YHWH Breaks the Cycle of Sin—But Not the Way Once-Saved-Always-Saved Teaches | Nahum 1:7-11

To sum up where we've been so far in Nahum and is that chapter 1 verse 1 through verse 3a is about God's vengeance on Assyria. Chapter 1 verse 3b to 6 is about God's power. And as a quick reminder, when I add a letter to a verse number, it is essentially breaking a verse down into more than one part. Verse 3a then means the first half of verse 3, verse 3b means the second half of that same verse. All right, this is a common designation used by most Bible scholars and teachers to just better pinpoint which part of a verse we might be talking about. Now, one of the things that's important to me and that I try to highlight wherever appropriate is that the church, and especially the modern-day church, insists on maintaining a childlike mental picture of Christ as gentle Jesus, so very meek and mild, who is just too nice, too small, too loving to ever confront sin, violence, and evil. But the Bible reveals something else entirely. In a mature, intellectually honest reading of his character as described in the New Testament, the world as it is, so full of malignant behavior, oppression, and evil that is embraced as a new good invites nothing but divine rebuke and catastrophic wrath. Believers especially pointing a finger at typical institutional Christian leadership this is the classic biblical example of idolatry. Idolatry is remaking God into an image we prefer and refusing to acknowledge the God that is. It is this rebellious nature of Israel that caused them three exiles and untold heartache and oppression. And the church has adopted it down to the last detail. And just like for ancient Israel, blindly denies it and stubbornly refuses to repent and change. Now, I'm quite sure that what I said is a generalization. It does not describe every last church organization. But if this describes you then I plead with you to step back from your doctrines and then compare them to what the Bible says and not to your congregation's apologetics that seeks to find a way to overturn what God says in his written word. Your present and then eternal life is at stake. So, let's all take Nahum to heart just as with all the minor prophets and not convince ourselves that this is for another people who have a different and older God. It is for all of us who consider ourselves God worshipers no matter what label we identify to. Now, before we move on to the next section of Nahum chapter 1 that begins with verse 7, I I want to embed in you the thought that God's vengeance is not impulsive. It's also not rigid. His anger doesn't boil over out of control at every sin or on every crisis. As verse 3a says in such a truthful and comforting way Yahweh is slow to anger but great in power and he does not leave the guilty unpunished. When the Bible uses the phrase great in power as it references God it is an expression that is speaking of his mercy and grace. Yahweh wants to give everyone more than the benefit of doubt and plenty of time to come to their senses to repent of their sins. But there is a point of no return. When his patience and grace ends and where that is no man on earth can know for sure. When we arrive at verse 6 ending the section about the power of God it comes with a warning that make sure we all understand that God is in full control. And when he determines to enact his wrath, nothing can detour it or successfully battle against it. Nahum 1:6, who can withstand his fury? Who can endure his fierce anger? His wrath is poured out like fire, the rocks broken to pieces before it. So judgment is coming to Nineveh all of Assyria in practice. They have no hope. The Father's power to affect what he has determined is immeasurable. Let's move on to verse 7. First, we'll reread from from verse 7 to the end of chapter 1. So, open your Bibles to Nahum 1 verse 7. Adonai is good a stronghold in time of trouble. He takes care of those who take refuge in him. But with an overwhelming flood, he will make an end of Nineveh's place and darkness will pursue his enemies. What are you planning against Adonai? He is making an end of it. Trouble will not arise a second time. For like men drunk with liquor, they will be burned up like tangled thorns, like straw completely dry. Out of you, Nineveh, came one who plots evil against Adonai, who counsels wickedness. Here is what Adonai says. Though they may be many and strong and they will be cut down, they will pass. And though I made you suffer, I will make you suffer no more. Now, I will break his yoke from your necks and snap the chains that bind you. Adonai gave this order concerning you. You will have no descendants to bear your name. From the house of your God, I will cut off carved image and cast metal image. I'll prepare your grave because you are worthless. Nahum's poetic prophecy now shifts gears to pronounce God's goodness that is even greater than his vengeance. And as I have demonstrated in the past or what I call the cycle of sin even though God will warn his people then punish his people, he will always offer restoration. It's no different here in Nahum. However this is not being offered to Assyria. Rather, this is but a statement of God's nature and of his response to those who are his. The reality is that the repentance that he had offered Nineveh through the prophet Jonah was a call for Assyria to become his people. And what happened was that at first Nineveh accepted that offer. In a limited way, became God's people, but rather rapidly that faded. And they returned to their natural state of being God's enemies. This historical reality was told to the people of Judah by Yeshua in the form of a parable six centuries later and it's familiar to us all. From Matthew 13, starting at verse 1. That same day Yeshua went out of the house and sat down by the lake, but such a large crowd gathered around him that he got into a boat. And he sat there while the crowd stood on the shore. Told them many things in parables. A farmer went out to sow his seed as he sowed, some seed fell along the path, the birds came and ate it up. Others say a seed fell on rocky patches where there was not much soil and sprouted quickly because the soil was shallow, but when the sun had risen, the young plants were scorched and since the roots weren't deep, they dried up. Other seed fell among thorns which grew up and choked the plants. But others fell into rich soil produced grain a hundred or sixty or thirty times as much as been sown. Those who have ears, let them hear. See, the ancient story of Nineveh is, of course, the story of seed scattered on rocky patches with little soil. So, when they heard Jonah, there was a sudden, positive reaction, and there was repentance. But, that soil was shallow. There were no deep roots, and they just as quickly dried up. The result? The divine declaration of vengeance upon Nineveh, Assyria, with no opportunity to repent as delivered by Nahum. Now, for Yeshua in this parable and for the Old Testament in general, it's just another proof that the fanciful Christian doctrine of once saved, always saved is to be re- is revealed to be without basis. In fact, the seed of salvation or deliverance can be sown, but there will be one of four things that will happen. It will be outright rejected and die upon impact. It will at first be accepted, but no longer but but but not too long later, it'll be renounced. It'll be accepted, and all is well for a time until other cares and concerns override it. So, because the roots were only surface deep, slow death happens until the plant dies. And finally, it can be that those seeds do as intended. Their root system steadily grows deeper, which makes the plant grow stronger and bigger with eventually fruit of great quality and quantity being produced, and then these plants produce more seeds that can be planted. The lesson of Christ's parable of the sower and the story of Nineveh are virtually identical. >> [clears throat] >> Nahum 1:7. Yahweh is good, a stronghold in time of trouble. He takes care of those who take refuge in him. Now, a subtly different, but much better, interpretation of this verse is in the YLT, the Young's Literal Translation. That one says, "Good is Jehovah for a strong place in a day of distress, and he knoweth those trusting in him." Now, the difference is that the Complete Jewish Bible speaks of God taking care of those who seek refuge in him. But, the more accurate meaning is about God knowing those who trust in him. In the first case, it speaks of those who on their own volition decide to take refuge in God. In the second case, the issue is that while a strong he is a strong refuge in days of trouble, it is he that makes the determination if you are someone who trusts in him sufficiently and sufficiently enough that he knows you to be one of his. And because we're dealing with poetry, and precise meaning of the words can be secondary to the message. I think it's fair to combine the idea of God knowing and God caring for. That is, if God knows one of his own, then it's a foregone conclusion that he will be a refuge for a person. That is, if he determines he knows you, then you, too, may be admitted to his place of refuge. Listen to what Yeshua says. It's exactly the same thing, only using different words. Matthew 7:21-23. "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven. Only those who do what my Father in heaven wants. On that day, many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord, didn't we prophesy in your name? Didn't we expel demons in your name? Didn't we do many miracles in your name?' Then I will say to their faces, 'I never knew you. Get away from me, you workers of lawlessness.'" It is not our determination that because we go to church or synagogue, and we pray, and we say all the right things, that on the day of judgment, God will rescue us and be a refuge for us. Rather, just as we find in Nahum, God must know you. Yeshua will make the determination if your words and actions mean that he knows you. No matter how many times, no how strong you make claims that you're saved in his name. Now, let me ask you a question. If you bow down to the golden calf, calling Yeshua, insist that he saved you. If you pray to him and mention his name in everything you do, will that make you known to him? Answer isn't that hard to come by. It's no. Why? Because all the while you were thinking you were doing good, you were committing idolatry. The entire time you thought you were praying to the Father and the Son, you were praying to an image of your creation, that golden calf, and you were depending upon that image of them that you preferred and were probably taught, rather than to who they really are. There is no salvation in that. Only darkness. And we learn throughout God's word that this is what the majority of people will do. Certain that they're right and immune. Only a remnant will come out of that Babylon religious system, return to God's word, and live a life of obedience towards God, joined to the covenant he made with Israel. And the only means to do that is full faith and trust in Yeshua, God's Son, not the one most of us have been told about by our traditional faith leaders, but rather the true Messiah, Yeshua, whose attributes and character is found only in the Bible. Now, the first few words of this verse are tov Yahweh. Good is Yahweh. Now, because this word tov is central to the creation narrative of Genesis, then it transforms into playing an important role in legal terminology, especially in God's legal covenants with Israel. So, when good is used in reference to God, then it's a unique, special, and highest form of good that is personified in Yahweh. Let's again see that thought carried over to the New Testament and Yeshua in Mark 10: verses 17 and 18. As he was starting on his way, a man ran up and knelt down in front of him and asked, "Good Rabbi, what should I do to obtain eternal life?" And Yeshua said to him, "Why are you calling me good? No one is good except God." If a believer knows neither the Torah nor the prophets, it's near hopeless to try to understand why Yeshua would say such an odd thing as no one is good except God. But, with this knowledge, it now makes much more sense. Nahum 1:8. But, with an overwhelming flood, he will make an end of Nineveh's place, and darkness will pursue his enemies. There's interesting This is a interesting verse, at least partially, because of something that happened historically. The term overwhelming flood is, on the one hand, a metaphor for the unstoppable power of God's anger and and wrath. And knowing the way these prophets tend to work, knowing one another's prophecies, if not at times actually knowing one another on a personal level, it is very likely meant to correspond to something Isaiah said about Assyria. In Isaiah 8:8, it will sweep through Judah, flooding everything and passing on. It will reach up to the neck, and its outspread wings will fill the whole expanse of the land. God is with us. So, Isaiah speaks of Assyria as a flood overwhelming Judah. Now, Nahum speaks of God as a flood overwhelming Assyria. This is not a coincidence. Yet, there is another side to this. The Hebrew word being translated flood or or torrent is shetep. Taken as it is, it is indeed a literal term. It means a torrent or a a moving and destructive flood of water. And further, Nineveh is labeled as a specific place where the flood occurs. Now, let me give you this verse to you in a dynamic way that probably says it better. In a way that we speak in modern times in the West. With a flood sweeping over, he, God, will make a complete devastation of Nineveh. See, I see Nahum 1:8 as a prelude to what we will read early on in chapter 2 about what happens to Nineveh, the capital or at least the principal city of Assyria. In Nahum 2 6 through 9 says the king of Nineveh assigns his officers. They stumble as they march. They hurry to its wall and set up shields to protect the battering ram. The gates of the rivers are opened and the palace melts away. Its mistress is stripped and carried away. Her handmaids moan. They sound like doves as they beat their breasts. Nineveh is like a pool whose water ebbs away. Stop. Stop. But none of it goes back. See, this adds more credence to this prophecy that the flood is both a metaphor and it's real. That is, an actual flood of water that will destroy Nineveh and at the same time, this is also a torrent of God's anger. Diodorus Siculus a famed Greek historian writes in his Bibliotheca Historica that indeed the walls of Nineveh were destroyed by floodwaters due to the diverting of the Tigris River. He actually said it was the Euphrates, but in reality, Nineveh was built next to the Tigris. Nineveh was a huge city of at least 150,000 people. 15 enormous entry gates were built into its tall walls. It had almost eight continuous miles of city walls. A bit less than 2 miles of it was built along the riverbank of the Tigris. The Tigris did flood from time to time. And so diverters were built to help protect the city. It seems that at about the same time Babylon had joined with the Medes to attack Assyria and an unusual amount of rainfall happened. The river flooded but the diverters were opened too late. The floodwaters undermined the entire length of the walls along the riverside and down they went. This allowed a way in for Babylon and their ally, the Medes and in a most dramatic way, Nahum's prophecy about Nineveh involving a flood was fulfilled. Well, back to chapter 1 verse 8. The flood that will hit Nineveh will result in the end of it, meaning the end of Assyria. The word the Complete Jewish Bible translates to end nearly all other translations make complete or a full end. The word is kalah. And it means complete destruction. It will no longer and never again exist. In verses 8, 9, and 10, we'll also find the familiar uh the similar Hebrew word male meaning completely used repetitively. So, the message is that Yahweh is going to obliterate Nineveh as he did with Sodom. It expresses permanence the finality of God's wrath. This message works in complementary fashion to the hidden acrostic we find in verses 1 through 3, which is I am Yahweh. So, first God explains who he is. I am Yahweh. Then goes on to tell Nineveh what the completeness of their destructions shall be at his command. This is Yahweh against Asher the god of Assyria. And Yahweh is not only the victor, but Asher can't even put up a good fight. Further, Asher's nation shall disappear from the face of the earth. And for the ancient Middle East mind this means that the god Asher has either been destroyed or has no further purpose or influence on earth. Yahweh has proved his superiority over Asher. It is actually a latent response to a taunt from Israel that has long oppressed Israel, or rather a taunt from Assyria that's long oppressed Israel found in Micah. This is the prophet that preceded Nahum in Micah 7:10. My enemies will see it too and shame will cover those who said to me, "Where's Yahweh, your god?" I'll gloat over them as they're trampled underfoot like mud in the streets. Well Yahweh, Israel's god, has just answered the question. But even more, notice the last few words of Micah 1:10. It is trampled underfoot like mud in the streets. And how is Nineveh to be destroyed? By a flood of water. Which of course turns the streets of Nineveh into mud. Okay. One final thing about verse 8. Notice it speaks of darkness pursuing God's enemies, here identified as Assyria. This darkness is in Hebrew hoshek. It's a spiritual kind of darkness as when we kind of look around and speak of the darkness of the world in the 21st century. It's the same kind of darkness that overflowed Egypt when God was throwing blow upon blow against Egypt to force Pharaoh to let his people go. That is, it was not layil which essentially means the type of darkness that happens every night as a natural phenomenon caused by the setting of the sun. Mm. This is evil. The kind of darkness that causes the hair on your neck to stand up on end. An evil darkness that you feel. It is the lack of God's divine enlightenment and goodness. This is Assyria's fate. Nahum 1:9 What are you planning against Yahweh? He's making an end of it. Trouble will not arise a second time. Now, this verse continues the theme of the completeness of Assyria's demise and destruction. The JPS Jewish Publication Society Bible does a superior job of translating this into modern English. It says, "What do ye devise against Yahweh? He will make a full end. Trouble shall not rise up a second time." You know, the opening word is mah. Best way to translate it in this case is whatever. Now, there's some disagreement among scholars whether this is indeed a continuation of God's message to Assyria or it has changed and now he's talking to Judah. See, the issue is the grammar in which technically the subject of this message is unclear. But as we discussed in our introduction to to uh Nahum Okay. This is only because Western academics do not take into consideration the realities of Hebrew poetry. So, they're looking for full and precise syntactic conformity the way Westerners approach literature. Bottom line, there is no issue here. Clearly, Yahweh is still talking to Assyria. Now, the message is it doesn't matter whatever the plan is that someone might devise to defeat Yahweh, thus defeating his people Israel. There is no strategy. No other power, earthly or among the gods, to stop him. Assyria, having for centuries been a Middle East superpower Well, they don't believe that the defeat is possible. In Isaiah the arrogant king of Assyria sent a message to Judah with Rabshakeh the commander of Assyria's military and he boasted this that we find in Isaiah 36 starting with verse 18. Beware of Hizqiyahu, Hezekiah. He is only deluding you when he says, "Yahweh will save us. Has any God of any nation ever saved his land from the power of the king of Asher? Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of of Sepharvaim? Did they save Samaria from my power? Where is the God of any of these countries that has saved his country from my power so that Yahweh might be able to save Jerusalem from my power? So, these words, bearing this thought, will happen again. Perhaps sooner than the believing world is ready for. It will come from the lips of the Antichrist as he assumes his throne. And the response of Yahweh will also be the same as it was for that other false god, Asher. Now, to continue in verse 9, the final words that the trouble that Assyria causes shall not rise up a second time just further stresses the theme of finality. In so many ways, what Nahum is prophesying and what the Lord is explaining is the way the entire end times will work itself out. See, everything that God has said and planned and done for millennia after millennia will finally come about for the whole world to see. The end times is all about finality. The evil things Satan has been doing and the wicked ways of humanity that God has dealt with over and over again come to a complete end. To quote Nahum in verse 9, "Trouble shall not rise up the second time." I mean, what a hope! A promise that we can live by and for every day. This is why God's believers can awaken every morning to a dysfunctional world and still harbor joy. Now, because Nahum is such an unusual document, and a particularly challenging document that opens up so many avenues of thought and and and exploration, I want to detour for only a moment to use this part of verse 9 as a teaching point. To demonstrate how Gentile Christian doctrine sprang up and how radically it can change what is otherwise clear biblical truth in order to separate itself from the faith of the Hebrews. Origen, a Gentile believer from Alexandria, Egypt, was alive and influential in determining the canon of the New Testament, which was established shortly after the beginning of the 3rd century, almost two centuries after Yeshua lived and died. Now, he was regarded then as a great theologian, later as an early church father. Although the Jewish believers at that time didn't tend to hold that same mindset about him. His view of the ending of verse 9 was significantly different from anything the Hebrews had ever interpreted or taught. He decided that trouble shall not rise up the second time had to do with God's grace and forgiveness through Christ and little to do with God's vengeance upon Assyria. Okay? That is, he determined that it meant that sinners would only be punished once for any sins they committed, and those sinners even included Satan. Once that punishment happened, the sinner, including the devil himself, would be restored to his or her previously purified state. Here we see one of the rationales or justifications for what would, many many centuries later, become a church doctrine among some large denominations of once saved, always saved. Origen is considered by many Christian scholars to be a huge contributor to, or perhaps the primary originator of, what is called Christian apologetics. He was a prolific writer who defended the growing body of Gentile believers' doctrines in the 3rd century and forward, which eventually led to the creation of the Constantinian church in the 4th century and the basis for their doctrines that solidified a full split from Jewish believers not only by belief and doctrine, but also by law. I only point this out to demonstrate just how early in history these sorts of erroneous beliefs began and what tremendous influence they had and continue to have on the church. Nahum 1:10. For like men drunk with liquor, they will be burned up like tangled thorns, like straw completely dry. Time to learn another technical word that matters. Before we discuss that, we find in Hebrew this verse that begins with a tiny word, ki, that is nearly always translated as for. In Hebrew poetry, however, this word is used for an extended purpose. It is placed as an important at important points within the narrative and typically indicates the beginning or ending of a canto. A canto is but a section or a significant structural division in the poem, similar to, but not exactly the same as a paragraph in Western literature. We can think of a canto as just a complete unit of thought. I stress, this applies to Hebrew poetry. Using Hebrew poetry rules, the same word, ki, used in regular prose does not operate the same way as it does in poetry. So, in our case, Nahum 1, first first chapter, 1 through 10 is a canto. Well, it's essentially a psalm. Some might also call it a hymn. And since verse 10 begins the final remark before the psalm ends, then it is indicated by using the Hebrew word ki. Even though ki can mean a few different things, whether it's used in Hebrew prose or poetry, what it means here is on account of. That is, it's causal. What came before it has been spoken, now as a result all that has been said, the following will happen. Now, of course, one must determine exactly where the beginning point of what came before it is. And here, what came before it begins with verse 1. Now, this is so very important to our understanding. J.M.P. Smith, back in 1911, said about this section of Nahum, "No translation affording any connected sense is of ordinary grammar interpretation." That is, until a much better understanding of Hebrew poetry was acquired, something that was only in its formative stage in 1911. The grammar as it is as it was currently understood could not allow any scholar to make any sense of what was written. That understanding is much advanced in 2026 to that time. Now, we can pay less attention to the grammatical eye candy that can throw us off track, more to the importance of the structure and rhythms of Hebrew poetry so we can attain the intended meaning. And if I may, this is why I pulled you through the knothole in our introduction to Nahum so as to explain why that complex knowledge of structure is the key to deciphering what Nahum has to say. Now, the Complete Jewish Bible has have a couple of others reordered the words of this verse. Now, there was no real harm in meaning, but see, it further obscures that structural purpose that Nahum originally created. So, here's what we get when we use that original word order. For they may for they be like tangled thorns and be drunken according to their drink, they shall be devoured as stubble fully dry. The first question then is, who's the they that's like tangled thorns? And if we use strict grammar rules, there is a Smith said no solution. But because we're dealing with ancient Hebrew poetry, because we can know for certain that we're reading the last line of a prophetic Psalm about the destruction of Nineveh, representing all Syria, then it's easily discernible that the they is either Nineveh or Assyria, likely both. In the early 2000s, Julia Myers O'Brien made an observation about this passage that I think is actually right on the mark. She said, "The verse, like the images it employs, twists and staggers in a drunken manner." Yes, exactly. The structure was made within a certain amount of intentional staggering around. Instead of being straightforward, to give one the the emotion or sense of drunkenness when reading it or hearing it. Now, moving away for a bit from the technical aspects of Nahum, the overall sense of this verse is meant to paint Nineveh as easily combustible as a stack of super dry thorns. And is helpless, irrational as a drunk could be moments before he finally passed out. God promises confusion to his enemies when he deals with them in his righteous wrath. People and nations that wind up in this state have jumped into a doom loop. They can't think logically. Their spiritual path to knowledge is blocked. They live in a condition of delusion, and there is no longer a way out. Thus, they are weak, can easily be defeated because they're in process of destroying themselves. However, all of this is because of what God has decided to do to them. See, what we might think of as being self-induced is actually God-induced. It was induced because they refused to obey or to acknowledge Yahweh. So, God gave them up permanently. And this is the result. The completeness, the finality of Assyria's demise and destruction is emphasized once again in the structure of this verse. The final words of this verse, in in their Hebrew word order, is male, which means completely. And we've seen a few verses earlier how the terms male and kala, which means a full end, are interspersed throughout this song. So, the structure pretty well demands that the final word is male in order to end this canto. Verse 11 then begins a new canto. "Out of you, Nineveh, he came one who plots evil against Yahweh, who counsels wickedness." Now, before we incorporate verse 11 into the teaching, I want to sum up what we have encountered in the opening 10 verses of book of Nahum. I can do no better than how Elizabeth Achtemeier put it back in 1986. She says this about this this Psalm. "We have here only a little less than a complete presentation of the biblical witness to God's person, the testimony to his covenant love and to his patient mercy, his intimate knowledge of his own and his protection of them, his just lordship over his world, and his might in maintaining his rule, his specific, but also eschatological defeat of all who would challenge his sovereign." What we see in that opening 10 verses sets the tone for all of Nahum. It seems to surprise, or more more truthfully, fly right over the heads of its Christian readers who believe that all of these characteristics of Yahweh never existed prior to Christ. Thus making Yeshua the start of a new era of God, or maybe even an entirely new God. Yet from Genesis forward, these are the attributes of the Father repeated hundreds of times. Already, long before Nahum, God's character as we find it in Nahum was established in the Psalm of David. We shall end our time together today with this Psalm, which so greatly parallels this hymn to open the book of Nahum in Psalm 99, beginning in verse 1. "Yahweh is king, let the peoples tremble. He sits enthroned on the cherubim, the cherub cheruby. Let the earth shake. Yahweh is great in Zion, he is high above all the peoples, let them praise your great and fearsome name, he is holy. A mighty king who loves justice. You established fairness and justice and righteousness in Jacob. Exalt Yahweh our God. Prostrate yourselves at the foot at his footstool, for he is holy. Moshe and Aaron among his koanim, Samuel among those who call on his name, called on Yahweh, and he answered them. And he spoke to them in the in the column of cloud. And they kept his instruction and the law that he gave them. Yahweh our God, you answered them. To them, you were a forgiving God, although you took your vengeance on their wrongdoings. Exalt Yahweh our God, bow down towards his holy mountain, for Yahweh our God is holy." Next time we'll open with Nahum chapter 1 verse 11. Okay. For more teachings of real Bible study and to rediscover God's word with Tom Bradford, visit Torah Class today on the web, streaming TV, or download the Torah Class mobile app.