Study from God’s Word… The entire book of Nahum, Chapters 1 – 3 … Passage for Reflection: Nahum 3: 5 … NIV “I am against you [Ninevah],” declares the LORD Almighty. “I will lift your skirts over your face. I will show the nations your nakedness and the kingdoms your shame.”
My Journal for Today: Reading through the book of Nahum and the historical comments by Dr. Smith this morning, as well as his devotional entry for today, I was brought to speculate about how long God will allow a nation – e.g., this nation in which we live – to perpetuate shameless practices of sin without our Lord coming down heavy with His wrath.
Since their repentance and deliverance by God through the ministry/preaching of Jonah, some 125 years before Nahum’s time/prophesy, the Ninevites (i.e., the Assyrians) had become a shameless and hyper-sinful culture, carrying out vicious practices without remorse, … practices which a Holy God will only take so long without bringing down His hammer of wrath. And the book of Nahum’s prophesy was directed toward this formerly repentant nation of Ninevah in Assyria; and we read in today’s highlight passage how God had had enough, relating, through Nahum, how The Lord was about to expose and shamefully display Ninevah’s sin to the world.
And as I read this, I couldn’t help but speculate an application of this passage to what has transpired in our country’s degradation during the past century; … how we now shamefully are desensitized to sinful practices which were considered cultural “abominations” 50 – 75 years ago, … practices which now are becoming “normalized” in our culture. Just this week – in the city where I live – the powers that be are trying to pass local legislation which will force businesses, and even churches, to hire cross dressers and transgendered individuals, which are cultural practices which would have been considered “shameful,” and were outlawed, just decades ago.
When we look at Ninevah, we see that God had patience and mercy for Ninevah after they repented and became obedient to the God of Israel at Jonah’s preaching; but the Assyrians slowly degenerated in their culture into shameful practices of sin, which once, for Ninevah, had been sin practices which they had rejected. My question is, “Just how long is our God, a most Holy God, going to be patient with this nation, which is becoming desensitized to such sinful practices as homosexuality, abortion, infanticide, and age-related genocide?” As a nation, we’re not so slowly becoming a culture who shows no shame to these sinful practices. And my friends, God, as He did with the Assyrians in Nahum’s day, will not continue to allow these shameful sin patterns to go on.
As we read in Romans 1: 18 – 32 [linked], God may be turning us, as His people, over to our own hearts and sin choices for a season. But most assuredly, God’s hammer of retribution will one day fall down; and even those who are the remnant of believers, trying our best to follow God, … yes, even those who have spoken out against these evil practices, will feel the rain of God’s discontent, when God’s wrath of abandonment becomes His wrath of punishment for our nation gone bad.
All I can say in prayer today is …
My Prayer for Today: Lord, have mercy on us, a sinful people and a caring remnant. Amen
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