Major Points from the Minor Prophets

So starting, from verse 1, chapter 1 verse 1. A prophecy concerning nineveh, the book of the vision of Nahum The Alkeshait. The lord is a jealous and avenging god. The lord takes vengeance and is filled with wrath. The lord takes vengeance on his foes and vents his wrath against his enemies.

The lord is slow to anger, but great in power. The lord will not leave the guilty unpunished His way is in the whirlwind and the storm and clouds are the dust of his feet. He rebukes the sea and dries it up He makes all the rivers run dry, Bashan and Carmel wither and the blossoms of Lebanon fade. The mountains quake before him and the hills melt away. The earth trembles at his presence.

The world and all who live in it. Who can withstand his indignation? Who can endure his fierce anger? His wrath is poured out like fire. The rocks are shattered before him.

The lord is good. A refuge in times of trouble. He cares for those who trust in him, but with an overwhelming flood, he will make an end of nineveh. He will pursue his foes into the realm of darkness. Well, good evening to you all.

If you can have Nahum open in front of you, that will really help we're continuing our series going through the minor profits and picking out a kind of major theme in each 1 of them. And tonight, we're going to be looking obviously at Nahum. There's a little diagram that we can put up on the screen just to remind you. You can't take that all in. I know the right small, but it just gives you some idea if you click it on 1 more time where we are on the timeline there.

So we are, if you're interested to know, we are after the northern kingdom of Israel has been taken into captivity and actually sort of been absorbed. And but we are before the fall of Jerusalem where the southern kingdom of Judah are taken. That's just to give you some sort of orientation as to where we are, but different for this particular book, Nahum's not written to either of them really. Nahum is addressing the nation of Assyria and more specifically the city of nineveh, nineveh as it's more properly called. So let's pray and then, we'll look at this together.

Further, we do thank you for your word. We thank you even for the really hard bits of it, the bits that, we don't like reading, perhaps, the bits that are harsh to our ears. But we pray lord that as we look at this book together, we will leave here tonight with a clearer and more accurate picture of what you are really like, and that we will see the glory of your love, your grace, and your justice in this book. So, lord, please speak to us and help us to hear tonight. We ask in your name.

Amen. So if you open up, the book of Nam and skim through it, I mean, you had a sample, read to you just now. Actually, that was some of the nicest bits of the book of Nam. The rest of it is it's quite hard reading. It's judgment, judge judgment judgment all the way through with that little glimmer of light that we read in, like verse 7 of chapter 1.

Very little else in the whole book And so that's the flavor of Nam the profit from what we can tell, and I hope, in some ways, I actually hope that that will be the flavor of what you hear tonight. So no apologies for that. Some things are hard to hear, and Nam's message to, if you're a ninovite, was very hard. To here. Now recently, I was speaking at, high school Christian union, just local to here, on the topic of doesn't the old testament contradict the new testament?

That was the question I've been given. And, 1 major area where people perceive a contradiction in the Bible is in the character of god that they see in Old Testament and New Testament, not necessarily see But in the old testament, they think of god as portrayed as dictating rules and getting angry Whereas in the new testament, god, they see god as being portrayed more as forgiving and kind and gentle. That's people's perception, and people perceive things that way largely I'm convinced because they haven't really read the Bible. Because the love and the incredible patience of god are written all through the whole of the old testament. You can see them.

And the new testament, the latter part of the Bible, clearly presents Jesus as judge before whom all will eventually stand. The Bible declares that god, father, son, and holy spirit, so god to godhead, god is love. We know that. We probably like that verse, that's probably up on your wall. Love is the constant heartbeat of god is what that verse is saying from from John's epistle.

God never stops acting out of love. Love informs god's every action because god is love in his essence. It's a central attribute of god. And yet, god is full of wrath towards sinners. Now, that was very clear in those opening verses we just had read from the start of Nam, wasn't it?

Very, very clear. He's wrathful towards sinners. God of wrath then and god of love and some people cannot reconcile how those 2 things can be can be true at the same time. And my hope is we look at this book together tonight in the short time we got is that you'll start to see how those 2 things just sit together, handing glove. And so I hope that we will get a better grasp of what god is really like.

So we're told in the opening lines of chapter 1, if you take a look down at it, that this little book is an oracle concerning Ninnaveh. Ninnaveh. Now, we, we took a little trip to the British Museum yesterday, my family and I, and looked at some of the exhibits there. There's a lot of stuff on on Ninnovate. It was a fabulous, fabulous city.

It was in fact the greatest city of the mighty Assyrian empire, the the superpower of the time. And in its heyday, there's some pictures up there. The circumference of its walls was some 8 miles. Now outside the walls was also City. But this is just the inner part.

8 miles of walls surrounding an area of nearly apparently 2000 acres which was accessed through 15 substantial gates like the 1 you've got there on your screen. Think of a city like think of visiting somewhere like that. It would have been staggering, wouldn't it? And this awesome place was home to an unrivaled superpower, an unrivaled military power of its day. And also the thriving center of commerce and trade in the world.

Their city had a system of canals and waterways. They brought fresh water in from mountains, dozens of miles away. And this civilization and and nineveh actually both the first freshwater aqueduct to bring this water in. So it was a marvel. The whole place was a marvel.

Historians tell us it was King Sernakarib, who made nineveh, a truly magnificent city, and he did that around 700 BC. He laid out new streets and squares. He built the great Southwest Palace, which was called the Palace without a rival. I think that's what he called his palace, palace without a rival, the plan of which has been recovered and the overall dimensions of it are about 503 by 242 meters, half a kilometer long this palace. That's quite the and how big your house is, that's pretty big, isn't it?

It comprised of at least 80 rooms, many of which were lined with with sculptures and statuary. And the city was full of colossal statues, like there's a picture coming up here. And you can see these in the British Museum, these massive statues all over the city. Huge monuments. It was twice the size of Babylon, the 1 that we all really know the name of, Babylon, the city, with a population of some 150000 people at its peak.

It's a marvel. And you can go to the British Museum. I don't need to tell you any more about it. But picture the city. This is where this is who the letters addressed to.

This is who the preaching is addressed to here. But first of all, I want to talk to you about the wickedness of this city. So we've heard about the city, but what about the people? Well, perhaps you'll recall that this is the same place that the prophet Jonah was called to go to. He was sent there.

And the book of Jona, if you remember, opens with god's declaration in the second verse of the first chapter. That the wickedness of nineveh has come up before me, says god, and therefore you need to go, because their wickedness has really stood out. Come up before me, you need to go. So we know that even back in those days, the ninevites stood out as a particularly wicked people in the world. But, we know the story of Jona, don't we?

Under the preaching of Jona, the city genuinely humbled themselves before God. That point's really rubbed in, isn't it? As a whole city, they cast themself on god's mercy. They even put sackcloth and ashes on the animals, didn't they? From the king to the poorest citizen, even the animals, they put on the sackcloth, they ate no food, and they begged mercy from god and god spared the city we're told.

And that's interesting to know because nearly a hundred years later, Nam pots onto the scene and has to go back, has to speak again to the city of So it's a hundred years after that. And the generation who had turned from violence and wickedness and sought the mercy of god back in the days of Jonah, they had long gone. Despite humbling themselves in those days, the people never really gave up the idols that they had, the gods that they served, marduk, and ishtar. And so long before before long, the people actually turned back to these satanic deities that took their hearts again and led them straight away from god. And Nam is preaching his message during the last few years before Judah is taken into slavery.

And, Assyria who never actually took Jerusalem did manage to swallow everything else up. If you look at a map, it's a it's a it's a bizarre picture that you get. You get the Assyrian Empire covering covering a great swath of the world. And this tiny little island in the middle of it with Jerusalem and a tiny little bit of Judea that they didn't take. So this is a strange map, but they were Judah was, at this time, this tiny little island holding out against the mega mega superpower.

Firstly, first thing you need to know about the people of nineveh then, these conquerors. Firstly, they were a violent people. Name declares the word of the lord in chapter 3 verse 1, have a look at it, and he speaks this way. The lord speaks this way about the city. Woe to the city of blood, full of lies, full of plunder, never without victims.

The Assyrians, you see, were particularly brutal conquerors. They were a culture desensitized, we're told by the historians, desensitized to violence. It was a national trait that they they learned to show no remorse. About their actions. 1 historian writes this, it's worth just getting this will get you a flavor of it.

Listen, he says, the kings of Assyria tormented the miserable world. They exalt to record how space failed for corpses How unpairing a destroyer is their goddess ishtar, how they flung away the bodies of soldiers like so much clay. How they made pyramids of human heads, how they burned cities, how they filled populous lands with wealth and devastation. How they reddened broad desert deserts with carnage of warriors, how they scattered whole countries with corpses of their defenders as with chaff. How they impaled heaps of men on stakes and strewed the mountains and choked rivers with dead bones, how they cut off the hands of kings, and nailed them on the walls and left their bodies to rot with bear and dogs on the entrance gates of cities, how they employed nations of captives in making bricks in fetters.

How they cut down warriors like weeds or smoke them like wild beasts in the forest and covered pillars with the flayed skins of rival monarchs. So, give you a flavor of what nineveh's like. Now, I've got in the back of my mind that my children draw pictures whenever I preach. Okay. I don't want to see pictures of that.

But do you get the idea? This was a brutally violent nature nation. And even the surrounding nations are shocked and appalled, by the level of violence endemic in the city of nineveh. See, it doesn't even take having the law of Moses, which the people of god would have had, to tell you that the ninevate, the ninevites, they've crossed a line somewhere a long while back. Nahan finishes his chapter with god's declaration.

Just take a look at it at the end of chapter 3 verse 13. He says, the lord says, the lord says, all who hear the news of you, after all these judgments come on them, clap their hands at your fall. Who has not felt your endless cruelty? See, the judgment of god against this nation gets a round of applause from the nations around them. That's how bad they were.

And they weren't an unviolent people group around them either. So the first thing, they were a violent people, and that's why God's wrath is coming on them. The second reason that god's wrath is coming on them is they were proud people. Well, it's hard not to be proud when you're on the top when you're, you know, squashing everybody else, isn't it? Nam's prophecy refers to a number of times, in the prophecy to nineveh's fortresses.

You read through it. You've got fortresses and walls and shields. You've got offices in the army referred to as young lions. Yeah. It's quite an evocative imagery, isn't it?

We were looking at, pictures from the walls in nineveh of lion hunts. They saw themselves as a sort of lion people who hunt lions. They are lions that you don't mess with And this this pride makes people complacent and deluded, especially before an almighty god. Manmade security counts for precisely nothing when god is against you. Does it?

Manmade security is not worth anything, if god's against you. And chapter 2 paints the picture of a forthcoming invasion against the great city. Now it might be slightly hard to follow this, but let me try and walk you through it. Take a look at chapter 2 verse 5. See if you can follow what's going on here.

Ninnovate summons her picked troops Yet they stumble on their way. They dash to the city wall. The protective shield is put in place. The river gates are thrown open and the palace collapses. That sounds like just a random collection of statements, doesn't it?

But in vivid language actually there, what you're seeing is complacent troops. They've seen the enemy coming. You remember the the city expanding way beyond the walls. They've seen the city, the enemy coming, but it hasn't bothered them. Because they're behind these great walls and these great gates.

The siege is laid, but they're not bothered because their walls are impenetrable. And so they continue on in their revelry, this is what the historians tell us, until the unthinkable happens. 1 rest historian writes this about the Fall of Nineveh, after a 3 month siege, rain fell in such abundance that the waters of the Tigris inundated part of the city and overturned 1 of its walls for a distance of 20 Stadia. So, you know, that you've got these soldiers complacently sitting having their party thinking they're so safe. And then suddenly the the wall collapses and so they stumble to their defenses, but everything's already lost.

Safe from men, perhaps but not from god as the river swells and takes the wall out. Nam continues, and look at what Nam says in chapter 2 verse 7. Mark these words, it is decreed. Doesn't matter how many walls you put up if it's been decreed by the lord almighty. It is decreed god has spoken that nineveh be exiled and carried away.

Pride counts for nothing, does it? So they were a violent people. They were a proud people. Thirdly, the judgment is coming because they're a greedy people. Have a look at chapter 2 verse 9.

Plunder the silver. Plunder the gold, the supply is endless, the wealth from all its treasures. Now that's the cry of the invading army. Coming into the city as they help themselves to the loot, to the riches of nineveh, this great city because Syria has swept through the nations sacking all of the towns and cities and taking everything as plunder. Like locusts, fueled with insatiable greed, they strip the nations bear, leaving them in poverty, bringing all the booty back to nineveh, and it's all blood money.

It's blood money that they've taken from people they've slain, but now the tables are turned in this verse. Nineveh is pictured actually in chapter 2, like a bath tub, when the plug is pulled. Do you see that? All their substance, all that they contain just gurgles down the plug hole. Amazing.

So they were a greedy people. Finally though, and this is an interesting 1. They were their judgement coming on them because they are a vile people. They're just vile. It's not my word.

Have a look at what it says. Where is this at the end of chapter chapter 1. I've written the verse down. Let me read it. The Lord has given a command concerning you nineveh.

Chapter 1 verse 14. You will have no descendants to bear your name. I will destroy the images and idols that are in the temple of your gods I will prepare your grave for you are vile. You are vile. You see, you become like the thing you worship.

And what does nineveh worship? Nineveh worships a collection of false gods, chief amongst whom was the vile goddess ishtar. We just heard about her. Didn't we in that historians report? Ishtar, the unsparing destroyer, as they called her.

You know, that's what's what's so great about Ishtar, she's unsparing. She has no mercy. Clearly, a god, a goddess of merciless violence, a very ancient goddess going right back to the founding of the city She was the goddess of war and love. That's what she was officially, and by love, read lust, war and lust. And after pronouncing a terrible woe on the city in chapter 3 verses 1 to 3, have a look at it.

Many casualties piles of dead, bodies without number, people stumbling over corpses. That's graphic, isn't it? Well then in verse 4, the root cause. Comes out is made public. Verse 4, chapter 3, all because of the wanton loss lust of a prostitute alluring the mistress of sorceries who enslaved nations by her prostitution and peoples by her witchcraft.

See, this is a city that's given themselves, like a prostitute, body and soul to demonic gods. And like their gods, they violently suck the nations dry and enslaved them. Make no mistake. Even though the idles of Nineover are just made of metal and wood and whatever else bits of rock, cunningly fashioned, behind them, the Bible tells us, behind those idols are demons. It's demonic.

So there are vile people. Nynovites were violent, proud, greedy, and vile. That is not a place to book your next summer holiday, is it? But this is no laughing matter because look again at those verses from chapter 1. Chapter 1 verse 4, he, that is the lord, rebukes the sea and dries it up.

He makes all the rivers run dry, basin, and calmer wither, and the blossoms of Lebanon fade. The mountains quake before him, and the hills melt away. The earth trembles at his presence. The world and all who live in it Who can withstand his indignation? Who can endure his fierce anger?

His wrath is poured out like fire. The rocks are shattered before him. Now, if you're a god that if you're a nation that that god is angry with, it's it's trouble, isn't it? And so my second point, really, this evening, as we've looked at the wickedness of nineveh, nineveh, is to look at the anger of god against sin, the rock of the lord. And I guess for most of us, even those who like to think the best of people, you'd be, I hope, at this point, pretty much won over to the fact that if god was going to judge nineveh, then there's a good case for it.

Right? They've pretty much got it coming as a nation, certainly as a leadership of the nation. The world would be a nicer place, let's admit it without that brutal regime in it. So we're sort of it sits okay with us perhaps. But of course, it is good to stop and think for a second just before we continue on, and think about ourselves as a culture.

Are we following the same gods as an Inovise? Do we do that? That sounds like a strange question, doesn't it? But are we a culture that loves violence, do you think? Just possibly.

Those who've been around a little bit longer will get a better sense of this, I guess. Have we are we turning violent as a culture? Are we proud perhaps of our independence from god Do we like to make our own rules up, shake our fists at him in rebellion? Do things our way instead of his. Chuck away his word.

Don't care about what he says. Are we greedy and without thought for those who are plunged into poverty? Do we do we not really think about them? So that we can live our life of luxury. Is that our culture?

Are we vile? Do we give ourselves to our life Do we do that as a culture? Actually, leave those questions hanging there. You see, we may not be quite as far gone as the ninevites, you may be, you may want to argue that. But I think we're on the same kind of path, aren't we as a as a culture?

Western culture, and we should have no part in the sins of our nation. We should surely as god's people be praying for our country because these are this is what I am saying. These are the very things that provoke the wrath of god. And we should take that very, very seriously. Are we pleading for our nation?

Now, These blood thirsty ninnovites that we've had sort of painted for us, those who rule by terror and slaughter the innocent Well, those sorts of people along with, you know, Hitler and Polpot and Mengeler and Stalin and Mal Well, maybe you'd want to say they should be judged, they should be damned for what they've done, but we're not all like them, are we? We're not, are we? Well, no, we're we're not. I guess no 1 here has done the kind of evil that those men did. I hope not.

But here's the thing, that doesn't let us off the hook according to god's word. First of all, the Bible tells us that god's anger is not just reserved for people who sink to the depths of nineveh. It's not about the extent you see. And the magnitude of our sin as much as it's about the fact that god is painted as having an absolute 0 tolerance for sin of any kind in the Bible. So let's not let ourselves off the hook.

The Bible says of God that his eyes are too pure to look on evil, he cannot tolerate wrongdoing. The prophet Habercuck says. And our first mistake in thinking about this is usually that well, it's it's got 2 sides to it. It's usually we underestimate the seriousness of our own sin We don't get how big it is. We think that our sin is trivial and not really worth making so much of a fuss about.

We're not an innovite, But that is flipside is because we grossly underestimate also the holiness and the purity of god. Is 0 tolerance of sin. Second issue we have with this is that we understand the problem of sin wrongly. We understand sin back to front. We think the sinfulness of a person is measured by the amount and by the seriousness of the offences that they commit.

I mean, after all, that's the way that our justice system works, isn't it? But Jesus identifies the problem completely differently. Listen to what Jesus says in Mark chapter 7. He said it's what comes out of a person that defiles them. For it is from within, out of a person's heart that evil thoughts come Section of morality theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance, and folly, all those evils come from inside and defile a person.

Do you see what Jesus is saying? Those are all actions that come, but actually the heart of them, the source of them is in here. We do not become sinners by sinning, says Jesus. We sin because we're sinners. You seen that?

It's the other way around. You've got to get that. I'll say it again. We don't become sinners by sinning. We sin because we are sinners at heart.

So as an apple tree can't help but bring forth apples, because that's what's coded into its DNA and into its nature. So also, we can't help but produce sinful fruit from our sinful hearts. It's our DNA. Sin will work its way out 1 way or another. It'll get out from here.

That's what's ha that's what'll happen. A third issue that we have is that because of that because that's true, because we are sinful right down to the core, is 1 of the issues we don't get, we are under god's wrath. We're under god's wrath because of that, not simply because of the things we do. I mean, it's, there's a harrowing passage that you read through ephesians chapter 2. It's just so blunt and brutal, isn't it?

Dead in your transgressions and sins. And listen, by nature, says the apostle Paul, by your nature, not by the things you do, but by your nature, you are a child of wrath. That's hard, isn't it? Hard to hear? But that is the testimony of the Bible from cover to cover about you and I.

God is patiently, the Bible says, patiently, not pouring all of the rough out or his off rough out on us right now, but storing it. Make no mistake. It is stored. And it will be fully revealed and dispensed on the final day of god's judgment. That was the clear message of Jesus.

The 1 that we think of as just being all about love, love, love, love, love, and he is. But that was also his clear message. Do you know about 13 percent of apparently, of Jesus' recorded words in the Bible are about judgment and hell. That's a significant chunk, isn't it? And not because he got a kick out of preaching hellfire at people, but because of his great and loving concern, that people should flee from the wrath to come.

Should find refuge from it. Should be spared it. Because on that final day, Jesus even tells the power, doesn't he no 1 is gonna slip through the net? The wrath of god against sinners in the bible, especially in the old testament, it's pictured as as if it's being contained in a cup. It's quite a graphic image, isn't it?

Jeremiah chapter 25 talks about this, this cup of god's wrath, and it's that god's wrath just drips into it, wrath against the nations. And we're told that the nations will be forced to drink this cup. And the slain will be everywhere says Jeremiah from 1 end of the earth to the other. Global. Because with every passing day, drip, drip, drip the cup fills with the strong cordial of god's just indignation.

Hundred years of nineveh, drip drip drip, wasn't it? Before Nathan finally brings god's message of judgment. Until we are told that at the judgment, the guilty will according to Revelation chapter 14, so the end of the story, drink the wine of god's fury. Which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath. Wow.

So how do we square that with the statement that God is love? That's where people have their problem, isn't it? Or chapter 1 verse 7, you know, in the middle of all of this this to prophecy of Nam. You've got this line in chapter 1 verse 7 saying, the lord is good. The lord is good.

With all of that anger going on? Well, actually, it's not that hard to understand. The problem is that I think we we tend to think of anger as being incompatible with love. Which it clearly isn't. Anger and love fit very well together.

For example, if I came home 1 day, to find that my house had been ransacked and that my children had been assaulted, my family beaten up, I would be full of anger. Wouldn't I? And rightly so. Why why so angry? Because people I care about, people I love have been attacked.

If I wasn't angry actually at that, you doubt my love. Wouldn't you? There were just nobodies to me. But if I read about a similar incident happening to some family, I'd never known the other side of the world, I might be a bit outraged by it I might be, probably would be, I'd be grieved, but I wouldn't be angry on that same level, to the same extent. Because my anger is in proportion to my love.

My love fuels my anger. Now please understand In the Bible, we have a statement that god is love, but we have nowhere a statement that god is wrath. He's not wrath in the same way that he's love. Roth is not in the essence of god's being. The Bible teaches that god is only angry when anger is rightly called for as the proper inevitable personal expression of his holiness.

And even then, when his wrath is kindled, he is, and we're told, it won't be in chapter 1 verse 3. He is slow to anger. He is always just because his moral judgments are true and righteous altogether. That's the god of the Bible. Take a look at chapter 1 verse 3.

Just get it open in front of you. It says there, the lord is slow to anger, but great in power. The lord will not leave the guilty unpunished. Now, that is precisely the god that we need ruling the universe eternally, isn't it? It is because God is good that he doesn't overlook sin.

He does not leave the guilty unpunished because he's good. But neither does he fly off the handle at sin that verse tells us. He's slow to anger, but he always does because he can, according to that verse, because he's great in power, he always does do and will achieve what is just and right. I mean, imagine a court scene where a criminal's done, you know, he's done all sorts of hideous crimes. And he stands before the judge.

And he says, yep, judge, hands up. I I know I'm guilty. You know, I've got no defense. I know I'm absolutely I'm I've I've behaved shockingly, actually. I am thoroughly utterly guilty.

But, Judge, I've heard that you're a really good man. And so I'm gonna ask you because you're such a good man that you will just be lenient, that you will let me off, that you will forgive me. You will let me go. Well, rightly, the judge would be incensed with needy who would actually say you're right, and it is precisely because I am a good judge. Then I'm gonna give you the punishment you deserve.

That's a good judge, isn't it? Well, the goodness of god shines shines all the brighter in the book of Nahem because this book is so full, of judgment and woe, and that's the last thing I want us to see tonight, the goodness of god towards sinners. And perhaps the brightest of all verses is chapter 1 verse 7. I think that really is the major point of this minor profit. Let's look at it and just spend some time looking at this before we close.

The lord is good. A refuge in times of trouble. He cares for those who trust in him. You know, Nam is 1 of only 2 books in the Old Testament, actually in the Bible that end with a question mark. Actually, ends with a question.

And funnily enough, both of those books can set are addressed to or about the same people. Nineveh. Do you think perhaps the author is trying to get our attention with this? In Jona chapter 4 verse 11, we read the last verse there. God's great compassion towards Ninnovah, themselves, asks, leads god to ask of Jonah, should not I be concerned about that great city?

We see the great compassion of god, don't we? In that last question? And then a hundred years later, we get another question at the end of Micah. He says of the same people who has not felt your endless cruelty. The grace and compassion of god in Jona contrasted with the cruelty and the wickedness of this sinful people in Nahem.

This is the same god who when confronted by sinners, a hundred years previously, who were broken by their sin, who truly cast themselves at his feet for mercy, forgave them and will always forgive people who do that. As he did in the days of Jonah. He is, according to that verse there, a refuge, a shelter always to any who will put their trust in him, a shelter from the wrath, even for those as wicked as an invite, if only they would turn to him and take refuge in him. And Jesus invites every single sinner to come to him for rescue and refuge for the from the wrath that is coming. That offer is open today.

Now, here's the final question then. So how can god make such an outrageous offer to you and I. How can he do that? Why do I ask that? Because haven't we been making a case for the goodness and Justice of God.

The 1 who according to this book we just read does not leave the guilty unpunished because he is just. How can he so freely offer pardon for sin without punishment how can god do that? Doesn't this book actually just beg that question? The answer is that he himself took the punishment for us. On the night of his crucifixion, Jesus went to a garden with the disciples And it's very interesting to read what Matthew records in his gospel.

Let me read it to you from Matthew chapter 26. Jesus said to them, my soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me. Going a little farther, he fell on his face to the ground and prayed, my father, if it is possible, made this cup be taken from me, yet not as I will, but as you will. Then he returned to disciples found them sleeping.

Could you men not keep watch with me for 1 hour? He asked Peter? Watch and praise you, you don't fall into temptation. Spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. And he went to wear a second time and prayed.

My father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done. And he went back and found them sleeping because their eyes were heavy. So he left them and went away once and prayed a third, third time saying the same thing. See, it was not so much the whips or the thorns or the nails that filled Jesus with dread on that night, it was the cup. It was the cup.

Because later that same day, Jesus was cruelly hung on a cross, where he bore the full wrath of god. Against sin. Because of his unfathomable love, he took that cup of wrath for you and for me, and he drained every last drop in our place. And the question tonight really is, will you take refuge in him? The 1 that drank the cup for you.

Let's pray father we thank you for this good news, actually, from a book of bad news. We thank you that though we are sinners worthy of your judgement, worthy of your utter contempt. Sinful and ruined. Yet we can take refuge in the 1 who took our place who was punished in our stead and bore all of that wrath for us. We thank you for the lord Jesus.

Lord it is my dearest prayer that any here who have not taken refuge in him would do so this very night. Amen.