Would you pray with me, please? Gracious and merciful Father,
Lord, in your love and mercy, you have warned us that a day
of judgment is coming to all of those who have rejected your
salvation. And so dear Father, I pray that
you might enable me to sound that warning today as mayhem
sounded it so long ago. May your people hear it, might
they believe it, that they may seek a stronghold in the day
of trouble. Dear Father, may each one seek
Jesus Christ as our high tower of refuge from the wrath that
is to come, forming the punishment of our sin, but understanding
your goodness in Christ. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. If you closed your Bibles,
would you open them again to Nahum? Nahum, right between Micah and Habakkuk, that little
book there. As I've stated to you before,
and I feel very strongly, I believe that God has called me to preach
the gospel of Jesus Christ to you. The mercy, the love and
the grace and the goodness of God, I think, cannot be preached
too clearly, believed too firmly, extolled too highly. However, I feel totally incompetent
to be able to do it. And so I constantly pray and
hope that you will pray for me all week long, if you would,
that God might enable me to preach the gospel. It's my joy to preach
the gospel. It's my joy declared by God's
grace to men and women everywhere. And I'm excited that we're now
able to do it on the Internet. So we're literally preaching
at this very moment all over the world. Everywhere I preach and I hope
people can hear that the Lord is good. All of those that God
has called to preach have said exactly the same thing. The Lord
is good. In Psalm 52 verse 1, David said,
The goodness of God endureth continually. In Psalm 27 13,
he said, I have fainted unless I have believed to see the goodness
of the Lord in the hand of the living." In Psalm 33, verse 5,
he says, The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord. And
in Romans 2, Paul said, The goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance. And in Psalm 31, verse 19, David
said, O how great is thy goodness! which thou hast laid up for them
that fear thee, which thou hast wrought for them that trust in
thee before the sons of men." Every true believer rejoices
in the knowledge of God's infinite and matchless goodness. But the
sad thing is that many people today have a perverted sense
of God's goodness. Most everybody would agree that
God is good, but most do not understand they have a perverted
idea of God's goodness. I see a sense of God's goodness
in the church and in the world which is totally unbiblical. In fact, most people's understanding
of God's goodness borders on idolatry because it robs Almighty
God of His majesty. There is a concept of God's love
and goodness in the world today which denies God's truthfulness. It's an idea of God's mercy which
totally denies the justice of God. This modern understanding
of God's goodness totally denies His holiness. Those people who
have the idea that God is so loving, so gracious, and so good
that he will not punish sin have no real idea about who God is
at all. As Charles Spurgeon once said,
he who does not believe that God will punish sin will not
believe that he will pardon sin through the blood of his Son. So it seems to me that if we
are going to worship God in spirit and truth, then we must have
a sense and an awareness of the majesty and the glory and the
power of the omnipotent God in his glorious holiness. We need
to have a correct understanding of God's goodness. If there ever
was a generation which needed to hear the message of mayhem,
it's this generation that we're living in today. In the opening
verses of Nahum's prophecy, we are immediately confronted with
a striking and a bold declaration of God's true character. We are
shown the one true and living God before whom all sinners are
compelled to bow, recognizing his awesome, infinite majesty. We see this great God as a consuming
fire who reserves wrath for his enemies. The name Nahum means
comfort. or consolation. And that's about
all that we know about the man Nahum. We don't know who Nahum
was, what kind of man he was, who his parents were. We don't
know how long he lived, where he died, or who his descendants
were. All we really know about this
man Nahum is that he was a prophet of God who carried in his heart
a burden. a burden for the people of Nineveh
and that he faithfully proclaimed the message which God had given
him to preach. Nahum seems to be one of those
men who faithfully served the Lord God in obscurity without
fame or recognition in this world. Nahum was a faithful man who
served a faithful God. For Nahum that was enough. God
tells us virtually nothing else about Nahum. But mayhem certainly
tells us a great deal about God. We read these first eight verses
of this book as our response of reading, but let's read them
again. In Mayhem 1, verse 1, this prophet begins his message
by giving us the title he calls his message. He calls his message,
The Burden of Nineveh. The book of the vision of mayhem,
the Elkoshite. And then in verse 2, Nahum says,
God is jealous, and the Lord reigneth, or the Lord takes revenge,
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 will not at all acquit
the wicked. The Lord hath his way in the
whirlwind, and in the storm, and in the clouds of the dust
of his feet. He rebukes the sea and makes
it dry, and He dries up all the rivers. Bashan languishes, and
Carmel and the flower of Lebanon languish. The mountains quake
at Him, and the hills melt, and the earth is burned at His presence.
Yea, the world and all that dwell therein! Who can stand before
His indignation, and who can abide in the fierceness of His
anger? His fury is poured out like fire,
and the rocks are thrown down by him." And I'm adding the word,
but. I like it in there, but it's
not the way God wrote it. The Lord is good, a stronghold
in the day of trouble, and He knows them that trust in Him.
But with an overt running flood, He will make an utter end of
the place thereof. and darkness shall pursue his
enemies." This message, this message that Nahum is preaching
is a message of judgment. Nahum's message from God was
a declaration that God had determined to judge Nineveh. He announces
it immediately. In Nahum 1 verse 1 he entitles
his message the burden of Nineveh. The book of the vision of Nahum,
the Elkoshite. And in verse 8, Nahum says about
God, But with an overrunning flood he will make an utter end
of the place thereof. He will make an end of Nineveh,
and darkness shall pursue his enemies. About a hundred years
before Nahum lived, there was a fellow prophet that the Lord
had sent by the name of Jonah. Jonah was sent to this wicked
city of Nineveh. He was sent to warn the people
there about the wrath and the judgment of God that was coming.
And when they heard Jonah's message, they repented. They turned from
their idols and their ungodly ways of idolatry. They turned
to the Lord and they worshiped Jehovah God who delights in mercy. stayed his wrath, and God who
delights in mercy stayed his wrath, and by God's mercy the
city of Nineveh was spared. But in the years that followed
Jonah's preaching, the Ninevites turned away from the Lord. Again
and again they turned away. They went back to their idols,
to the ways of cruelty and lasciviousness which idolatry always produces. Now God had laid on Nahum's heart
the burden of Nineveh. Nahum's prophecy graphically
foretells of the coming destruction of a people who had violently
persecuted God's people. God poured out his revenge on
Nineveh a hundred years later, even after Nahum had preached
it a hundred years later. when God in His holiness and
justice and truth rewarded their sin with indescribable wrath. In chapter 1 of the book of Nahum
the judgment that God had determined would fall on Nineveh is announced. In chapter 2 the sentence of
Nineveh is described. God determined utterly and to
permanently destroy this great renowned city of Nineveh. In
Nahum 2, verse 13, God says to Nineveh, Behold, I am against
thee, saith the Lord of hosts. And so I want to ask you a question.
If God is for us, who could be against us? But when Almighty
God turns against us, who can be for us? In chapter 3, the
prophet Nahum describes the execution of God's wrath on this city of
Nineveh. That destruction wouldn't come
to pass for another hundred years, but it would come to pass. The
Lord God had bruised the city with an irrevocable stroke of
His justice. The Lord declares in Nahum 3,
verse 19, that there is no healing of thy bruise. Thy wound is grievous. I pray that everyone here can
hear this warning. This warning from God. because
it is a warning for us today just as much as it was for Nineveh
in that day. To despise God's mercy is to
court God's wrath. The Lord God has sent Jonah to
Nineveh and God had displayed his grace to that wicked city
sparing them in his mercy but they willfully turned aside turned
aside from their revelation of God's goodness And so that now
this reprobate city was under the irrevocable sentence of God's
wrath. And so Nahum's prophecy describes
this utter destruction that is coming to Nineveh. And the city
was completely destroyed so that every trace of its existence
was covered up until the year 1841 when some archaeologists
discovered it buried. Buried in the sand, buried down
under the ground. The Ninevites thought that they
were impregnable, so they ignored God's warning to them. But God
destroyed the entire city and everyone in it. But Almighty
God always has his way in the whirlwind and in the sea, and
in the mountains and in the hills, in heaven and in earth. And so
when the appointed time of God's wrath came, the Lord God raised
up a pagan army to invade and to destroy the city of Nineveh.
And he caused Nineveh to be buried by the overflowing of the Tigris
River, which had long served as its protector. That which
had protected them is what buried them. But I pray you can hear
Nahum's message. Hear it not as a message of condemnation,
but hear it as a message of comfort. Nahum's message to Nineveh was
a message of wrath and judgment and God's wrath and judgment
on Nineveh was deserved. But that's not all there is to
Nahum's message. Remember that the name Nahum
means comfort and consolation. And so his message to God's elect
is a message of comfort and consolation too. It's a message full of instruction. Look at Nahum chapter 1 and notice
how fully Nahum describes the great and glorious character
of our God. Nahum began his prophecy with
a declaration of God's attributes. He doesn't declare all of the
attributes of God. Nobody could do that. But Nahum
does give us six distinct attributes of deity. Six things which are
essential to and descriptive of God's holy character. Who
is God? What is God like? Well, Nahum
tells us that. He says in verse 2 that God is
jealous. With God his jealousy isn't a
fault as it would be in ours. God's jealousy is an attribute.
It's okay for God to be jealous because God is perfect. Any assault
on God's person, resistance to his will, rebellion against his
rule or objection to his work is evil. God is jealous for his
son, just ask those who crucified Christ. God is jealous for his
own honor and glory, just ask Moses. God is jealous for his
worship and his ordinances, ask Uzzah. God is jealous for his
people, ask Pharaoh. God will avenge his own elect.
God will avenge the honor of his name. God will avenge himself
on his enemies. Nahum 1 verse 2 says, God is
jealous and the Lord revenges. The Lord revenges and is furious. The Lord will take vengeance
on his adversaries and he reserves wrath for his enemies. That word
wrath here is not in the original text. It was added by the translators. But what God reserves for his
enemies is inconceivable and inexpressibly horrifying. God
destroyed everybody in the city and the entire city itself was
buried. God is jealous for his enemies
and his wrath will fall on them. God's wrath is going to fall
on God's enemies. You can count on it. God will
punish sin. Today men talk about God's love
as though God's love is a passion which comes and goes like our
love does. But God's love is altogether
isolated from His other glorious attributes. The fact that God
is love doesn't in any way diminish the fact that God is a jealous
God. In fact, it's God's love that
makes Him jealous. God's love makes Him so jealous
that He is furious, and so He reserves wrath for His enemies.
Then in verse 3, Nahum 1 verse 3, it says, The Lord is slow
to anger. In other words, this great and
terrible God, whose jealousy makes him furious, is also patient
and forgiving and long-suffering. God is not in a hurry to punish
sinners and to execute His judgment on His enemies. Judgment is God's
strange work and He always defers it, giving sinners plenty of
opportunity to repent. God is willing to be gracious.
God gives His enemies an opportunity to repent, and He commands them
to repent. In Acts 17, verse 30, Paul said
to the men of Athens on Mars Hill, in the times of this ignorance
God winked at, but now He commands all men everywhere to repent. And in 2 Peter 3, verse 9, Simon
Peter said, The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some
men count slackness. But His long-suffering to us
were not willing that any should perish, but that all should come
to repentance. But you know, if God was not
merciful, nobody would ever come to Christ. Nobody would ever
repent of their sins. We love our sins. We need God's mercy. God must
make us willing, or no one at all would turn to God. Then in
verse 3, Nahum tells us that the Lord is great in power. God
is omnipotent. He's almighty God. He has all
power and He can do all that He is pleased to do. Our God
is a great God because He is great in power. A weak and a
frustrated and a defeated God is like a bucket without a bottom
or a well without water, as Don Fortner might say. Turn please
to Isaiah 46 and verses 9 to 13. The word omnipotent means
all-powerful. But I wonder, what does all-powerful
mean? Omnipotence does not mean that
God can do anything. Omnipotence means that God has
the power and the ability to do everything that He has purposed
and determined that He would do. Omnipotence is the ability and
the power of God to do all His pleasure. God is so powerful
that He can do anything that He wants to do. In Isaiah 46,
verse 9 to 13, God says, Remember the former things of old, for
I am God, and there is none else. I am God, and there is none like
me. declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times
the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand,
and I will do all my pleasure, calling a ravenous bird from
the east, the man that executed my counsel from a far country.
Yea, I have spoken it. I will also bring it to pass. I have purposed it, and I will
also do it. Hearken unto me, you stout-hearted
that are far from righteousness. I bring near my righteousness. I shall not be far off, and my
salvation shall not tarry. And I will place salvation in
Zion for Israel by glory." God has the ability, God has the
power to perform all of His word. Everything that He says He will
do, He will do. He can do what He says He will
do because He is an almighty, all-powerful God. In Isaiah 55
verse 11 God says, So shall my word be that goes forth out of
my mouth, it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish
that which I please, and it shall prosper in the things whereinto
I send it. That's a powerful God. God has
the ability and the power to accomplish all of his purposes.
In Romans 8 verse 28 to 30 Paul says, And we know that all things
work together for good to them that love God and to them who
are called according to His purpose. For whom He did foreknow, He
also did predestinate to be confirmed to the image of His Son, that
He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover, whom
He did predestinate, them also He called, and whom He called,
them also He justified, and whom He justified, them also He glorified. God could do everything. He has
the power to do absolutely everything that He wants to do, that He
purposes to do. And God has the ability and the
power to save all of His people. God sent Jesus to save His people
from their sins, and every single one of them are going to be saved. In Romans 9, verses 13 to 18,
Paul says, as it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau
have I hated. What shall we say then? Is there
unrighteousness with God? God forbid. For he saith to Moses,
I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion
on whom I will have compassion. So then it is not of him that
willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy.
For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose
have I raised thee up, that I might show my power in thee, I might
show my power in Pharaoh. and that my name might be declared
throughout all the earth. Therefore hath he mercy on whom
he will have mercy, and whom he will, he hearteneth." We praise
God for His power. We praise God for His omnipotence
because a weak God is nothing but a frustration to us. To those
who worship Him because they worship a weak God It's a frustration
because a weak God is always frustrated. Only the Almighty
Omnipotent Jehovah is the comfort and stay of those who trust in
Him. False gods are only a frustration. And then in Nahum 1 verse 3 it
says that the Lord will not at all acquit the wicked. That's
saying that God is just. Justice and truth are the habitation
of God's throne. Although God is long-suffering
and patient, He will punish every transgressor. He will punish
all sin. God's forbearance with sinners
isn't an indication that He lacks either the will or the ability
to punish His enemies. God is great in power and He
is just. Therefore, the soul that sinneth,
it shall die. God will not clear the guilty.
A just God can't clear the guilty. He must punish sin. in order
to be just and he will punish sin. Justice requires that sin
must be punished and so in verse 3 Nahum says the Lord would not
at all acquit the wicked. You know the mysteries of Calvary
are all wrapped up in that verse. The Lord will not at all acquit
the wicked. When a guilty criminal is pardoned
by the judge something is desperately wrong. If something is wrong
either with the law that condemned the man or with the administration
of the law. And so for God to acquit the
wicked would indicate exactly the same problem. The problem
would either be in God or in His law. God can pardon on the
basis of justice satisfied. Not to punish sin is not to be
just and God is just. God is always just and He always
punishes sin. But how can God be just and yet
be the justifier of sinners? If God is just, then he must
punish sin, and so then how can any sinner ever be saved? It's a major mystery, isn't it?
How can any sinner ever be saved? Well, is God going to lay aside
his justice in order to be merciful? No, he can't do that. Justice
is essential to God's character. He is just. Well, how then can
God save us and still be just? Well, there's only one way. There's
only one way. By substitution. God has found a substitute to
ransom the guilty. He's found a substitute to ransom
the guilty by His own righteousness. In Job 33, verse 24, it says
about God, Then he is, God is, gracious
unto him, and saith, Deliver him from going down into the
pit. I have found a ransom, God says. And in Proverbs 16, verse
6, wisdom says, of course wisdom is Christ. Wisdom says, By mercy
and truth iniquity is purged, and by the fear of the Lord men
depart from evil. And in Romans 3, verses 24 to
26, Paul says, be justified freely by his grace,
by God's grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom
God has set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to
declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are
passed through the forbearance of God. To declare, I say, at
this time his righteousness, that he might be just and the
justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. If God Almighty saves
a guilty sinner, if God Almighty forgives his sins, that sinner's
sins, then three things must be done. First, the sinner's
sin must be punished to the full satisfaction of justice. It must
be punished if God is going to be just. Second, his sins and
guilt must be totally removed. And third, he must be made perfectly
righteous. He can't just take away his sin,
he must be made righteous. These three things can only be
done by the substitutionary work of Jesus Christ. God punished
all the sins of all of his elect to the full satisfaction of his
justice when Christ died as their substitute. Can you think of
anything more wonderful than that? Galatians 3.13 says that
Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law by being
made a curse for us. For it is written, Cursed is
everyone that hangeth on a tree. God removed the sins of his people
and put them away by the sacrifice of his dear son. And Hebrews
9.26 says, For then must he often have suffered since the foundation
of the world, but now once in the end of the world hath he
appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. And God
has imputed or God has given to us Christ's perfect righteousness. He's given us Christ's perfect
righteousness in exactly the same way and to the same degree
as God imputed our sins to Christ. In 2 Corinthians 5.21 it says,
For he, for God, hath made him, hath made Christ, to be sin for
us, to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made
the righteousness of God in him. And then the last phrase of verse
3, Nahum 1.3 says, That the Lord hath his way in the whirlwind
and in the storm. Well, what do you suppose that
those words mean? Well, they mean that the Lord
our God, who is jealous, long-suffering, omnipotent, and just, is also
totally sovereign. The Lord our God rules over all
things, and He rules according to His will, not yours and not
mine. He rules according to His will.
In Psalm 115, verse 3, it says, But our God is in the heavens.
He had done whatsoever He had pleased. And in Psalm 135, verse
6, it says, Whatsoever the Lord pleased, that did He in heaven,
and in earth, and in the seas, and all the places. In all things,
at all times, with all creatures, in all places, the Lord has His
way. In creation, in providence, and
in grace, the Lord has his way. We rejoice in the glorious sovereignty
of our God, knowing that God always exercises his sovereign
will over all things for the redemption and salvation of his
people. We rejoice in that. It is a wonderful thing. Oh,
I hope you know and understand that God is sovereign over all
things. But then in Nahum 1 verses 4
to 6, the prophet says about God, He rebuketh the sea, and
maketh it dry, and dryeth up all the rivers. Bashan languishes,
and Carmel, and the flower of Lebanon languishes. The mountains
quake at him, and the hills melt, and the earth is burned at his
presence, yea, the world and all that dwell therein. Who can
stand before his indignation? Who can abide in the fierceness
of His anger? His fury is poured out like fire,
and the rocks are thrown down by Him." I have this picture in my mind
of Isaiah looking up to God. And Isaiah saw the same holy
and sovereign God that Scripture talks about all through Scriptures.
In Isaiah 45 verse 7, God said to Isaiah, I form the light and
create the darkness. I make peace and create evil.
I the Lord do all these things. And then in verse 22 of Isaiah
45, God said, Look unto me and be ye saved all the ends of the
earth for I am God and there is none else. And then in Isaiah
50 verse 2, God asked, Wherefore, or why, when I came, why was
there no man? When I called, why was there
none to answer? Is my hand shortened at all that
it cannot redeem? Or have I no power to deliver? Behold, at my rebuke I dry up
the sea, and I make the rivers a wilderness, and their fish
stinketh because there is no water, and they die for thirst. And in Isaiah 51, verses 10 to
12, the prophet asked God, Art thou not it which hath dried
up the sea and the waters of the deep that hath made the depths
of the sea away for the ransom to pass over? Therefore the redeemed
of the Lord shall return and come with singing unto Zion,
and everlasting joy shall be upon their head. May shall obtain
gladness and joy, and sorrow and mourning shall flee away.
And then in verse 12, God answers Isaiah, God says, I, even I,
am he that comforteth you. Who art thou that thou shouldest
be afraid of a man that shall die, and that the Son of man
which shall be made as grass? As we think about, contemplate
what God did to Nineveh, I pray that we might be reminded once
more of what Psalm 115 in verse 3 says. I'm reading it again,
I know, but I want you to pay attention to it. Psalm 115, verse
3 says, Our God is in the heavens, and He hath done whatsoever He
hath pleased. And in Psalm 135, verse 6, it
says, Whatsoever the Lord pleased, that did He in heaven and in
earth and in the seas and all the places. You know, God didn't
just wind up the earth as He created it. started spinning
around and then go away and leave it so that it would just see
what would happen. No, God isn't in some faraway
observer of history. God is history. God makes history
happen. It was God who caused the wind
to blow for Jonah one day, and it was God who picked the elements
of nature and hurled them on Nineveh to bury it in the ground.
There are very few people who recognize these things, but it
was God who does all of these things. They deny the sovereignty
of God when they deny the salvation of Jesus Christ, and they deny
the sovereignty of God in everything else. When some great tragedy
happens in the world, or when an epidemic sweeps over the land,
or when pestilence strikes, no one turns to God in repentance
when they see these things, because no one imagines that God would
do these things. They have been taught that God
is only love. But God declares plainly in Isaiah
45 verse 7 that these things are the work of His hands. God
says, I form the light and create darkness and I make peace and
create evil. I the Lord do these things. Oh,
how I wish everybody could see the power and the sovereignty
of God. But few people do. And yet God's
sovereignty should be evident to everybody. I don't know what
God is going to do in Iraq, but I do know that it was only a
change in the wind which turned the tide of the battle of Gettysburg
and forever altered the course of our nation's history. He commands
and raises the stormy wind according to Psalm 107, verse 25. Have you ever been to Gettysburg?
Have you ever seen the battle? Seen where all those people were
buried? God turned the storm in that battle just by a win. The radical Muslims preach out
strong words of hate. Napoleon once challenged the
world and God too by saying, the Lord is on the side of the
heaviest artillery. But that once proud Napoleon
with his mighty artillery was stopped in his tracks and then
was defeated by an enormous accumulation of unexpected tiny snowflakes.
That army bogged down in the snow. Psalm 148 verse 8 says,
fire and hail, snow and vapor, stormy wind fulfilling his word. And a century after Nahum's prophecy,
God turned loose his elements and so Nineveh fell to the armies
of the Medes and then God buried that unrepentant city in the
dirt. Judgment you see is God's work. When we see an almighty
sovereign God Let's be wise and let's seek His face so that we
might fear God and seek our salvation in Jesus Christ. Let's turn to
God and repent of our sins, seeing ourselves for the sinners that
we are. Now look at Nahum 1 and verse 6. Even as the prophet
describes the judgment of God and the fierce anger of God's
wrath, he raises a question. It's a question which, when it's
answered, carries a message of hope for sinners. Nahum asks
in verse 6, who can stand before his indignation? And who can
abide the fearlessness of his anger? Talking about God. Certainly
not you or me. I cannot stand in the face of
God's wrath. I cannot abide his anger. You and I cannot do that. God's
wrath would consume us in an instant like a snowflake in an
oven. If we tried to stand up to God,
we cannot do that. But the Lord Jesus Christ, our
great substitute, before the indignation of Almighty God,
hung on a cross and He consumed God's wrath for us as our substitute. Do you see the attributes of
God? The Lord is jealous. The Lord is wrong-suffering.
The Lord is omnipotent. The Lord is just, and the Lord
is sovereign. Now turn to verse 7, Nahum 1,
verse 7. It says, The Lord is good, a
stronghold in the day of trouble, and he knoweth them that trust
in him. First, verse 7 says that the
Lord is good. Our great God is good. Goodness
is just as essential to God's being as His sovereignty and
His justice and His truth and His holiness. In fact, the very
name God is an abbreviation of the word good. God is good. Goodness is the character of
our God and the goodness of God gives us hope and comfort and
strength in the midst of our trials and sorrows in this world.
Look at what the Holy Spirit tells us here in verse 7 about
the goodness of God. It says, The Lord is good. Nahum
has been talking about the storm of God's wrath and terror of
His justice, the greatness of His anger, the whirlwinds and
shaking mountains and melting hills and burning the earth.
Then Nahum comes to a blessed, calm, serene island of rest.
He is resting in Christ, though he does not know Christ by name.
He says, the Lord is good. We can rest in that goodness,
can't we? God is essentially good. Goodness
is essential to God. Without goodness, God would not
be God. Goodness is so essential that
the character of God, as John Gill has observed, there is nothing
but goodness in God. Nothing but goodness comes from
God. In James 1 verse 13 and 14, the
Holy Spirit says, Let no man say when he is tempted, I am
tempted of God, for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither
tempteth He any man. But every man is tempted when
he is drawn away by his own lust and enticed. God is always good. He permits evil, but He overrules
evil for good. In Psalm 76 verse 10 it says,
Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee, the remainder of
wrath shall not thou restrain. God afflicts His children and
He brings many evils upon us, but God makes evil work for good. You know Romans 8.28 where Paul
says, and we know that all things work together for good to them
that love God, to them who are called according to His purpose.
And in Proverbs 12.21 also says that there shall no evil happen
to the just, but the wicked shall be filled with mischief. In Genesis
50 verse 20, Joseph, who is a picture of Christ our Savior, he says
to his brothers, Joseph says to his brothers who sold him
into slavery, but as for you, you thought evil against me. But God meant it unto good to
bring to pass as it is this day to save much people alive. God
punishes sin. He punishes sin with a vengeance.
But even the punishment of sin is good. because it's a vindication
of God's justice and the protection of His kingdom. God is the only
one who is good. He's the only one good in the
whole universe. In Matthew 19, a man came up
to Jesus, and that man called Jesus good. Then in verse 17,
Jesus said to him, Why callest thou me good? There is none good
but one, that is, God. But if thou wilt enter into life,
keep the commandments. God is eternally good, and His
character never changes. In Malachi 3, verse 6, God says
to us, I am the Lord, I change not. Therefore ye sons of Jacob
are not consumed. God is good in each of His glorious
persons. God the Father is good, God the
Son is good, God the Holy Spirit is good. God is good in all of
His acts of grace, and God is good in all of His works of providence.
The Lord is good. That's a sentence which is worth
continual meditation on. The Lord is good. We should think
on it often. Everything that happens to us,
we should think, the Lord is good. We should praise Him for
His goodness. All eternity will not be long
enough to tell us about the fullness of God's goodness. And all of
God's goodness is directed towards us at all times. In Nahum 1 verse
7 it says, The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble. And we see God's goodness in
that stronghold because that stronghold is Jesus Christ. Listen
to this carefully and I pray you can hear it and I pray that
you can believe it. The only place of safety in this
world is the place that we find beneath the shadow of God's wings. As Proverbs 18 verse 10 says,
the name of the Lord is a strong tower. The righteous run into
it and are safe. The Lord who is good is our stronghold. He's our place of refuge. He's
our refuge in the day of trouble. Hebrews 6 verse 18 says that
by two immutable things in which it is impossible for God to lie,
we might have a strong consolation. who have fled for refuge to lay
hold upon the hope set before us. And Paul says in Hebrews
4.16, Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that
we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
If you fear God, if you know that you're a sinner, it ought
to cause you to fear God. But if you fear God, then come
boldly to Jesus Christ. He is a stronghold in the time
of trouble. He is the only one that we have.
He is the only one that is sure. We'll have our days of trouble
as long as we live in this world. But notice in verse 7 how Nahum
describes those troubles. He says, Every day of trouble
is the day of God's appointment. Every day of trouble is temporary.
It's only the day of trouble. 2 Corinthians 4 verses 17 and
18 says, For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh
for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. While
we look not unto the things which are seen, but at the things which
are not seen. For the things which are seen
are temporal, they're temporary, they're just while we're here.
But the things which are not seen are eternal. Whatever your
trouble might be, Whatever our trouble might be, the Lord is
our stronghold in the midst of trouble. In Hebrews 4.16, Paul
said that, let us therefore come boldly under the throne of grace
that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of
need. A stronghold is a fortress. It's
a fortress where you're safe, where the protection of citizens
against the enemies can be found. It's a place of safety and of
peace. It's a residence. It's a provision. And Jesus Christ
is the believer's stronghold. He's their stronghold because
they trust in Him. The Lord knoweth him that trusteth
in Him. Do you? Do you trust in Him? Do you trust
in the Son of God? Do you trust in His finished
work? Are you trying to add to His
finished work? Do you trust in His abundance
grace? His many promises? His providential rule? His unerring
wisdom? Do you trust this great, mighty,
and good God, the Lord Jesus Christ? If you do, be of good
comfort, because the Lord knoweth him that trust in Him. Oh, dear Father, may the hearing
of God's Word Bring your people to Christ, that by God's grace,
by God's mercy, they might trust in Jesus Christ, our stronghold
in the day of our troubles. Amen. Turn in your hymnals please to
hymn number 81. Let's stand as we sing, Not What
My Hands Have Done.