Nahum 1:15-2:10. The first verse of today’s reading is quoted by Paul in the letter to the Romans (Romans 10:15).  In that verse he is telling the believers in Rome that the Jewish people have not been abandon by God but that they need to believe that God will fix their relationship with him.  Paul is telling the mostly non-Jewish believers in that church that our relationship isn’t fixed by following the Law of Moses but by Jesus (Romans 3:20; Galatians 2:16; Romans 5:8; Romans 6:23).  Paul tells the believers there that the Jewish people in ancient days should have known this because Moses and the Old Testament Prophets had told them so.  Those guys are the ones who had “beautiful feet” and “proclaimed good news”.  The good news is that heaven isn’t earned it is given to us free of charge (See Romans 5:8).

One of the prophets that Paul specifically mentions is Isaiah.  In Isaiah 53:6 we are told that all of us have offended God; none of us deserves Heaven.  That is why the news about Jesus giving it to us for free is so good.  Unfortunately the quote Paul uses for Isaiah (Romans 10:16) is that many have not believed the message that Isaiah and the others gave them; they have rejected the good news.  Since no one deserves heaven and it cannot be earned through following the Law those who do not believe are lost.  Revelation 20 describes the final judgment of people who rejected Jesus.  According to Revelation 20:6 the end result of that judgment is called the “second death”.  In the Bible the word death means “separation”.  The first “death” or “separation” is when our spirit or soul and body are “separated”; physical death.  This death is only temporary though.   According to Revelation 20 there are two “resurrections”.  The word “resurrection” means to “stand together” and the idea is coming back to life.  The people who put their faith in Jesus are part of the “first resurrection” and over them the second death has no power.  The rest come back to life at the end of a 1000 year reign of Jesus on earth.  At that time they are judge by their actions since their names are not in the book which lists all those who have trusted Jesus to fix their relationship with God.  Those who are part of this second resurrection suffer a second death.  This separation is not from their bodies but from God.  They are sent to a place where they have no contact with God, it is called the “Lake of Fire” and according to Jesus it is a terrible place to spend eternity (Matthew 8:12; 13:42, 50; 22:13; 24:51; 25:30; Luke 13:28).  Because of all of these facts Nahum told the Jewish people to Celebrate their feast and to pay their vows (which were ways to remember who God is and what he is doing).

So the ultimate hope of the Jewish people (and us) lies in the future but they were having problems then and there. Eternity is of much more importance than right now and that is God’s greater concern.  Right now we live in a world and universe that we have messed up.  According to 2 Peter 3:9 God is patiently mating for the maximum amount of people to believe in Jesus; to respond to the “good news”, before he deals with the mess we have made.  That does not mean that God does never manipulates history, he does, but always for the greatest eternal impact. Chapter 2 of Nahum  describes how God is going to do just that by destroying the Assyrian nation represented by it’s capitol Ninevah.  Verse one tells us that the “one who scatters” has gone to fight against Ninevah.  This is a reference to God.  Verses 2-10 describe the destruction of Ninevah and it’s a “zoo”.  Ninevah had once been a great place to live (look at verse 8 and remember that Ninevah was in what is modern day Iraq.  Ninevah was like a pool in the desert) but in these verses the people are very upset.

The destruction of Ninevah described by Nahum did not happen until 612 BC, 40 years after Nahum deliverd his message to the people of Judah.  Ninevah had been terrorizing the Jewish people for decades.  70 years earlier the Assyrians had destroyed the northern kingdom and 50 years earlier they had almost taken Jerusalem, capital of Judah (the Southern Kingdom).  Some people may have still been alive from the time when Nahum spoke, very few of them though would survive until the destruction of Ninevah.  Old Testament prophecies are very encouraging to us because in them we see that God is interested and active.  Since they accurately predict the future they are proof of God’s existence and of the truthfulness of what they tell us.  But many of them would have remained future predictions to the people they were originally given to.  The point here is that they needed to be more interested in eternity than in “today”.  Of course the generation which did see the fall of Ninevah would have felt relief but only for a short time because the new empire, Babylon, would be the empire which finally did conquer Jerusalem.  We need to be encouraged by the proof of God we find in the Bible and the proof of God’s love and involvement.  We need to be careful though and realize that the “good news” is really about forever, about eternity.  When we do we can have the attitude that the author of Psalm 23 had when he said, “even if I pass through the valley of the shadow of death I will not fear evil.”  Life will be full of many dark scary valleys but we need to keep our eyes fixed on the beautiful sunny eternity that waits for us at the end.  But be careful, Jesus is the only path to this destination (John 14:6) all others lead through the darkness to the darkness where an eternity of despair awaits.

God thank you for providing a way back to you.  Thank you that it does not depend on my abilities.  Thank you for making your existence and plan clear.  Thank you for helping me see it.  Help me keep my eyes on eternity as I live each day in the shadows.  Give me strength and perseverance.  Thank you for your love and forgiveness.