Nahum - "Too Late(?)"

Happy Fathers Day!

In our family, what stood out most about dad was that he was provider.  The four of us kids all lived with my dad after my parent’s divorce - and he took care of all of us.  Dad took care of just about everything - very handy - knew his way not only around the caar and the yard but also around the kitchen and the sewing machine and the washing machine.  Some dads, their very survival is in question if mom is even just out of town for a couple of days - but not my dad.

I remember growing up that my dad didn’t get angry very often - but his anger was something to be avoided.  Mom’s anger - and her punishment - weren’t so bad compared to dad’s.  But he wasn’t an angry man per se.

Many dads sadly carry what is called a daddy wound.  Their father hurt them somehow, or hid from them in some way.  And they have grown up to be either angry men, or they're hiding.  Shut down.  Emotionally absent.  And they then often pass this on to their own sons, who also grow up either angry or shut down.

Consideration of dad sets the stage for our continued journey through the minor prophets this morning.  <Come Back>  We come to the book of Nahum… As a segue to our text this morning I would like to show a video clip of a rather famous father and son…

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-HFv6Ms1lw] - too late for me (Vader)

Now of course Vader was pretty much absent as a dad.  And he didn’t even have a dad, as best we know.  He had father figures of course, flawed as they were.  But the boy called Anakin Skywalker grew up angry.  Wounded, and wounding others.  Killing.  As an enforcer, Darth Vader of course was unsurpassed for being powerful and ruthless and downright evil.  And he tells his son, Luke, it is too late for me.

Nahum is writing to Nineveh.  The capital of Assyria.  The most powerful and ruthless and evil empire on the planet.  The center of the gentile world.  We saw Nineveh and Assyria about 100 years earlier, when God sent Jonah to preach to Nineveh.  Repent!, he told them.  And they did.  And God used the Assyrians to carry out His discipline on the northern kingdom of Israel.  Fast forward a couple of kings, and Nineveh has fallen back into its old ways.  Even worse.  They attacked Judah - without provocation.  Part of extending their evil rule over the then-known world.  We date this book sometime after 663BC (destruction of Thebes/No-amon by Assyria/Ashurbanipal) but before the collapse of Assyria in 612BC.  Assyria began to decline sometime in the 630’s and 620’s BC, so we need to date Nahum’s prophecy earlier than that perhaps, closer to 640BC - which dates it BEFORE Zephaniah.

But Darth Vader is a good modern approximation if you want to gain an idea about just how powerfully evil Assyria had become.

God says, I have this burden about Nineveh.  About Assyria.  So take out a pen and a piece of paper…  And Jonah, he be like, say what?  All my brother Nahum has to do is write a letter?  Why couldn’t I have gotten the cushy assignment?  All Nahum has to do re prophesying against the most powerful regime on the planet, is write a letter?  I need you to write a letter.  From a certain perspective, this is a relatively easy task.  Compared to what it could be, this should be easy peasy.  Far easier than actually having to go to Nineveh, to the death star, to the evil center of the filthy gentile universe, and preach against them.  Write a letter.  Which brings us right out of the gate to our first point this morning - the easy task.  The supposedly small things.  The “little" things.  How do we approach those?  Is there really any “little” thing when the King of the Universe wants you to do it?  And is there anything we can do without His strength, without the power and the filling and the guidance of His Spirit?  There are no small assignments with the King of the Universe.  I want you to write a letter.

Altho, Nahum could have mailed it in.  He could have been like, why do I only get to write a letter?  Boy, Jonah got to go on a cruise, and then he got to travel abroad, and go be part of a massive revival, an entire city turning back to the Lord.  Why didn’t I get THAT assignment?  How come all I get to do is write a letter?

“There are no small parts, only small actors.”  “Don’t count scenes or lines. Instead, make your scenes and lines count!” 

Or - WHATEVER you do, do it to the glory of God.

1Peter 4:11 Whoever speaks, is to do so as one who is speaking the utterances of God; whoever serves is to do so as one who is serving by the strength which God supplies; so that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belongs the glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.

But there is another point here.  Sometimes you get the easy task, and sometimes you don’t.  Sometimes you feel like you are carrying that light burden, and sometimes you feel like you are carrying a cross.  It’s heavy.  It hurts.  You hurt.  And the journey is such a long one.  No relief in sight.  And the temptation is to look at the next person, and wonder why they have it so easy.  What about them?  “What about Mary?”, asked her sister.  Lord, she’s not being helpful.  Lord, don’t You care?  Don’t you care about me?  Why don’t You tell her to help?  And we get caught up in the comparison trap, looking at those around us, and we take our eyes off the Lord.  We get distracted by our huge burden and we can begin to doubt whether or not the Lord really cares about us.  Whether or not He even sees the burden we’re carrying.  We doubt His goodness.  We doubt His presence.  The Lord was calling Peter to a deeper love for Him, to a deeper level of sacrifice, and Peter was like, what about John?  What about him, Lord?  And Jesus was like, if I have something different for you, what is that to you?  What does it matter?  You follow Me.  In My strength.  Big or small task.

But what happened?  What happened to Nineveh?  

Assyrian military might and dominion and ruthless oppression had stretched out over the known world for hundreds of years.  And though there had been brief glimmers of hope - the revival under the prophetic ministry of Jonah, the turning back of the Assyrian army during the reign of King Hezekiah - the Assyrians had imposed their will and gone largely unchallenged for centuries.  They were an evil tyrant, a bully gone berserk.  Since before the time of King David, in fact.  And they had become arrogant.  Proud, and self-sufficient.  Rampant idolatry, and injustice.  Wicked, and cruel beyond belief.  And they are beyond redemption.  They are beyond hope.  They are past the point of no return.  It is too late for them, God says.

Look at the language in these first verses.  This is the common picture of the God of the Old Testament, being a God of wrath.  But of course that is not the complete picture, is it?  It is always both - don’t miss verse 3 and verse 7…!  He is not safe, but He is good!

But as with Darth Vader, it was too late for Nineveh…

Nahum 1.8-10  

But with an overflowing flood He will make a complete end of its site, and will pursue His enemies into darkness.  Whatever you devise against the LORD, He will make a complete end of it. Distress will not rise up twice.   Like tangled thorns, and like those who are drunken with their drink, they are consumed as stubble completely withered.

The fate of the Assyrian empire is actually one of the questions of history.  They endured for two millennia, and imposed their will on the surrounding nations for hundreds of years, and then the empire collapsed in the span of just a couple of decades, with the Babylonians completely razing Nineveh in 612 BC.  The nation never came back.  There was NO comeback.  Nineveh was never rebuilt.  God made a complete end of it.  No more bully.

[pic of Nineveh] - vv1.12, 14, 15

Nahum 3:19  

There is no relief for your breakdown, your wound is incurable. All who hear about you will clap their hands over you, for on whom has not your evil passed continually?

Now remember last time we talked about this progressive generation which in its headlong pursuit of modern deism is actually hurtling towards atheism - whether deliberately or unintentionally, is intent on fashioning an absent/silent God.  Toothless.  

[pic of Toothless]

The natural conclusion of this thinking is that God doesn’t care.  He either doesn’t see, or doesn’t care, or is powerless to do anything about it.  A toothless God.  Or resigned to do nothing.  IF He even exists at all.  And so we’re left with the problem of evil.

The deist or atheist says you can pretty much do what you want - as long as it doesn’t impede my happiness.  They might take it a step further and insist that one is free as long as one doesn’t hurt anyone else.  But there is a fatal flaw in their thinking.  These same ones who insist on removing God from the equation and have landed on this idea of natural selection and survival of the fittest fail to account for the bully.  For Nineveh.  For Darth Vader.  Survival of the fittest sounds just fine when you’re talking about fruit flies in a lab or birds on some remote island, but what about the bully who wants to take my lunch money?  What about the bully who lives in Nineveh and wants to wipe me out?  Survival of the fittest, right?

What we find is that we all have this innate sense of right and wrong, a moral compass, one which tells us that actually survival of the fittest doesn't (or shouldn't) always work.  It isn’t always right.  IF we’re honest, you and I all know that there are some things which are not right.  It is not right for the bully to take someone else’s lunch money just because he is bigger and stronger.  Or fitter.  Survival of the fittest sounds fine and dandy if you’re trying to explain away the notion of a Creator.  But it doesn’t set well if you are one of those less fit.  It doesn’t set well if you are living in Judah and Assyria has just shown up to plunder you.  That’s not right.  But how is it that we know this?

Being mean - what we call injustice - we see clearly as being wrong.  The right thing to do is actually to defend the weak, those who are less fit.  Take care of that which is vulnerable.  To not take someone else’s stuff.  To respect their stuff AND their personhood.  We know this in our hearts without even having to be taught it.  Some 4-yr old bully pushes you down, or takes your toy - how do you respond?  Thank you sir may I have another?  Here you go - and you can have my blankie too!  Of course not!  We cry.  And we want justice.  We want him to be punished.  We call this the moral law - and we understand that the existence of this moral law points to the reality of a moral law giver.

We exist in a world that comes packaged with a moral law that we did not invent. We discover it and once we do, we find that we are bound by it.

The problem of evil, the existence of morality, is about values, starting with the value of a person.  People have value.  They have intrinsic value - that means they have worth apart from whatever value some person or group might attach to them.  We make and enforce laws because people have value.  It’s what separates us from the animals - animals don’t make laws.  It’s dog eat dog.  Or cat - sadly.  And we don’t make and enforce laws which expect moral behavior from animals.  “Dog must not eat cats.”  Now we might have something to say to their human owner - if they have one.  The atheist - and even the modern deist - want to say that we are on our own.  Meaning that we are accidents.  But arbitrary accidental causes do not give rise to intrinsic value, nor to any moral law.  Which is what those who question the existence of God because of the problem of evil would like to be true.  They posit that our existence is NOT the result of some divine Creator and Law Giver, but rather accidental.  The result of random chance.  Arbitrary.  Survival of the fittest.  Survival of the bully.  Darth Vader - and the Emperor - gets to win.  That’s really what it is.  And, it doesn’t solve the problem!

When the problem of evil is held up as an excuse, it becomes self-defeating.  If you believe evil is a problem, then you have drawn upon this moral law to make a value judgment about another person’s behavior, and are holding them up to this moral standard which is anything but arbitrary.  It is not the product of random chance, or arbitrary evolution.  Nor is it simply majority rules.  Majority doesn’t determine what is right.  If the majority votes that it is okay to kill an unborn human, or to enslave or even exterminate an entire race of people, that doesn’t make it right.  When we draw on the right to prosecute someone for their involvement in something like genocide, or murder, we are appealing not to some arbitrary value but to a higher timeless law which transcends the court of popular opinion.

One apologist put it like this: “Transcending value and justice must come from a person of transcending worth and an ultimate law or value-giver—and the only reason people have intrinsic worth is that they are the creation of One who is of ultimate worth and the perfect lawgiver. That person is God.”

Our response should be, I recognize your wonderful worth, put there by an Intelligent Designer, and even if you are weaker than me (and especially if you are) I will protect you and serve you and pursue justice for you because He has written this law on my heart which says it is good and just to do so.

What we ultimately find in connection with question of the problem of evil and the existence of God, is not the absence of answers - it is the suppression of them.

Rom. 1:20-25 

For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.  For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.  Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them.  For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.

This is what had happened in Assyria.  What we get in Nahum is this transcendent God Who is real, Who is immanent and whose planned destruction of this now-evil-and-arrogant kingdom is imminent.  Like Darth Vader, there is no hope for them.  A complete end to Nineveh/Assyria.

He is there, and He is not silent!  He is not a tame lion - “‘course He isn’t safe”, says Mr Beaver - “but He’s good!”  But is He?  Is He good?  Is He unsafe?  Moderns like to question both…

Nahum 1:7

The LORD is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble, and He knows those who take refuge in Him. 

Nahum 1:15

Behold, on the mountains the feet of him who brings good news, who announces peace!

Their words will go out to the entire world!  When the goodness of God is impugned - with success - faith soon crumbles.  We are drawn to goodness, aren’t we…?  Think about it - a good restaurant, a good movie,   If Satan can somehow get us questioning the breathtaking goodness of God, His good plans for us, then our faith is in trouble…

What we hear from Nahum is, this is Who God is - justice is in His hands.  He makes a complete end of whatever ends we devise against Him.  But He is good, oh-so-good, and He is slow to anger.  Put your trust in Him.

To which His people, the remnant, understandably ask, how long, Lord?  How long till Your kingdom does come?  Till Your Will will be done?  Ours is the daily journey of trust... Will you and I trust in Him today?  For us, it's NOT too late...  The moral of the story, and one which we find in the case of Darth Vader, aka Anakin Skywalker, is that for us it’s actually NOT too late.  For as long as Jesus tarries and we have breath in our lungs, we can confess that God is God and Jesus is our Savior.  That He paid for the consequences of all our evil on the cross.  He offers forgiveness, a new start, a new heart.  He is good, and He has written His good law on our hearts - will you acknowledge that today?  Will you turn back to Him in your heart today?

I. Intro (1.1)

II. God’s Profile  (1.2-2.2)

1. God’s ways (1.2-7)
2. God’s plans (1.8-2.2)
1. A complete end to Nineveh (8-12a, 14, 15b-2.1)
2. Shalom for Judah (12b-13, 15a, 2.2)

III. God’s Judgment on Assyria (ch 2.3-3.19)

Zephaniah - "We Need A Hero"

Who do you think is the greatest hero in the MCU?  What about the worst villain?  Who is your hero?  A hero: a rescuer/protector, great for others, give us hope, inspires us.

“Since it is so likely that (children) will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker.”― C.S. Lewis

A hero makes our future brighter.  Today we meet up with a couple of heroes (AND a villain!) - as we look at the book of Zephaniah.  

We are now many years past the exile of the northern kingdom of Israel.  Assyria conquered them a century ago.  Zephaniah was a contemporary of Jeremiah, who is sometimes called, The Weeping Prophet.  Weeping why?  Because the kingdom of Judah is next.

Zeph traces his ancestry back four generations.  He is the only prophet to do that.  But it is significant - he is descended from King Hezekiah - which incidentally makes him distant cousin of the current king, Josiah.  But a bit of history here is enlightening.  Josiah is a hero.  Hezekiah, Josiah’s great-grandfather, was one of Judah’s most beloved kings.  Also a hero.  And his grandfather, Manasseh, was a villain.  The worst.

-Hezekiah was king for 29 yrs (Read 2Ki 18.1-8)(~715-686BC)

• Year 6 of King Hezekiah of Judah - Assyria conquers/exiles Samaria/Israel (2Ki 17.6)(cf 2Ki 17.7-19)(2Ki 18.9)
• 8 yrs after taking Samaria/Israel, the Assyrians attack Judah in great force (2Ki 18.13, 18.17) - Hezekiah trusts in the Lord (2Ki 19.19), and the Lord repels the Assyrians (2Ki 19.32-36)
• Later Hezekiah becomes mortally ill - he again turns to the Lord, and God extends his life (2Ki 20.5-6)

-Manasseh his son reigned 55 yrs (697-642BC - a bit of overlap w his dad) - he did evil, rebuilt the high places which his dad had destroyed (2Ki 21.9).  He even sacrificed one of his sons to Molech.  An all-time villain.  Judah’s doom is sealed under/because of Manasseh (2Ki 21.10-15)(2Ki 23.26, Jer 15.4).

-Amon, his son, 642-640, also did evil (2Ki 21.19-26).

-Josiah becomes king in 640-609.  The boy king.  8yrs old (2Ki 22).

-In the 18th year of his reign, they find the scroll of the Law

-Huldah the prophetess (2Ki 22.14-20) - prophesies good re Josiah

-2Ki 23 - revival/cleansing of the temple, Jerusalem, even as far as Samaria, passover observed —> 2Kings 23.21-23

Summary of Josiah - 2Ki 23.24-25

So we have this boy king.  8 yrs old.  Any 8 yr olds in here this morning?  Would any of you like to be king?  Or queen?  And 18 years into his reign, the priest "discovers" this scroll of God’s Law in the temple.  Apparently it’s been missing for generations?  And they break it out, and revival breaks out.  Big revival.  Huge.  People waking up to the reality of God and their need for Him.  All this then creates a question of, when exactly did Zephaniah come on the scene with his message? 

When Hilkiah discovers the book of the law, and Josiah hears it, and says they should go inquire of the Lord, they don’t go to Zephaniah.  There is no mention of Zephaniah - which is strange, because he would have been a relative of Josiah’s.  Nope, Josiah and Hilkiah go to Huldah.  We also have:

• The remnant of Baal (1.4) - implying that the revival had already busted out

Zephaniah is writing sometime after the revival of Josiah.  And there were many good things which came out of that.  Not enough to turn back God’s plan to exile Judah into Babylon, but many good things.  And yet, we read that there is a remnant of Baal.  There is still a remnant of Baal.  There are areas where things are still occupying God’s rightful place.  Everything has not been removed.  It is the church of Sardis, about which we read in the book of Revelation:

Revelation 3:1-6

“To the angel of the church in ^aSardis write: He who has the seven Spirits of God and the seven stars, says this: ‘I know your deeds, that you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead. Wake up, and strengthen the things that remain, which were about to die; for I have not found your deeds completed in the sight of My God. So remember what you have received and heard; and keep it, and repent. Therefore if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come to you. But you have a few people in Sardis who have not soiled their garments; and they will walk with Me in white, for they are worthy. He who overcomes will thus be clothed in white garments; and I will not erase his name from the book of life, and I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’”

And the problem is, these are things about which we should be ashamed.  In 2.1 God calls them a "nation WITHOUT shame".  And that’s how it goes -> things about which we SHOULD be ashamed, they don’t bother us.  We tolerate them.  We get used to them.  We even celebrate and boast in them.

And here’s the point.  Look at what the Lord is saying.  I, I will completely remove.  I will remove everything.  You have not completely removed everything, so I will completely remove.  The day of the Lord.  The day of the Lord.  It’s moving day.  Or should we say, removing day.  The day of the Lord is about removing our shame.

This is what God says.  I am going to remove all things.  To take away, to sweep away, to put to an end, to destroy.  You are not finished sweeping, your spring cleaning is not yet finished.  So I am about to show you how it’s done.

It’s the ol’ hunny-do list.  Anybody here have one of those?  That list of things you need to get done, various projects around the house, and it just never seems to get done.  If anything, it gets bigger.  Wouldn’t it be great if you could check off everything on that list?  Wouldn’t it be great if you could finish all those projects?  Clean everything out?

God is saying, there are some more things you need to do here.  Some more things you need to clean out.  Some more things you need to remove.  Some things you ought to be ashamed of.  Some things you need to burn.  Things you need to replace.

But of course we are not talking about a physical house here - we are talking about that house which is our life.  Our heart.  God sees the heart.  He cares about our heart.

There are three specific heart conditions which the Lord is addressing in this letter:

1.5 - “…those who bow down and swear to the Lord and yet swear by Milcom”

• Here we have those who say one thing and do another.  These are those who want it both ways, to have their cake and eat it too.  Divided loyalties.  A little bit of Jesus, and a dash of the world for favor.  All paths lead to God.  Pluralism.  
• These are the lukewarms.  One foot in the door, and the other foot out.  Those who suggest, What matters most is faith.  You just gotta have faith, faith in something (even faith in a couple of things?).  But what actually makes faith work is not HAVING it, i.e. the presence of faith - it is the OBJECT of our faith.  It’s NOT enough simply to believe.  It’s not that you trust in any old something.  You need to determine, is that something trustworthy?
• We could also be talking about syncretism.  Folks name the Name of Jesus, but then fall back into the traditions of their ancestors, the cultural norm.  They haven’t fully trusted in Jesus - or perhaps they are succumbing to pressure from culture or family.

1.6 - “…those who have not sought the Lord nor inquired of Him”

• Here we find the sins of omission.  It’s not simply a matter of the bad things I have done.  It is the good things which I have NOT done.  I stop short.  I don’t even start, in fact.  We look around us in our fallen fleshy mindsets and we think, well, I’m not as bad as THAT person.  And we pick some bad example, some all-time villain, the worst of the worst - Adolph Hitler.  Josef Stalin.  Osama bin Laden.  Manasseh. I’m not as bad as them.  But our pride deceives us.  All we like sheep have gone astray.  And we were not designed to simply avoid the bad stuff.  Any inanimate object can do that.  Any old rock can be a don’t-er.  No, we are called to be do-ers.  We were designed for glory.  God’s standard is glorious perfection.  Breathtaking goodness.  He designed us for love and kindness and patience and mercy.  He calls us to love Him with all our hearts and to love our neighbor as ourselves.  He designed us to journey in relationship with Him, to trust Him and seek Him, to love Him.  Love.  Love does.

• And what we find is that even God’s chosen people repeatedly fall short.  They stop short.  They neglect to inquire of the Lord.  They fail to seek Him.  God, what do You want?  Lord, show me what you want.  Speak Lord, your servant is listening.  But in my flesh my tendency is to live apart from Him.  To live as if He doesn’t exist - or doesn’t care.  To not depend on Him.  And again, the barometer for this is our prayer life.  You want to know how your heart is doing in the matter of depending on the Lord?  Look at your prayer life.  Look at the degree to which you are seeking Him and inquiring of Him.  Do you and I stop to pray?  Do we begin by praying?  Do we continue with prayer, in prayer?  Pray without ceasing, Paul says.  Again, we’re not talking about a work - we’re not trying to earn favor with God by doing prayer as a work.  It is a heart condition.  God is looking for hearts which are completely His, He is looking to remake hearts which will be completely His, which trust completely in Him.  And yes, the tendency of my heart apart from Him is to live apart from Him.  To not depend on Him, to not seek Him or inquire of Him.  Practical atheism.  When I get in a bind, when something goes wrong, when I’m at my wits end, THEN I’ll remember Him, but sadly sometimes it takes just that for me turn to the Lord.

1.12 - Those who say “The Lord will not do good or evil.”  

• Not only do we tend to live life as practical atheists, there is an explicit mindset which dismisses God from the conversation because He simply appears to be absent.  Silent.  Rather non-involved.  I wonder if this perception can sometimes be reinforced by dads/parents who are absent.  Absent dads.  Silent dads.

• Here we come into the vicinity of what is called deism.  There is a God, but He is silent.  He is not immanent.  He is not involved.  He is not present and accounted for, sir.  Perhaps a God who winds up the universe like an old timepiece and then just lets it go, leaves it to its own devices, and stays on the sidelines.  No need for a daily walk with Him here.  He is just a higher power.  Unknowable.  Incommunicado.  He has not spoken, His Word is not necessarily binding.  He is found instead in the divine gleanings of exalted human reason, supposedly what people can believe about God without faith.  Without the supernatural.  General providence as opposed to special providence.  Thus a historical deist would perhaps look to Jesus as a great moral teacher, an example to be followed, but not God incarnate.

We want not so much a Father but a grandfather in heaven, a God who said of anything we happened to like doing, ‘What does it matter so long as they are contented?’

–C. S. Lewis The Problem of Pain

• A modern deist would have no problem even confessing the deity of Christ - as long as doing so would improve their own well-being and happiness.  It is God on my terms.  aka “Moral Therapeutic Deism.”  The therapy of whatever it takes to make me happy.  Free thinking Christianity.  Not dogmatic.  Not archaic.  Progressive.  Ironically these modern deists stumble over God’s obsession with His glory (cf Is 48.11) - which appears to them to be self-centered and narcissistic - when in fact their own worldview is entirely the same.  They are simply inserting themselves into God’s proper place in the equation.  Me first.  Isn’t this something of what the so-called progressives of our day are pursuing, a worldview where they perhaps claim to be Christians, and yet dismiss all hint of dogma in favor of prevailing cultural views?  I am the master of my fate, the captain of my ship.  Master of my domain.

• It resembles atheism in that both worldviews demand that people be absolute sovereign of their own destiny and morality.  Not only can I have what I want, but no one–least of all a non-existent or irrelevant God–has grounds to even express disapproval.  I am only held accountable to myself and a standard of natural law that rarely, if ever, enforces itself.

• Moral relativism takes it even a step farther and declares that there is no standard by which what I want can be measured at all.  Since nothing is “right,” everything is.  Do what you want, and try not to hurt anyone - unless they are standing in the way of your happiness. It is, perhaps, the ultimate example of the grandfatherly indulgence that humanity has come to expect and demand.

We also find this thinking in some unbelievers who say that because evil is not punished that God is either not good, not in control, or altogether nonexistent.  The age old problem of evil.  God will not do evil.  Evil is not punished.  So either God doesn’t exist.  Or He doesn’t care.  Or He is not in control.  Either way, I’m free.  Not strings on me.  Heading on down the primrose path.  There is a way which seems right to a man, but it leads to death.

Here’s what I know - the cross is empty, and so is the grave.  The cross is actually bloody - Jesus died on that cruel Roman cross for you and for me.  And the grave is empty.  Game-changer.  He rose on the third day - defeated death, and proved Who He claimed to be.  Jesus.  The Way, the Truth, and the Life.  The only way to God.

To this we thus find Zeph talking about the great day of the Lord.  The great and terrible day of the Lord.  We saw this in Joel (1.15, 2.11, 3.14).  And this day of the Lord is near.  It is oh so near.  Near and coming quickly.  It is coming, as surely as night follows day.  And it is coming to the whole earth.  All the earth.  Zeph uses this phrase more than any other book in the Bible.

1.2-3 - “I will remove all things from the face of the earth…and I will cut off man from the face of the earth.”

1.18 - “…for He will make a complete end, indeed a terrifying one, of all the inhabitants of the earth.”

3.8 - “…My decision is to gather the nations…and pour out on them My indignation…for all the earth will be devoured…”

Note the scope of the judgment.  Global judgment.  Yes, God is angry with His wayward people.  Yes, He has appointed the Babylonians to conquer them.  But the whole earth is guilty before Him.  All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.  And the wages of sin is death.  And yet His plan from the get go was to bless a chosen people who would extend His blessings to every nation.  To all the families of the earth.  Through the Seed of Abraham.  Because note the scope of God's salvation:

2.3 - “Seek the Lord, all you humble of the earth…”

3.9 - “For then I will [gather the nations and] give to the peoples purified lips, that all of them may call on the name of the Lord.”

Thus we see that God here is revisiting the mission strategy He laid out in Gen 12.  I will bless you, and in you ALL the families of the earth will be blessed.  Every nation.  Hearts which are completely His produce hearts which are completely His.

Look at the contrast in 3.11 vs 3.12  

• Rebels, proud, exulting, haughty, no shame
• Humble lowly, taking refuge in the name of the Lord, no wrong, no lies/deceit, no shame, mountain of the Lord

Look at 3.20 - “At that time I will bring you in, even at the time when I gather you together; indeed, I will give you renown and praise among all the peoples of the earth, when I restore your fortunes before your eyes,” says the LORD.

1Pet. 4:17 For it is time for judgment to begin with the household of God; and if it begins with us first, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God?

Here we see God’s vision for His people: 3.16-17 “In that day it will be said to Jerusalem: “Do not be afraid, O Zion; do not let your hands fall limp.  The LORD your God is in your midst, a victorious warrior.  He will exult over you with joy, He will be quiet in His love, He will rejoice over you with shouts of joy.”

The LORD our God is a rescuing hero.  Precisely what we need…

Judgment on Judah - 1.2-2.3

Judgment on nations - 2.4-3.8

-note the judgment on Nineveh/Assyria (2.13-15), who had repented under the preaching of Jonah, and note the object lesson: “So if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall.” (1Cor 10.12)

The Remnant - 3.9-20

Micah - "Hear, Hear!"

Come back!

Joel, Jonah, Amos, and Hosea use the word return (shub, H7725) some 50 times.  Now Israel is going into exile.  Judah is next.  And the next 6 prophets only use the word 9 times.  Then the last three (Daniel, Zechariah, Malachi) use it 47 times.  I urged you to come back to Me, and you didn’t, so now you’re going away, but eventually you will come back.  I will bring you back. 

There are a couple of words which Micah uses more than these other prophets.  One is the word, will.  Future tense, indicative mood.  It is the language of future fact.  I will do this.  You will experience this.  They will do this.  This will happen.  "I will" is the language of the settled and decided fact.  The language of promise.  I will, you will, they will, it will - 131 times (in 105 verses) in Micah.  This thing is as good as done.  It is going to happen, as surely as summer follows spring.  Basically at this point Israel is staring at the consequences of her waywardness dead in the face.  These WILL happen.

[read verses 1.1-7]

Another word which we see in Micah is the word, hear.  Israel (and Judah) have not been listening.  They are not listening, they are not paying attention, in other words.  Hear, hear!

What does it take to hear?

[story of Austin Chapman]

[recording of lacrimosa - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JE2muDZksP4]

Israel wasn’t listening.  But sometimes the enemy of hearing is actually noise.  Isn’t that true for our world today?  Isn’t there so much noise?  And isn’t it true that we so willingly tune in to the noise, to the cacophony of the world, rather than tune in to the sounds of heaven?

You know how they test hearing?  They put you in that small sound proof chamber, and put those headphones on you, and you’re supposed to listen for the tiny beep, that still small noise.  And it wouldn’t be so hard - but then they turn on noise.  They turn up this static noise, and it makes it so much harder to hear what you’re actually trying to hear.

[picture of an ear]

Ear, ear drum, bones, nerves, neural/cerebral processing - and then it gets handed off to the mind and the heart, which control what kind of motor responses will result from the reception of the audio signals.

Talk about complexity.  Darwin’s Black Box and irreducible complexity… When we encounter complexity in the world, our minds instinctively understand that there is intelligence behind that.  Some intelligent being accounted for that anomaly.  I call complexity an anomaly because one of the most fundamental laws of physics tells us that randomness increases.  In our current universe, randomness is always naturally increasing.  Things get more random, they break down.  Everything breaks down, doesn’t it?  Our cars.  Our houses.  Our toys.  Our bodies.  Even relationships are prone to this.  Without some measure of intervention, sooner or later everything breaks down.  And we, the people of the Book, understand that this is a result of the Fall.  All that which was designed by our Creator to last forever - now is subjected to what the Bible calls the law of corruption. 

Romans 8:21 

…that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

The entire universe is enslaved to this principle of corruption, of decay.  Randomness increases.  The Law of Corruption means Stuff breaks down - UNLESS acted upon by some external force.  Unless you introduce some energy - AND intelligence - into the equation.

[pictures of peter ellenshaw] - take a look at this picture. our fallen nature assumes this is random.  But what if I tell you that this is a painting, a bunch of paint on canvas?  What is the best explanation for how this came about?  If a bunch of paint were thrown onto a canvas, what are the chances that something like this would result?  We look at a painting, and we can easily intuit that there is intelligence behind this beauty - but then we look at the real thing, and our fallen corrupted minds are wont to dismiss the idea that there is intelligence behind this.

[picture of trees in a row]

How many trees in a row does it take before the most reasonable answer becomes intelligence as opposed to randomness?  And what if you had to stake your life on it?  What is the most reasonable explanation for that row of trees?  Just because you did not see them planted, or cannot even see the one who planted them, means nothing.  Any reasonable open-minded thinking person can see that this is no random accident.  But this is exactly what many thinking people are desperate to believe about the universe, and about humans specifically.  That we are random accidents, hopeful mutations.  And we say hopeful mutation, because outside of the Marvel Comic Universe mutants overwhelmingly tend to struggle to even survive. Much less multiply.

Let’s go back to the ear.  Look at the amazing complexity of this design.  What is the most reasonable explanation to account for this?  Random accident?  Or the product of ingenious engineering?  Complex structures do not arise from random accidents.

Psalm 94:9  

He who planted the ear, does He not hear?  He who formed the eye, does He not see?

Isaiah 42:20  

You have seen many things, but you do not observe them; Your ears are open, but none hears.

A reality with which all parents are familiar. There is more to hearing than the mere physical anatomy of the situation.  Ears are always open (normally).  They are always on.  Like Alexa/Google/Siri - unless our battery dies.  Or we get this…  

[no signal]

But when it comes to our always-on ears, our mind has the ability to tune out.  It tunes out when we’re asleep.  And it tunes out the noise when all it is is noise.  Our minds tune out what they perceive to be noise.  It’s Charlie Brown’s teacher.  Woh woh woh.  When our child is not listening to us, when they are not hearing what we are saying, it’s not that their ears are not functioning.  Ears are always on (assuming they are in fact healthy).  No, something needs to happen in the mind and heart of this audio receiver.  There is this thing called attention.  Hearing is about paying attention.  And yes, one could say that there is a cost, a price to pay when it comes to paying attention.  

Another option for when ears don’t hear is when they’re operating in a vacuum.  Sound waves cannot travel in a vacuum - did you know that?  There is no sound in space.  All those cool space explosions in Star Wars and the Marvel Universe - in space your ears wouldn’t hear a thing.  And I do think that one plausible explanation as to why some people don’t hear the Word of the Lord is that they are operating in a spiritual vacuum.

But for most of us, the challenge of hearing is that of paying attention.  And then there is this other thing called response...

Micah 6:3

“My people, what have I done to you, and how have I wearied you? Answer Me.”

God says His people's lack of response is because they have grown weary, they are tired of Him.  Impatient.  It is the law of diminishing returns.  We get tired of the same old stuff - even when it's amazing 5-star stuff.  And in our modern pop-culture age, things get old and tired and outdated not in years and decades but in minutes - and milliseconds.  And so God says, Remember!  Remember what I have done for you! 

Micah 6.4-5  

“Indeed, I brought you up from the land of Egypt and ransomed you from the house of slavery, and I sent before you Moses, Aaron and Miriam.  My people, remember now what Balak king of Moab counseled and what Balaam son of Beor answered him, and from Shittim to Gilgal - so that you might know the righteous acts of the LORD.”  

Remember!  Never forget, never lose the awe and grandeur of Who I am and all I have made and done.

And Micah says, As for me, I will watch.  I will wait for the Lord.  I will even bear with His indignation - because I have sinned against Him. (7.7-9) I will remember who He is, and who I am.

Micah 6:8  

He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, to love kindness (chesed), and to walk humbly with your God?

Walking.  Humbly with your God. 

And here’s a thing about our ears.  Healthy ears are what make it possible for humans to walk.  Structures in our middle and inner ears help us regulate our equilibrium and retain our balance.  We can’t even walk right without our ears.  And isn’t that true in a spiritual sense?  Isn’t that what the Lord is saying?  Hear!  Hear, hear!  Hear O Israel!  The Lord is God.  He is the One and Only.  And you will love Him with all your heart.  You will do what is right, and love chesed, and walk humbly with Him.  Walk humbly with Him.  Because it is so easy to grow tired of Him.  To get sidetracked.  To get out of spiritual balance.  We start paying attention to other things.  The noise!  So much noise!  We lose sight of Who He is.  What He has done - His righteous acts.  His wonders!  The grandeur and perfection and majesty of Who He is.

But there must be an initial humbling, this initial lowering of ourselves, where we initially choose to tune in, to acknowledge that God is God.  That there is a God, and I am not Him.  That He made the heavens and the earth and all that is in them.  Unbelievably complex.  Including me.  And therefore I am accountable to Him.  He is Lord, and I will bow my knee to Him.  I think this initial humbling is about removing the spiritual vacuum.  It is about emerging from the deafness of the vacuum chamber and out into the atmosphere, the world of sound, no longer merely where your physical ears can hear music and birds and all the attendant noise, but where your spiritual ears can hear the still small sound of the voice of God.  I will bend my ear and listen to Him.  I will pay attention to Him and rank myself under Him and do what He wants.  This is the price we must pay.  I will live into doing what He wants.  He HAS told us.  He has shown us.  He has made it perfectly clear.  The heavens - everything around us - is declaring that there is a God, and He is glorious.  We just need to choose whether or not we will pay attention.  Whether or not we will humble ourselves, get off our high horse and acknowledge that He is God.  And in the end we find with the saints of old, that whatever price I think I will have paid, that it was all more than worth it.  In the words of Hudson Taylor, I never made a sacrifice.

Same goes for those of us who have done that, who have made this initial acknowledgement, there is the need to keep paying attention, the daily need to walk humbly with our God.  Walking humbly with God means we defer to Him, we tune in to Him.  Every day.  Because as we see with Israel, it doesn’t take much.  It doesn’t take much to get off track, to tune out.  We’re not talking about signal loss as much as we are talking about competing stations.  Isn’t that what happens on the radio?  You have this one station you really like to listen to, and invariably it seems as tho some other station will come along, set up shop closer to where you live, and it starts crowding out the station you’ve been listening to.  That’s what happened to the Israelites.  They were camping out in Shittim, in the plains of Moab, God had brought them so far and through so much, and here Balak hires Balaam to curse them, and instead God speaks through a donkey and through Balaam and blesses His people.  They’re camping right there beside the banks of promise.  And right there [Num 25.1-3] they begin to play the harlot.

It doesn’t take much.  It doesn’t take long.  Every day brings with it a new need for fresh grace and fresh fire from the Lord, fresh spiritual fuel for our journey.  And the challenge is the same for us as it was for Israel.  HEAR, O Israel.  HEAR, O church.  Hear, hear!  Listen up!  Pay attention!  Pay attention to the Lord.  You and I and all God’s people need Him today.  We need to listen to His Word and His Spirit and depend on Him today, because apart from Him there is nothing we can do.  And the problem is not with our ears.  The problem is with our hearts.  We tune out.  Our hearts and our minds tune out - we turn the voice of the Lord into so much noise.  Woh woh woh.  Or there’s too much noise in our lives, so much noise that it’s drowning out the Lord.  We need to find ways to eliminate the extraneous noise.  Silence - that’s what we need.  The sounds of silence.  So that we can really hear.  Taking the time to listen.  

When do you do your best listening?  And where do you do your best listening?  What does it take for you to be able to hear the still small voice of the Lord?  Silence.  And solitude.  These are age-old spiritual disciplines, never more vital for our cacophonous 21st century world.

Luke 5:16 But Jesus Himself would often slip away to the wilderness and pray.

Matt. 14:23 After He had sent the crowds away, He went up on the mountain by Himself to pray; and when it was evening, He was there alone.

Mark 1:35   In the early morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house, and went away to a secluded place, and was praying there.

Luke 6:12   It was at this time that He went off to the mountain to pray, and He spent the whole night in prayer to God.

Morning - or evening.  It made no difference to Jesus.  Where is your mountain?  Where do you find your wilderness?  Your alone time?  Where do you & I find silence in our lives?  When?  Jesus would find it OFTEN.  In our day, it is an increasingly fleeting commodity, so many messages and voices and stimuli coming screaming at us - even from the moment we wake up...

Psalm 46:10  

“Cease striving and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”

We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and private: and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship.

C. S. Lewis

Inner silence is for our race a difficult achievement. There is a chattering part of the mind which continues, until it is corrected, to chatter on even in the holiest places.

C. S. Lewis

The moment you wake up each morning, all your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists in shoving it all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other, larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in.   C. S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis was heavily influenced by a Scottish author named George Macdonald.  Macdonald wrote this about heaven: he described it as "that region where there is only life, and all that is not music is silence."  It is an intriguing thought - one on which Lewis then elaborates in The Screwtape Letters.  There, the “senior demon” Screwtape reveals one very interesting plan of the devil.

Music and silence–how I detest them both!….[Hell] has been occupied by Noise–Noise, the grand dynamism, the audible expression of all that is exultant, ruthless, and virile–Noise which alone defends us from silly qualms, despairing scruples and impossible desires. We will make the whole universe a noise in the end….The melodies and silences of Heaven will be shouted down in the end. (The Screwtape Letters, 119-120, emphasis added)

In order to drive us away from God, Satan chooses to distract us with “Noise.” He knows that if we are overrun by countless distractions that we will be unable to hear the voice of God in silence.

[turning off the tv]

Jesus - "My sheep hear My voice…"

Samuel - "Speak Lord, Your servant is listening..."

Ending promises

2.12-13

4.1-7

5.2-3

7.18-20

•  Hear I: Judgment Will Come (ch 1-2)

1. 1.1 - Hear the Word of the Lord
2. 1.5 - Israel AND Judah
3. 2.1 - Woe
4. 2.3 - Thus says the Lord
5. 2.12 - A remnant

Hear II: Judgment Then Blessing (ch 3-5)

1. 3:1 - Hear Heads/Rulers
2. 3.5 - (False) Prophets
3. 3.9 - Hear the judgment on leaders (rulers, priests, prophets)
4. 4.1 - Last days
5. 4.9 - Purposeful punishment
6. 5.1 - Messiah/Bethlehem
7. 5.10 - The Pruning

Hear III: Indictment And Blessing (ch 6-7)

1. 6.1 - Hear (shama) the indictment
2. 6.3 - God’s heart
3. 6.9 - The indictment
4. 7.1 - The perishing
5. 7.7 - The watching (for the Lord instead of for calamity)
6. 7.11 - The Come Back