The Nature of God's Judgement

Order of Service

• Announcements
• Presentation of Senior Bibles — Proverbs 3:5-8
• Call to Worship — Psalm 145:1-2, 3, 21
• Hymn — All Creatures of Our God and King
• Prayer of Invocation
• Confession of Sin
• Assurance of Pardon
• Scripture Reading — Joshua 23:1-16
• Hymn — Come, Ye Thankful People, Come
• Pastoral Prayer
• Offering
• Hymn — Great King of Nations, Hear Our Prayer
• Sermon
• Prayer
• Hymn — The Lord Is My Refuge
• Benediction — Numbers 6:24-26
• Doxology

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Sermon Title: The Nature of God's Judgment

Scripture: Nahum 1:1-11

I. The Cosmic Nature of God's Judgment

A. God's judgment is depicted in creation-shaking, cosmic terms (Nahum 1:2-8)

1. God coming "in the whirlwind" echoes his appearance to Job — he takes Job on a tour of creation to demonstrate his sovereign sustaining power; similarly, God couches his judgment of Nineveh in creation terms
2. Upheaval of creation as a reversal: the sea dried up, Bashan and Carmel wither, Lebanon's forests laid waste, mountains quake and melt (Nahum 1:4-5)
3. Mountains and hills were symbols of permanence and strength in the ancient Near East — yet they melt before God's wrath (Nahum 1:5)
4. "Who can stand before his indignation?" — his wrath poured out like fire, rocks broken to pieces (Nahum 1:6)

B. The flood imagery of God's judgment (Nahum 1:8)

1. Recalls Noah's flood — God destroying all except those preserved
2. Recalls the Red Sea — Israel passes through safely; God crashes the waters on Pharaoh's army
3. The cosmic upheaval at Christ's crucifixion fulfills this imagery: darkness for three hours, the earth shaking, rocks splitting (Matthew 27:51)
4. The floodwaters of God's wrath were poured out on Christ at the cross; believers are baptized into Christ as Israel was baptized into Moses (1 Corinthians 10:2), so that God's judgment passes over those hidden in the Passover Lamb

C. Application: Hide yourself in Christ by faith now, so that at his coming you will not call for the rocks to hide you from his wrath

II. The Personal Nature of God's Judgment

A. The shift from third-person description to direct address (Nahum 1:9-11)

1. "What do you plot against the Lord?" — Nineveh is addressed directly
2. Sennacherib's invasion of Judah in 701 BC and his threat against Hezekiah: Hezekiah prays in 2 Kings 19:16 that God would see Assyria mocking the living God
3. God sends an angel of death to destroy 185,000 Assyrians; Sennacherib returns to Nineveh and is killed by his own sons — a foretaste of Nineveh's final destruction
4. In 612 BC, an alliance of the Medes and Babylonians utterly annihilated Nineveh, and the Assyrian Empire never rose again

B. God is named "Lord" (Yahweh) eight times in the passage — his personal covenant name for his people

1. He is called a "jealous God" (Nahum 1:2) — jealous over his covenant people facing Assyrian atrocities
2. God calls Israel his son (Exodus 4); when the covenant people are persecuted, the Father's fury is intensified and personal
3. Paul in Colossians 1:24 teaches that afflictions against the church are afflictions against Christ — the Father's wrath reaches a boiling point when the body of his Son is persecuted

C. God's longsuffering is purposeful, not passive (Nahum 1:3)

1. He "guards" or holds back his wrath — his slowness to anger allows the cup of iniquity to fill up completely
2. Genesis 15:16 — God delays judgment on the Amorites until their iniquity is complete; 400 years later Joshua destroys them
3. 1 Thessalonians 2:16 — God's wrath comes upon those who fill up the measure of their sins "completely"
4. His judgments are not capricious; the cup of wrath poured out is always in proportion to the cup of sin that has been filled

D. God's law is not abstract — it is his very heart expressed to us

1. Psalm 119 seamlessly equates love for God's law with love for God himself
2. John 14:15 — "If you love me, you will keep my commandments"
3. To break God's law is to break God's heart; to refuse repentance and refuse the Son who fulfilled the law is to make his judgment intensely personal in the new covenant era

III. The Comforting Nature of God's Judgment

A. The name Nahum means "comfort" — paradoxically, this book of judgment is a book of comfort for oppressed Israel

1. Miroslav Volf (Exclusion and Embrace) observes that those who have lived through genocide find deep comfort in the reality of divine judgment — Western complacency often obscures this
2. Nahum 1 was likely written as a book (unique among the prophets) to serve as an underground pamphlet of comfort for Israelites under the Assyrian yoke
3. Nahum 1:2-8 is written as a psalm or hymn, likely recited or sung — like Paul and Silas singing hymns in a Philippian prison

B. The Lord is a stronghold for those who take refuge in him (Nahum 1:7)

1. "The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; he knows those who take refuge in him"
2. Image of a hero who holds the rescued person close with one hand while fighting off the enemy with the other — God with one hand destroys the wicked; with the other he holds his people to his chest

C. The comfort of Psalm 23 reread in light of God's judgment

1. The shepherd's rod was a weapon to fight off predators, not merely a symbol of peace — David himself used it against lions and bears (1 Samuel 17)
2. "Your rod and your staff, they comfort me" — the rod that destroys the enemy is inseparable from the comfort of the sheep
3. If Christ has only a staff but no rod, there is no true comfort for his sheep; he must be both Savior and Judge, Lamb and Lion, Priest and King

D. The believer's comfort in Christ's judgment

1. Those hidden in Christ — who hate sin, long for the removal of wickedness, and weep over suffering — find deep comfort in the coming judgment of Jesus Christ
2. Even now he leads his people through the valley of death and fights their enemies in secret
3. One day the rod will come down in its full fury, and his people will be saved from sin, Satan, and death — "Come quickly, Lord Jesus"