesying the destruction of Nineveh. And he says in verse three, the Lord is slow to anger. He's long suffering. The Lord is great in power. The Lord will not at all acquit the wicked. For the Lord hath his way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet.

Four things Nahum tells us about our God. He tells us that he's slow to anger, He tells us that he is great in power. He tells us that he is a just God who will not allow sin to go unpunished. And he tells us that the Lord always has his way. Whether it's a whirlwind of storm, whatever happens, our God is the first cause of all things.

That's why I wanted to title this message, Thy God Reigneth. Say unto Zion, your God reigns. He reigns. No other message comforts our heart more than to know that our God reigns. No other message quiets our fears more than to believe that our God reigns. No other truth strengthens our weaknesses than to believe that we have a God who reigneth. And I love the verb tense of the ETH in the passage in Isaiah that we read.

It's the perfect tense. The imperfect tense is a tense that is incomplete. The perfect tense is a verb tense that is absolutely complete, nothing can be added to it, nothing can be taken from it. It is perfect. Thy God reigneth. No other message silences our fears more than to believe that our God reigneth. Our confidence and our assurance in a world and in a body of sin filled with so many uncertainties. Thy God reigneth. No exceptions. Thy God reigneth. No conditions. Thy God reigneth. No limitations. Thy God reigneth. No qualifications. Thy God reigneth.

Whatever in our heart or in our experience or in the world seems to be contrary to that, it cannot be changed. Our God reigns. over all the armies of heaven and over all the inhabitants of the earth, he hath done whatsoever he's pleased to do. No man can stay his hand. No man can say unto him, what doest thou?

What a comfort. What an encouragement. There are no better tidings. There's no greater ground or publication of peace as we read in Isaiah 52. There's nothing that brings good tidings of good more than to know that our God works all things together for good for them that love him and those that are called according to his purpose. No greater hope of salvation. Nothing causes the heart the downtrodden heart, the heart that is often troubled to sing and to rejoice more than to know. My God reigneth. He reigneth. He's in control of this thing. Every bit of it. Every bit of it. Oh, why do we doubt? The Lord begins with telling us that he's slow to anger.

It's been perhaps as much as a hundred years since Jonah went to Nineveh and preached that message when he said, 40 days, 40 days, and this city will be overthrown because of its wickedness. And the king put on sackcloth, and the people repented. And there was at least a moral reformation in Nineveh.

Whether anything else happened or not, I don't know. Nineveh was the capital of Assyria. And the Assyrians were known for their great atrocities in war. Remember? October the 7th, 2023, when Hamas attacked those Jewish settlements and killed mercilessly 1,200 Jewish civilians, raping women, cutting the heads off of babies, things that are perhaps unspeakable. And as we can understand the desire for the Jewish people to avenge that sort of atrocity. And yet, from what I understand about the Assyrians, they would have made that look like nothing. They would not have quit until they wiped out an entire nation. They would have impaled bodies along the streets. They would have flayed children and opened up pregnant women. They would have had no restraint whatsoever in war.

That's the reason why, when God sent Jonah to go to Nineveh, and Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, you say, well, where is Nineveh today? You remember back in, I think, 2017 in the Iraqi war? The ISIS took over Mosul. And we had to go in and remove ISIS from Mosul. Mosul is Nineveh. Mosul is the city in Iraq. That is ancient Nineveh, which was the capital of.

I'm just bringing all this out in order to say, we see in our modern, history in our daily news events, just a little bit of the kind of stuff that went on between the Assyrians and Israel back many, many years ago. And the reason why Jonah didn't want to go, turn back just a couple of pages to the book of Jonah.

The Lord told Jonah to go. Jonah went down to Joppa. He got on a ship, went down into the ship. He ended up in the belly of the whale. And finally, he goes to Nineveh and tells the Ninevites what the God of Israel is going to do if they don't change their way. Chapter 4 of Jonah, verse 1. But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry. And he prayed unto the Lord and said, I pray thee, O Lord, was not this my saying when I was yet in my country?

Therefore, I fled before Tarshish, and I knew that thou art a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger. Now, they whom is preaching 100 years later, perhaps, We don't know the dates exactly, but it could be as much as 100 years later, telling the Ninevites, again, the Lord's slow to anger.

But Jonah says, I knew you were going to save them. I knew you were going to not destroy. Jonah and the Jewish people, the Israelites, wanted nothing more than the Assyrians to be completely wiped off the face of the map for what they had done to the Jewish nation. I knew you were going to be merciful to them.

In spite of their wickedness, Lord, I knew that you were slow to anger and of great kindness, and repented thee of the evil. Therefore, now, O Lord, I beseech thee, my life from me, from me, for it is better for me to die than to live." Once I go home and they find out that it was my preaching that that abated your judgment against Assyria, be better off for me to be dead than to have to face that.

Now, that's the kind of animosity. That's the kind of hatred that existed. And that's who Nahum is preaching the destruction of. God withheld his wrath from you once. And he's allowed you to continue now for all these many years Now the Babylonians are going to come in and they're going to destroy the nation of Assyria and they're going to destroy Nineveh as a fulfillment of Nahum's prophecy. I say all that in order to say if God showed such restraint and such patience and such long-suffering toward these pagan people.

How much hope do we have in looking at our own lives and seeing how slow to anger our God is? We get angry. Why do we get angry? And why do we get angry so quickly oftentimes? Someone says something or does something and we might just express our anger right away. Fly off the handle, say things, hurtful things. Why do we do that? Did we not do it because we feel as if we're losing control of the situation and we're trying to dominate power over those circumstances and try to bring people back under? Is that not what our anger is?

God never had that need. Thy God reigneth. He doesn't have to. He didn't demand from these Ninevites. immediate and long-term obedience. He's slow to anger. He's going to bring judgment. Don't, don't interpret my slowness to anger as my weakness or my unwillingness to, to avenge my people. But I want you to know that I'm slow to anger. The Lord tells us in the book of James chapter one, verse 20, that we are to be swift to hear and slow to speak.

And then he goes on to say, for the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. In all of our futile temps, in all of our expressions of anger, to try to get control of the circumstances, God remains on his throne. We haven't achieved our goal. And whatever manipulation we might accomplish through our anger with another person, we're still not in control.

He is. Our God reigneth. He is slow to anger. Turn with me to Proverbs chapter 15. The longsuffering of God is our salvation. If God treated us the way we treat one another, he would have gotten rid of us a long time ago. Peter says it like this, the longsuffering of God is your salvation.

Thank God that he reigns sovereign on a throne that doesn't have to be like us. He doesn't have to express his anger like we do in order to try to gain control. He is in control. And he tells us that the wrath of man shall praise him. Whatever, whatever he allows to happen between men and expressing their wrath one to the other, he will use that to his glory. He's in control of that.

Proverbs chapter 15, look at verse 29. The Lord is far from the wicked. But he heareth the prayer of the righteous. That is not the verse that I wanted to read, and it's in Proverbs 15 somewhere. But it's basically expressing the fact that our God is not short-tempered. He doesn't have to be. He doesn't have to be. He is slow to anger. Turn to me to Exodus chapter 34.

Moses, you remember, asked the Lord to show him his glory. Lord, we've, now at this point, Moses had seen the turning of the Nile River into blood. Before that, he had seen the bush burning at Mount Sinai and wasn't being consumed. He had heard the voice of God, the ground on which you stand is holy ground. He had received the command of God to go down into Egypt and bring out his people. He saw the plagues in Egypt. the passing over of the death angel by the blood of the sacrificial lamb. He saw the dividing of the Red Sea. He saw the drowning of the army of Egypt. They had already been eating the manna that fell from heaven. He saw the water that came out of the rock. He had already been on the mountain once. And now he's on the mountain the second time and he says, Lord, just show me your glory. Show me your glory. He said, well, Moses, don't you think you've already seen the glory of God multiple times? Lord, show me your glory.

Chapter 33 at verse 18 and verse 19 said, I'm going to show you my glory by making my goodness pass before thee. I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee, and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will have mercy upon whom I will have mercy." Now look over in chapter 34. And the Lord, verse five, descended in a cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name of the Lord. And the Lord passed before him and proclaimed the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy to thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty. Now what the Lord tells Moses in Exodus chapter 33 is exactly what Nahum is telling us about God in our verse, chapter one, verse three.

The Lord is slow to anger. He is great in power. He will not acquit the wicked. So thankful that our God is not like us. and that is desperate as we are. And that's the, that's the, you know, all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. The pride of life. That's control, isn't it? And something that we're, that we feel, we feel so uncomfortable. We feel so much of a need to try to to try to manipulate circumstances in order to get in control so that we can feel safe.

And it's all fake. It's all false. It's a false sense of safety. Because really the only true safe place is to bow before the one who is always in control. The one who always reigneth. The one who doesn't have to do what we do. He doesn't have to express his anger. He is slow to anger. He is in absolute control. What comfort there is when we feel, when we feel as if things are beyond our control. to know that they're not beyond his.

The second thing Nahum tells us, the Lord tells us about himself is that he is great in power. I would go back to the first point because really the evidence of the Lord being in control is the cross. It's the life of the Lord Jesus Christ and his work of redemption going to the cross.

And that is so clearly illustrated by what Pilate said. When Pilate said, don't you know that I have the power to crucify you? I have the power to set you free. And the Lord said, you have no power at all except for that which is given you to heaven from heaven.

The Lord Jesus was in complete control of everything that was happening. And if God ever had reason to be angry at us, it would have been because of what we did at Calvary. And yet he expiates, he releases, he satisfies all of his anger. which he had pent up for all the sins of all but God's people and poured it out fully on Christ, who went to the cross willingly and laid his life down for his sheep. Those Roman soldiers that were nailing the Lord to the cross never dealt with a man like that before. I'm sure that every person that ever nailed to the cross, it took two or three of them to hold him down, while the other one nailed, the Lord just willingly laid down his hands.

He was in, he wasn't angry. Everything that he was doing at that cross was an expression of his love. Hearing his love. Not that we loved God, but that he loved us and gave his son as a propitiation for our sins. God is slow to anger. And now all of these many years since the Lord ascended back into glory, and we're waiting, we're waiting for that time when Nahum's prophecy against Nineveh God's prophecy against Babylon, God's prophecy against this world will be fulfilled. It will be fulfilled. But right now, our God is long-suffering, and he's slow to anger.

He's great in power. Psalm 147 verse five says, great is our Lord and of great power. His understanding is infinite. He understands everything from the beginning to the end. We get little snippets, little snapshots of what's happening right now, but we don't know what preceded it. We don't know where it's going to lead. He's got all of that already worked out. He's great in power. His understanding is infinite.

Think about when the Lord came to Abraham, he was 100 years old. Sarah was 90 years old. He had made a promise. Abraham and Sarah, thinking that God did not have the power, questioning at least whether God had the power to accomplish his promise by himself, decided that they would help God out. And brought Sarah's handmaiden into the picture. And Hagar brought forth Ishmael. And Ishmael's now 12, 13 years old. Abraham's thinking that Ishmael's the fulfillment of the promise. And God said, no, no. I'm going to come back a year from now. Sarah's going to have a child. Sarah heard what the Lord said and she laughed. And the Lord said, why did you laugh?

Is anything too hard for God? Is anything too hard for God? Is it too hard for Him to save us? Is it too hard for Him to provide all that we need in this life and in the life to come? Is there anything too hard? Is it too hard for Him to fulfill all of His promises?

Left to ourselves, We will try to overpower men, manipulate our circumstances, and foolishly imagine a God who needs us to do something in order for him to be able to save us. How foolish. How foolish. We will set ourselves up on the throne of God. Men believe that their will is more powerful than God's will. That God wants everybody to be saved, but he's unable to save people because they won't let him have his way. You hear it all the time. The free will gospel. Our God reigns. He's slow to anger. And he is great. in power. The only way that we will ever know that power is when we have none. When we were yet without strength, Christ died for the ungodly. The Lord Jesus said, all power has been given unto me.

If he's got all power, that means I don't have any power. I don't have the ability to atone for my sins. I don't have the ability to establish a righteousness before God. I don't have the ability to see the future and manipulate my circumstances or get myself in a safe place. He stripped me of all that power. All power has been given unto me in heaven and in earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, teaching them, baptizing them, and teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. And I will be with you always. Turn with me to Matthew chapter 9. Look at verse 27, Matthew chapter nine, verse 27. And when Jesus departed thence, two blind men followed him crying and saying, thou son of David, have mercy on us. And when he was coming to the house, the two blind men came to him, and Jesus saith unto them, believe ye that I am able to do this?

And they said unto him, yea, Lord, we believe that you are able to give us sight. What is faith? Now the Lord touched them according to your faith. Immediately, they got their sight. Is faith believing that I'm saved? Is faith believing that I'm one of God's elect? Is faith believing that Christ died for me? That's assurance, and we rejoice in that. But the simplicity of faith is believing that he is able.

He is able to save me without my contribution, without my participation. He is able to do it all by himself. The woman with the issue of blood. She had spent all that she had on physicians and was worse off now than she was to begin with. And she knew that if I could just touch the hem of his garment, I can be made whole. That man's able to save me.

The father that had the son that was possessed with a demon brought him to the disciples. The disciples were not able to cast the demon out. And so the disciples brought the man with his son to the Lord. And the man said to the Lord, Lord, if you are able to do anything, please have compassion on us. And what did the Lord say? The Lord looked at him and said, if you are able to believe, all things are possible to him that believe it.

Brethren, faith is not believing that I'm saved. It's not believing that my sins have been put away. It's believing that He is the Savior and that He is able to save all by Himself and that I need a Savior like that. I can't save myself. If I'm going to be saved, He's going to have to do it all. He can't depend upon me for any part of it.

And I believe that he is able. I believe that he is able to make me willing in the day of his power. I believe that he is able to give me faith and love for Christ. I believe that he's able to put my sin away. First Corinthians. Chapter one, term of me there. I believe that the God who reigns reigns omnipotent in creation, in providence, and most especially in salvation.

That's what kind of power he's got. He spoke all that exists into creation by the power of his word. He holds and sustains everything by his power. He makes something out of nothing when he When he created the universe, he did that physically. When he recreates us in Christ, he does that. He makes something out of nothing. That's what the Lord tells us.

Look. Look at verse 26 in 1 Corinthians chapter 1. For you see your calling, brethren, how that not many of wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things that are mighty, and the base things of the world, and the things which are despised have God chosen, yea, the things which are not to bring to naught the things that are. that no flesh should glory in his presence.

For of the Father are you in Christ Jesus, who of his Father is made unto us all our wisdom, all our righteousness, all of our sanctification, and all of our redemption, that according as it is written, he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord. Our God reigneth.

He's slow to anger, and he's great. great in power. Paul said in Romans chapter 1 verse 16, I'm not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth. Believeth what? Believeth that Jesus is God. Believeth that he has the power to save. Believe it, that he accomplished by his own sovereign, omnipotent power and will what he came to do, the salvation of his people. Lord, if I'm going to be saved, you're going to have to do it. And I believe you have the power to do it. I believe that. Nahum, chapter 1.

Our God reigns. He's slow to anger. He doesn't have to do what we do in order to be in control of things. He will eventually pour out His wrath, but it's not in the kind of anger that we have. He's great in power, and He will not at all acquit And we read that in Exodus chapter 34.

He will in no wise clear the guilty. Our God is just and he must punish sin. And all sin will be punished to the justification of his righteousness. That's why hell is eternal. Because his righteousness will never be satisfied. by the judgment that men experience in hell, they'll never be satisfied.

But that's why, being found in Christ, I'm acquitted. I'm justified. Why? Because God saw the travail of his soul and God said, I'm satisfied. Everything necessary to satisfy my holy justice and to establish my righteousness was accomplished by the Lord Jesus. And by his death, he has justified many. Our God reigneth. He always satisfies his justice.

Now finally, in our text, notice in the last part of this text, and you can't read this without thinking about the historical event of the Babylonians coming in great force with horses and chariots and tens of thousands of men marching across that desert landscape and knowing that this was the fulfillment of what the Lord said he would do in destroying Nineveh. And the point that I want to make on this last thing about our God who reigns is that he is the first cause of all things.

You could say, well, the Babylonians destroyed Nineveh. No, God destroyed Nineveh. He just used the Babylonians. And that truth applies to everything in life. Someone asked me recently about the judgment of fire that God promises will come against this world when he burns it up. He said, I'm not going to destroy it by flood, I'm going to destroy it by fire. Is that some supernatural event of fire falling from heaven that Hurled by the very hand of God, perhaps? I don't know. Could it be a nuclear holocaust? Yeah, it could be. It could be. I don't have any problem with that at all. Because God's the first cause behind that. That's just a secondary cause. And our God's the first cause behind everything.

And to say, well, men don't increase the glory of God. They diminish the glory of God when they want to see God's hand at work firsthand. In other words, they want to see something miraculous. They want to see an event that is inexplicable. They want to see an event that is an obvious, clear act of a supernatural God who transcends all logic and all laws of physics, and there's God. And that, somehow in their mind, that exalts the power of God to see such a thing.

But in fact, that diminishes the power of God. The fact that God, and we're talking about our God reigning, the fact that God uses the free, uncoerced thoughts and actions of billions of men and women on this planet, the events of of nature, innumerable, and accomplishes his perfect will and purpose through all of these different factors, that glorifies and exalts the power of God. We don't, to see the hand of God in some sort of supernatural event, that would be, that would be nothing compared to a God who reigns so powerful and so sovereign that he is the first cause behind everything. So that whatever man decides to do and whatever happens in this world and in our lives, our God is the cause of it.

He's behind every event and every thought and every word and every deed and nothing's out of place and everything is on perfect time. It's happening right now exactly like it's supposed to. Brethren, Thy God reigneth." The cross is a secondary cause. It's the Christ of the cross. It's the God behind the cross. Faith is a secondary cause. We wouldn't have faith if God didn't give it to us. For by grace are you saved, not by faith, but through faith. And that faith is not of yourself, it's a gift of God.

Our God reigns. He is the first cause of all things. And we can lie our heads on our pillows at night and know that he doesn't sleep nor slumber. He's in complete control of everything and that he's slow to anger and that he is great in power and that he's satisfied his justice when he acquitted the wicked by the sacrifice of his son. Thy God reigneth. Tom, let's close the service at 2.23 in the hardbacked hymnal. Arise, my soul, arise! Shake off thy guilty fears! The bleeding sacrifice in my behalf appears! Before the throne my surety stands. My name is written on His hand. My name is written on His hand. He ever lives above.

His all-redeeming love, His precious blood to clean, His blood atoned for all my sin, And sprinkles now the throne of grace. And sprinkles now the throne of grace. Five bleeding wounds He cares, Received on Calvary. They pour me factual prayers, they strongly plead for me. Forgive him, O forgive, they cry, nor let that ransomed sinner die, nor let that ransomed sinner die. His dear anointed one He cannot turn away The presence of His Son His spirit answers to the blood And tells me I am born of God And tells me I am born of God When God is reconciled, His pardoning voice I hear. He holds me for His child, I can no longer fear. With confidence I now draw nigh, And Father, Mama, Father, cry. And Father, Mama, Father, cry.

Thy God Reigneth

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Thy God Reigneth

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