There is no healing for your wound; your injury is fatal. All who hear of your destruction will clap their hands for joy. Where can anyone be found who has not suffered from your continual cruelty? (Nahum 3:19)
Biblical Truth & Life Application
The name "Nahum" means comfort or consolation. Maybe the message was comforting and consoling to Nineveh's enemies, because the small three chapter book is God proclaiming Nineveh's destruction. God first had Jonah evangelize to Nineveh, after which they repented and God spared them: Then God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God relented from the disaster that He had said He would bring upon them, and He did not do it. (Jonah 3:10, Jonah 3)
But approximately 150 years later, this generation of people where just as wicked, if not worse than the prior. God being a jealous and just God, He dealt with them in the way they deserved: The Lord is a jealous God, filled with vengeance and rage. He takes revenge on all who oppose him and continues to rage against his enemies! The Lord is slow to get angry, but his power is great, and he never lets the guilty go unpunished. (Nahum 1:2-3)
God destroyed Nineveh by a series of natural disasters, and He allowed them to be shamed before their enemies (Nahum 1, 2): “Behold, I am against you,” says the Lord of hosts; “I will lift your skirts over your face, I will show the nations your nakedness, And the kingdoms your shame. (Nahum 3:5) None of us should ever want the Lord to say, "Behold I am against thee, saith the Lord of hosts." (Jonah 2:13, 3:5) Because after that statement, He follows with "..., and I will...". God will deal with wickedness and evil definitely.
Just as Nineveh should have learned after God spared them and should have taught their children the same, we also must learn: Don’t you see how wonderfully kind, tolerant, and patient God is with you? Does this mean nothing to you? Can’t you see that his kindness is intended to turn you from your sin? But because you are stubborn and refuse to turn from your sin, you are storing up terrible punishment for yourself. For a day of anger is coming, when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed. He will judge everyone according to what they have done. He will give eternal life to those who keep on doing good, seeking after the glory and honor and immortality that God offers. But he will pour out his anger and wrath on those who live for themselves, who refuse to obey the truth and instead live lives of wickedness. There will be trouble and calamity for everyone who keeps on doing what is evil—... But there will be glory and honor and peace from God for all who do good—... For God does not show favoritism. ... For merely listening to the law doesn’t make us right with God. It is obeying the law that makes us right in his sight. ... And this is the message I proclaim—that the day is coming when God, through Christ Jesus, will judge everyone’s secret life. (Romans 2:4-16)
Sin leads to death, and eventually eternal damnation. But believing in the Word of God leads to life, and eventually life eternal; But I want to remind you, though you once knew this, that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe. And the angels who did not keep their proper domain, but left their own abode, He has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day; as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities around them in a similar manner to these, having given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh, are set forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. Likewise also these dreamers defile the flesh, reject authority, and speak evil of dignitaries. ... But these speak evil of whatever they do not know; and whatever they know naturally, like brute beasts, in these things they corrupt themselves. Woe to them! (Jude 1:5-11) What fruit did you have then in the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:21, 23)
Let's make sure that our end is better than our beginning, once we know better let's do better: For if, after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the latter end is worse for them than the beginning. For it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered to them. But it has happened to them according to the true proverb: “A dog returns to his own vomit,” and, “a sow, having washed, to her wallowing in the mire.” (II Peter 2:20-22) God made us above the animals (Genesis 1:26-28), let's not resort to act like one!
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