Tag: Judgment

Morning Musing: Nahum 3:7

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“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?

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Digging in Deeper: Nahum 2:13

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“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.

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Morning Musing: Nahum 2:2

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“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?

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Morning Musing: Micah 7:9

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“Because I have sinned against him, I must endure the Lord’s fury until he champions my cause and establishes justice for me. He will bring me into the light; I will see his salvation.”‬‬ (CSB – Read the chapter)

Have you experienced the law of cause and effect? I suspect you have. You do one thing and something else happens. Cause. Effect. Sometimes this law works itself out quickly and obviously. Other times, though, the connection from one to the other is much more difficult to make. This is often because the path from a cause to its effect takes much longer to reveal itself. The challenge here is that when sin is a cause and its effect is delayed, we begin to think that it has no effect. But as Micah warns here, its effect will come.

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Morning Musing: Micah 7:1

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“How sad for me! For I am like one who — when the summer fruit has been gathered after the gleaning of the grape harvest — finds no grape cluster to eat, no early fig, which I crave.”‬‬ (CSB – Read the chapter)

If there’s any one word that is most often used to describe the Old Testament prophets, what do you think it would be? For me some words like judgmental and mean come to mind. That’s the kind of characterizations I often see them given in the culture at large. If there was a single word that was most used, though, it would be the word angry. That word is common. But is it right? Maybe not. Let’s talk about it.

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