“King of Assyria, your shepherds slumber; your officers sleep. Your people are scattered across the mountains with no one to gather them together. There is no remedy for your injury; your wound is severe. All who hear the news about you will clap their hands because of you, for who has not experienced your constant cruelty?” (CSB – Read the chapter)
Last Friday we ended with a question; a haunting question at that. Who would show some sympathy to Assyria? Who would give her any comfort? This morning we get our answer. No one. No one is available or willing. Actually it’s worse than that. Let’s talk about just how bad it is and what we are to do with this little collection of prophecy.
In this final part of our series, I Do, we talk about the secret sauce that makes marriage work. You will perhaps be completely unsurprised to find out it’s love. But, love only works if we know what it is and how to use it. As we wrap up the last few weeks of work, that’s exactly what we’ll be talking about. Keep reading to learn more.
Love Done Right
How many of you have seen the movie Michael with John Travolta? Leaving aside the terrible theology for a moment, the movie itself is great. John Travolta plays the archangel Michael who has come to earth apparently to have a great time, do a lot of sinning, and help William Hurt and Andie McDowell fall in love. Again, as I said, terrible theology. In any event, Hurt works for a tabloid magazine in New York and McDowell is a dog walker who convinces the magazine’s editor, Bob Hoskins, that she is an angel expert. The two are dispatched to Iowa where Michael is staying with an old woman in her hotel, in order to see if the reports they’ve heard about the angel living in Iowa are true. If they are, the pair are to convince him to come back to New York City with them for an interview. He refuses to fly (get it?) and instead insists that they drive across the country through rural America in order to get back to the big city. Along the way they have all kinds of misadventures including obscure tourist stops, bar fights, and great pie. About halfway through the movie, just before the group crosses the border into Illinois, Michael starts singing a pretty well-known song and encourages everybody else to join him.
“Then all who see you will recoil from you, saying, ‘Nineveh is devastated; who will show sympathy to her?’ Where can I find anyone to comfort you?” (CSB – Read the chapter)
Have you ever seen someone who was a mess and felt awful for them? I was at a birthday party a few weeks ago for one of our youngest’s friends. When I arrived to pick him up, most of the kids were outside playing. This was a fine thing except that it had rained hard the night before and everything was muddy. Really muddy. The party was progressing normally inside until chaos erupted. One poor little girl came inside crying. It looked like she had tried to a belly slide through the mud. Everything from her chin down was brown. The poor thing was a complete mess. Mom got her all cleaned up, but the rest of us just felt awful for her. You’ve perhaps encountered a situation along those lines before. But what about when someone is a mess…and it’s her own fault?
“Beware, I am against you. This is the declaration of the Lord of Armies. I will make your chariots go up in smoke, and the sword will devour your young lions. I will cut off your prey from the earth, and the sound of your messengers will never be heard again.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
When the apostle Paul was retelling his testimony to King Agrippa before being sent off to Rome in order to be tried before Emperor Nero, he added something to what Jesus said to him on the road to Damascus. When Jesus asked Paul why he was persecuting Him, He also made a statement: It is hard for you to kick against the goads. It is indeed hard. And, as Nahum describes here, the harder we try and kick against them, the harder the pushback will be.
“For the Lord will restore the majesty of Jacob, yes, the majesty of Israel, though ravagers have ravaged them and ruined their vine branches.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
One of the things we try and teach our kids is that they shouldn’t delight at someone else’s misfortune. Doing that is natural. We tend to think about life as a zero-sum gain affair. Someone else winning means we’re losing. Their losing, therefore, must mean we are winning. But that’s not the way of Christ. How are we supposed to teach them this lesson well, though, when we see Nahum, whose name means “comfort,” offering as much to Israel by prophesying the destruction of Assyria?
The Nexus 