Nahum 1-3 - Outline

[Jim Watt]

“*TWO ARE BETTER THAN ONE” MINISTRIES*

*Jim & Marie Watt*

*Tel: 253-517-9195 - Email: jmbetter at gmail.com*

*Web: www.2rbetter.org*

March 20, 2013


 *SEP 30 - NAHUM 1-3 - VENGEANCE ON NINEVEH: A CONTRAST*


 *1. 1:2-3 (1:1-8, ESV) THE GOD WHO OBSERVES NINEVEH. “The LORD is a
jealous and avenging God; the LORD takes vengeance on his adversaries and
keeps wrath for his enemies. 3 The LORD is slow to anger and great in
power, and the LORD will by no means clear the guilty. His way is in
whirlwind and storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet.” *Father, we
tremble in awe at this aspect of Your Holiness and Righteousness. We all
fall short of Your Glory. Your day of wrath, O Jehovah, comes! *Hallowed be
your :name!*


 *2. 1:9 (1:9-11) THE “OVERSTEPPING” OF NINEVEH. “What do you plot against
the LORD? He will make a complete end; trouble will not rise up a second
time.” *We remember Father, that You have a “point of no return” with us.
There is a time “when the die is cast”. Like Nineveh, we can sin away our
day of grace! *Your :kingdom come!*


 *3. 1:15 (1:12-2:2) JUDAH DELIVERED FROM NINEVEH. “Behold, upon the
mountains, the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace! Keep
your feasts, O Judah; fulfill your vows, for never again shall the
worthless pass through you: he is utterly cut off.” *Thank You Father for
Your Justice and Faithfulness. We can depend upon You. The Judge of all the
earth *shall* do right! *Your :will be done, As in heaven, so on earth.*


 *4. 2:13 (2:3-13) THE FALL OF NINEVEH. “Behold, I am against you, declares
the LORD of hosts, and I will burn your chariots in smoke, and the sword
shall devour your young lions. I will cut off your prey from the earth, and
the voice of your messengers shall no longer be heard.” *Forgive us Father,
that we forget You are a God without respect of persons! We cast ourselves
upon You mercy. We know You are both righteous and merciful. Grant us
compassion and forgiveness for one another. *Our :daily :bread Give us this
day.*


 *5. 3:1 (3:1-4) CRIMES AND WAR: BROUGHT RUIN ON NINEVEH. “Woe to the
bloody city, all full of lies and plunder - no end to the prey!” *O Father,
our hearts melt within us at such fullness of wickedness, and the
inevitability of Your judgment upon such! May we not be high-minded, but
profit from this revelation. *And forgive us our :debts, As we also have
forgiven our :debtors.*


 *6. 3:7 (3:5-13) GOD’S JUDGMENT ON NINEVEH. “And all who look at you will
shrink from you and say, Wasted is Nineveh; who will grieve for her? Where
shall I seek comforters for you? *Not only wicked man Father, but Satan and
his angels and demons shall suffer similar fate. You are just! You are
holy! It cannot be otherwise. *And bring us not into temptation.*


 *7. 3:19 (3:14-19) INEVITABILITY OF RUIN FOR NINEVEH. “There is no easing
your hurt; your wound is grievous. All who hear the news about you clap
their hands over you. For upon whom has not come your unceasing evil?” *O
Father, we groan within us. We take no pleasure in the death of the wicked.
We join Your heart in desiring *all* to come to repentance. *This* is the
kind of God You are! *But deliver us from the evil one!*


 *NOTE**: 1:7-8 (1:1-8) **GOD’S CONTRAST FOR NINEVEH. “The LORD is good, a
stronghold in the day of trouble; he knows those who take refuge in him. 8 But
with an overflowing flood he will make a complete end of the adversaries,
and will pursue his enemies into darkness.” *In You Father, Truth and Mercy
meet! Holiness and Love balance each other. We cannot understand it all,
but we do trust You!


 *Our Psalm for the Day: 90:3-4 (90) FROM EVERLASTING TO EVERLASTING. “You
return man to dust and say, ‘Return, O children of man!’ 4 For a thousand
years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in
the night.” *O Father, what is man in the light of Yourself? Yet You
created us; in Christ You redeemed us; *and* You have chosen us and *loved*us!
*Hallowed be your :name!*


 *Title: “A Prayer of Moses the man of God.” *Many attempts have been made
to prove that Moses did not write the Psalm, but we remain unmoved in the
conviction that he did so. The condition of Israel in the wilderness is so
preeminently illustrative of each verse, and the turns, expressions, and
words are so similar to many in the Pentateuch, that the difficulties
suggested are, to our mind, light as air in comparison with the internal
evidence in favor of its Mosaic origin. Moses was mighty in word as well as
deed, and this Psalm we believe to be one of his weighty utterances worthy
to stand side by side with his glorious oration recorded in Deuteronomy.
This is the oldest of the Psalms and stands between two books of Psalms as
a composition unique in its grandeur and alone in its sublime antiquity.
Many generations of mourners have listened to this Psalm when standing
around the open grave, and have been consoled thereby even when they have
not perceived its special application to Israel in the wilderness and have
failed to remember the far higher ground upon which believers now stand.


 90:1. *Lord, You have been our dwelling place in all generations. *Moses,
in effect, says - wanderers though we be in the howling wilderness, yet we
find a home in You, even as our forefathers did when they came out of Ur of
the Chaldees and dwelt in tents among the Canaanites. Not in the tabernacle
or the temple do we dwell, but in God Himself; and this we have always done
since there was a church in the world. We have not shifted our abode.
Kings’ palaces have vanished beneath the crumbling hand of time - they have
been burned with fire and buried beneath mountains of ruins, but the
imperial race of heaven has never lost its regal habitation.


 90:4. *And as a watch in the night, *a time which is no sooner come than
gone. There is scarce time enough in a thousand years for the angels to
change watches; when their millennium of service is almost over, it seems
as though the watch were newly set. We are dreaming through the long night
of time, but God is ever keeping watch, and a thousand years are as nothing
to Him. A host of days and nights must be combined to make up a thousand
years to us, but to God, that space of time does not make up a whole night
but only a brief portion of it. If a thousand years be to God as a single
night-watch, what must be in the life-time of the Eternal!


 90:8. *You have set our iniquities before You. *Hence these tears! Sin
seen by God must work death; it is only by the covering blood of atonement
that life comes to any of us. When God was overthrowing the tribes in the
wilderness, He had their iniquities before Him, and therefore dealt with
them in severity. He could not have their iniquities before Him and not
smite them. *Our secret sins in the light of Your countenance. *Rebellion
in the light of justice is black, but in the light of love it is devilish.
How can we grieve so good a God? The children of Israel had been brought
out of Egypt with a high hand, fed in the wilderness with a liberal hand,
and guided with a tender hand and their sins were peculiarly atrocious. We,
too, having been redeemed by the blood of Jesus and saved by abounding
grace, will we be truly guilty if we forsake the Lord. What manner of
persons ought we to be? How ought we to pray for cleansing from secret
faults?


 90:9. The Vulgate translation has, “Our years pass away like those of a
spider.” It implies that our life is as frail as the thread of a spider’s
web. Constituted most curiously the spider’s web is: but what more fragile?
In what is there more wisdom than in the complicated frame of the human
body; and what more easily destroyed? Glass is granite compared with flesh;
and vapors are rocks compared with life.


 90:11. *Even according to Your fear, so is Your wrath. *Holy Scripture,
when it depicts God’s wrath against sin, never uses a hyperbole; it would
be impossible to exaggerate it. Whatever feelings of pious awe and holy
trembling may move the tender heart, it is never too much moved; apart from
other considerations, the great truth of the divine anger, when most
powerfully felt, never impresses the mind with a solemnity in excess of the
legitimate result of such a contemplation. What the power of God’s anger is
in hell and what it would be on earth, were it not in mercy restrained, no
man living can rightly conceive. Modern thinkers rail at Milton and Dante,
Bunyan and Baxter, for their terrible imagery; but the truth is that no
vision of poet, or denunciation of holy seer, can ever reach to the dread
height of this great argument, much less go beyond it.


 90:12. *That we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. *A short life should be
wisely spent. We have not enough time at our disposal to justify us in
misspending a single quarter of an hour. Neither are we sure of enough of
life to justify us in procrastinating for a moment. If we were wise in
heart, we should see this, but mere head wisdom will not guide us aright.


 90:14. *O satisfy us early with Your mercy.* Since they must die and die
so soon, the Psalmist pleads for speedy mercy upon himself and his
brethren. Good men know how to turn the darkest trials into arguments at
the throne of grace. He who has but the heart to pray need never be without
pleas in prayer. The only satisfying food for the Lord’s people is the
favor of God; this Moses earnestly seeks for, and as the manna fell in the
morning, he beseeches the Lord to send at once His satisfying favor, that
all through the little day of life they might be filled therewith.


 90:15. *Make us glad according to the days wherein You have afflicted us,
and the years wherein we have seen evil. *None can gladden the heart as You
can, O Lord; therefore as You have made us sad, be pleased to make us glad.
Fill the other scale. Proportion Your dispensations. Give us the lamb,
since You have sent us the bitter herbs. Make our days as long as our
nights. The prayer is original, childlike, and full of meaning; it is,
moreover, based upon a great principle in providential goodness by which
the Lord puts the good over against the evil in due measure. Great trial
enables us to bear great joy and may be regarded as the herald of
extraordinary grace. God, Who is great in justice when He chastens, will
not be little in mercy when He blesses; He will be great all through; let
us appeal to Him with unstaggering faith.


 90:16. *And Your glory unto their children. *How eagerly do good men plead
for their children! They can bear very much personal affliction if they may
but be sure that their children will know the glory of God and thereby be
led to serve Him. We are content with the work if our children may but see
the glory which will result from it: we sow joyfully if they may reap.


 90:17. *And establish You the work of our hands upon us; yes, the work of
our hands establish You it. *We come and go, but the Lord’s work abides. We
are content to die so long as Jesus lives and His kingdom grows. Since the
Lord abides forever the same, we trust our work in His hands and feel that
since it is far more His work than ours, He will secure it immortality.
When we have withered like grass, our holy service, like gold, silver, and
precious stones, will survive the fire. *(From “The Treasury of David” by
C.H. Spurgeon, abridged by D.O. Fuller)*



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