The Surprising Blessing of Justice

We have a city of about 120,000 people that takes three days to travel across that is about to be destroyed. That is the city of Nineveh. This destruction is being announced through the prophet Nahum. It is predicted ultimately by God, and of course predicted because he decreed it. Nahum also incorporates some of the destruction of Nineveh in his prophecy.

This is about 140 years after Jonah had preached to Nineveh and there had been repentance at the time of Jonah. This is fascinating because this is indeed the actual capital of the nation of Assyria. Assyria is definitely a well-known nation, not well known for all the poor that they fed or all of the different good deeds that they did. It is because of how brutal they were, because of how violent they were.

The Assyrians were violent, terrible, brutal people. The judgment that is coming upon them is well-earned and it is well-deserved. In fact, the Greek translation of Nahum titles it a receipt for Nineveh. With all the sin committed in Nineveh by the Assyrians, the bill is now owed. Again, during Jonah's time there was much repentance, but by the time of Nahum in the seventh century BC, Nineveh was ready for judgment.

Now it is important to recognize that though Nahum is about Nineveh and it is about the judgment of Nineveh, Nahum is really for the people of God. This will actually be demonstrated within our passage because we are going to look into Nahum chapter 1 and we are going to find out how it is that this passage of Scripture actually is a blessing to God's people. That is why we have titled our message The Surprising Blessing of Justice.

God Is an Avenging God

I have focused on that term justice to emphasize a concept that is presented in Nahum. Even in the second verse God has revealed three times as an avenging God. He is the avenging God. One of the only other times that an attribute of God is listed three times in succession is his holiness: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. He is also then revealed here in Nahum as avenging, avenging, avenging. This is the avenging God.

Now that term of avenging carries with it the idea of justice. It is not a God who simply was offended or ticked off because the Assyrians were maybe better and more advanced than God wanted them to be. It is nothing to do with that. It is not God being a megalomaniac who looks upon Assyria and is jealous over their success and then decides to act in judgment. It is the very fact that what God is avenging is what is right and what is wrong and the Assyrians have been committing wrongdoing. This is God acting in accordance with the right thing. This is what God should do.

If you were oppressed by the Assyrians you would absolutely recognize the significance of God being an avenging God and of that being a context of justice. It is the right thing for God to act. God is also revealed as jealous. God is a zealot. God is not jealous of the Assyrians. God is jealous for his own holiness. God is jealous for his own justice. God is jealous for his own righteousness and that is the reason why he is going to judge the Assyrians. The Assyrians have nothing that God wants. They are owed his worship and his obligation to his righteousness and his holiness but they are not performing that.

Now God is going to act in justice and judge the Ninevites. Justice has two concepts associated with it. It is either acting in justice for somebody, the victim. The victim needs justice. The victim is owed justice and so God would be avenging the victim. He would be fighting for justice for the victim but justice would also be that which is due upon the wrongdoer. That would be inflicting justice upon them. Both of those concepts are going to in some way be present within our text.

The idea of jealousy also has two understandings associated with it. It is either envying something that you don't have that somebody else has and wanting to take it and maybe even take it at all costs. Doing whatever you can to get what you think you deserve. That is not the jealousy of God here. God is jealous for something he already has that the Assyrians are not acknowledging.

Because I am jealous for you with the jealousy of God, for I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ.

2 Corinthians 11:2

The concept comes across in the New Testament as well. When the Corinthians are not living in accordance with God's holiness, Paul feels a sense of jealousy, divine jealousy to make sure that the Corinthians are living as a pure virgin to Jesus. The jealousy can be an absolute great thing. Jealousy fights for what's right and what's right gets to be defined by God. God is jealous for all things God.

Which of course begs the question this morning, are you jealous for all things God? Or are we jealous for all things us?

Jealous and avenging God also does something that might be a little bit difficult to stomach because this jealous and avenging God keeps wrath for his enemies. This basically means that he knows who his enemies are ahead of time and his wrath is not reactionary. God is not the God of moral neutrality that then somebody happens to tick him off and so then he reacts with wrath. It is that God knows who his enemies are and stores wrath for them. It also indicates that his wrath is not just for sin, but his wrath is for sinners.

Certainly this is the part of the introduction where you might begin to say, I thought you said this was a message about blessing. God keeping wrath, how is that a concept that will bless me? God expending his justice, how is that a concept that could bless me? Well, certainly God has revealed himself as a God of justice. That's an important concept to note. If we're going to believe in God for who he is, we believe in God as how he has revealed himself.

Now there are two types of people though within this passage and there will only continue to be two types of people even after this series. There are those for whom God is going to be just for. He's going to bless them. There are those whom God is going to be just against. He's going to judge them. So it's important to begin to recognize maybe this morning which group, which type of person I might be in.

And it's also important that if we're going to worship God, we must worship God for who he is and not for who we want him to be. At that point we're simply worshiping the God of our mind. We're worshiping the idol that we have created. Plus it is just as atheistic to ignore God in his judgments as it is to be Richard Dawkins. It is no gospel that cannot recognize God's justice because God poured his justice out upon the cross. That was one of God's greatest displays and revelations of his justice. We cannot ignore God in his judgments and we must worship God in his judgments.

1. Delayed Justice Is a Grace

God delaying his justice is a demonstration of his common grace upon humanity. Now what do we mean by delayed justice? Because it seems like our passage of scripture is informing us and telling us that God is an avenging God. Every time, so I think that kind of repetition means it's important to recognize, pay attention to this fact. God is an avenging God. He avenges with wrath. He keeps his wrath for his enemies.

Now if God exists and he is this powerful, why wouldn't he simply pour out his wrath immediately? Well notice what verse three says. The Lord is slow to anger. This is the long nose of God. Long nose obviously is an idiom that paints the picture of somebody when they're in the moment of being angry if they have a short nose. Then it would come across as something like, so if you have a long nose, takes longer for the air to exhale, which means you're demonstrating yourself as being more patient. The long nose of God. He is slow to anger.

Be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger.

James 1:19

The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.

2 Peter 3:9

Of course, Peter is ultimately concerned here with the elect as the context would show, but certainly there is something very important to glean from that as the context also results in the destruction of the heavens and the earth. So the Lord being patient is fantastic. It is super helpful. It results in his people coming to repentance because certainly if God were to end things now, many of his people would not be saved. God is the God of patience. He is delaying his justice.

Since all these things are to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness?

2 Peter 3:11

Don't take the delayed justice of God to mean that now you get to live however you want to live. The delayed justice of God is an absolute grace to begin to recognize my repentance. And like Charles Simeon had pointed out that some people look at the idea that because their actions don't immediately result in judgment, that then it's okay to continue to live in sin. And you've missed the understanding of delayed justice. Delayed justice is not what the scoffers in 2 Peter 3 were talking about, where it's not going to happen. Delayed justice is the fact that it will happen and God is holding off of it right now to give you the opportunity to come to him.

To me it is a sore judgment when God giveth them their request.

Deuteronomy 32:35

Jonathan Edwards says this, there is nothing that keeps wicked men at any one moment out of hell but the mere pleasure of God. Delayed justice is a grace. Jonathan Edwards also continues saying so that it is not because God is unmindful of their wickedness and does not resent it that he does not let loose his hand and cut them off. God is not altogether such a one as themselves, though they may imagine him to be so. The wrath of God burns against them. Their damnation does not slumber. The pit is prepared. The fire is made ready. The furnace is now hot, ready to receive them. The flames do now rage and glow. The glittering sword is wet and held over them. The pit hath opened its mouth under them. Delayed justice is a grace.

It's also a grace because of what verse 3 says. God will by no means clear the guilty. Under no circumstance will God withhold punishment for the guilty. Not only does this demonstrate his absolute sovereignty but it also demonstrates a very significant problem that is littered throughout the entirety of the scripture.

The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty.

Exodus 34:6-7

He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous are both alike an abomination to the Lord.

Proverbs 17:15

God will not justify the wicked. God sees that when somebody says that the wicked can go free, that the wicked are not wicked, that the wicked are righteous. God sees that as an abomination. To God letting the wicked go free, letting the wicked be justified is an act as unnatural and as ungodly as the sin of homosexuality. It is absolutely wrong for those who are wicked to say that they are not wicked. God will not do that. He will not say that the sinner is righteous, he will not clear the guilty.

Whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.

John 3:18

Let both grow together until the harvest.

Matthew 13:30

What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin.

Romans 3:9

This seems rather hopeless so far. If everyone is under sin and God will by no means clear the guilty, if I am guilty, I cannot be cleared. So maybe delayed justice is even greater because if I can't be cleared, if my punishment cannot be removed, then I need God to stay his wrath.

2. Definitive Justice Will Happen

Not only is there the delaying of justice is a grace to us, but the very fact that definitive justice will happen, known as verses 8 and 9.

But with an overflowing flood he will make a complete end of the opponents, and he will pursue his enemies into darkness. What do you plot against the Lord? He will make a complete end. Distress will not rise up twice.

Nahum 1:8-9

Nineveh was destroyed in 612 BC. It happened. As prophesied as promised by God, the city was destroyed. It's located in modern day Mosul, Iraq. The city tends to build itself around this wasteland known as Nineveh. In its day, it was the largest city. In its heyday, it was absolutely phenomenal. Large wonder of mankind's ability to build cities and to defend them and to protect them was laid to waste by Babylonians, Scythians and Medes.

Our judgment, our justice is going to happen. And God says within this prophecy that he will make a complete end. It won't rise up a second time. The end will be entirely complete. There's nothing after this. And there's actually some significance within our context of an eschatological nature. What does the idea of God pursuing his enemies into darkness sound like?

Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot and cast him into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

Matthew 22:13

That gnashing of teeth isn't from anger. That gnashing of teeth in that place is from an absolute, incessant pain that results in the one experiencing that pain constantly grinding their enamel on their enamel. The image is a never-ending, never-relieving agony. And not only that, but it is a never-ending, never-relieving agony that carries with it the absolute absence of one of the most important concepts to a human being which is hope. This is not only a place of pain, it is a place of continual, ongoing hopelessness.

3. Deliverance from Justice Is Found in Christ

God is delaying justice. This is a grace that justice though will definitively and finally happen. And so what hope does the person, especially the person who has lived through the first point and the second point and recognizes that God will not clear the guilty? What hope do we have then? Well, we have to have the deliverance from justice in Jesus Christ.

You might say, but I didn't see in the book of Nahum any direct messianic references. So how are we going to derive the concept of deliverance from justice in Jesus? Well, first off, let's recognize what some of the New Testament passages say about the prophets.

For those who live in Jerusalem and their rulers, because they did not recognize him nor understand the utterances of the prophets which are read every Sabbath.

Acts 13:27

O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory? And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.

Luke 24:25-27

So the prophets, whether directly or even indirectly we could say, would give some kind of an indication of the future comings of the sufferings of Jesus.

Now, in our first point again, we revealed the significant problem that we have that we are ungodly sinners. And God won't justify the ungodly. And our only hope so far seems that God's justice is delayed. There's also the problem of our second point, which recognizes that justice will eventually happen and it will be an absolutely unimaginable pain and eternal conscious punishment by receiving God's wrath for the rest of eternity future.

Again, the hands may go up and say, I thought this was a message of blessing. So how does it bless us to know about God's justice? Let's pull out some things from the text that I think are significant in recognizing the blessing of justice.

The first thing to focus on is the prophet's name. Nahum means Comforter. Why on earth would a prophet who brings a message of judgment be called Comforter? In fact, even in the pagan mystery religions around this time, there