July 28: A Prophetic Microcosm
The LORD is good, A stronghold in the day of trouble; And He knows those who trust in Him. Nahum 1:7
Trust in the Lord continually grows by cultivating a love of the truth (2 Thessalonians 2:10). He provides counsel for every area of life. There is no part of your life that He does not care about. His word, if heeded, has a powerful way of protecting from all sorts of harm—physical, mental, social, emotional, and spiritual—with the ultimate goal of character-building that will last.
Nahum’s message to the Assyrians is a practical one for all of us. Once saved, our human tendency is to settle into a routine of presumption and/or neglect of the most essential relationship of all: our relationship with the Lord. Only one hundred years before, Jonah’s preaching had brought the entire capital city of Ninevah to repentance. God graciously granted a stay of the judgement that Jonah had announced. In Jonah’s day, the people had realized that they deserved the destruction that God was warning them about. In agreeing with Him as to what they deserved, they actually found mercy and stepped onto a new path: one of repentance. Salvation had truly come to the Ninevites!
But over the next hundred years, the Assyrians returned to their idolatrous, violent, and arrogant ways. Again a message of destruction came; this time through Nahum: God will use Babylon to utterly destroy them. This prophecy was so completely fulfilled that no trace is left of the Assyrians today. This is a prophetic microcosm of the coming destruction of sin, those who cling to it, and also of Satan himself:
What do you conspire against the LORD? He will make an utter end of it. Affliction will not rise up a second time. v.9
These were—and are—words of comfort to God’s faithful people. Nahum’s name means “comfort” or “consolation.” The practices of the Assyrians, like the world of today, were so evil and atrocious that those who believed the whole counsel of God (Acts 20:27) could know for certain that evil will not be allowed indefinitely. It will be totally eradicated.
God means for each of us to have a lifestyle molded by the study of His word in its entirety. Whatever we are faced with, the guidance and promises that God has for us are for our protection, comfort, and spiritual safety. Beloved, one of Satan’s strategies is to blind you to some (but not all) truths of God’s word. The deadliest doctrines are mixtures of truth and error. If you are deliberately overlooking large swaths of Scripture, bring an end to that habit at once. A partial view of God’s word will inform the adversary of exactly what falsehoods he can successfully inject for the purpose of destroying discernment. More words for those who have tasted of God’s kingdom but have slid into laziness or presumption: And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie. 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. For as you drank on My holy mountain, So shall the nations drink continually; Yes, they shall drink, and swallow, And [ultimately] they shall be as though they had never been. (2 Thessalonians 2:11; 2 Peter 2:21; Obadiah 16)