God is Good and Angry
At Brewster Baptist, we’re on a journey through every book of the Bible, that journey started last July and now we’re in a section of the Hebrew Bible called the minor prophets.
This week we’re listening to the little known, little heard from Book of Nahum.
Each book of the Bible, no matter how well known or obscure, has something to teach you to help you know God better and to know how to live your life better as well. Some books are marked by joy like Paul’s letter to the Philippians, and some are not, like the prophet Nahum.
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God is Good and Angry
This past week we witnessed the beginning of the biggest war in Europe since the 1930’s. Tanks rolled in from the already Russian-annexed Crimea in the south, explosions were seen in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, and we could watch this blatant violation of international law played out on television and on social media.
In Vladimir Putin, Ukraine and the world is facing a tyrant whose unbridled ambitions threaten the security of all of Europe, and that will impact people all over the world including the United States. This is a conflict between democracy and authoritarianism and the results and consequences will be far reaching.
Dr. C. Jeff Woods. General Secretary. American Baptist Churches USA released a statement that said in part,
“As we hear news and witness the reports of the assault on Ukraine by Russian troops, I call all American Baptists to pray for the people of Ukraine and all those affected by this military action. Ukraine has one of the largest bodies of Baptists in the world and on this day and in the weeks ahead, we especially lift up in prayer our Baptist brothers and sisters in Ukraine and Russia. Please pray for the safety of all people, for minimal loss of life and property, and for a peaceful end to this conflict.”
It’s hard for us to imagine what it’s like to be in Ukraine right now. I’ve been thinking about if I was a Baptist pastor there, what would I have been doing in the past years and months as the threat of invasion has grown. What would our church have been doing to prepare should this day of attack come? What would we be doing at this moment, knowing that religious minorities like ourselves were one of the targets the Russians are seeking? What would we be feeling if it were our nation that was being invaded? Fear? Uncertainty? Dread? Anger? All of these and more?
I’m pretty sure anger would be one of the emotions we’d be feeling because we all tend to get angry when we believe someone had done us wrong or has not done the right thing. Do you ever get mad when that happens? I confess I do. And you know what? God does too.
For those of you who may here for the first time we’re on a journey through every book of the Bible that we started last July and we’re in a section of the Hebrew Bible called the minor prophets. Today we’re listening to the little known, little heard from Book of Nahum.
Each book of the Bible, no matter how well known or obscure, has something to teach you to help you know God better and to know how to live your life better as well. Some books are marked by joy like Paul’s letter to the Philippians, and some are not, like the prophet Nahum.
In Nahum we’re confronted by a truth that may at first seem like a paradox, but it’s not. That truth is God is good and angry.
Now I can say that with the emphasis in different places and it sounds different, doesn’t it? I can say, God is Good and angry. Or I can say, “God is good and Angry!” Or, “God is Good and Angry!”
Two weeks ago, in the more well-known book of Jonah, we heard about Nineveh, the capital city of the Assyrians. About 100-150 years before Nahum, God was ready to destroy Nineveh because it was so evil that the city deserved to be demolished. But God sent the prophet Jonah to preach to Nineveh and the people repented and changed their ways. God accepted their repentance, and Nineveh was spared. Now, many years later, Nineveh was worse than ever.
One way to read the Book of Nahum is as a sequel to the Book of Jonah.
One message of Jonah is when an individual or a nation turns from sin, God will be gracious and forgive and you’ll be granted a second chance.
A century or a little more after Jonah’s remarkable ministry in Nineveh, Nahum proclaimed God’s message again to the Assyrians, but this time the message is quite different – your time is up, when you don’t turn from sin, you’ll be destroyed.
The consuming wrath of the Lord is God’s reaction to unrestrained violence, cruelty and evil. There comes a time when it’s too late to turn and change and God will judge the wicked.
An avenging, wrathful God will utterly destroy any adversary who rises against the Lord.
I want that to happen and so do you. I want the unrepentant violent and the wicked to get what they deserve from a good, just, and holy God.
We want God to make right what has been wrong in the world. We want the violent who abuse and kill the innocent to be held accountable, there’s a sense of justice in us that wants that to happen in this world or the next.
Nahum affirms there is hope and encouragement that God has great power, God will bless those who stay faithful, but by no means clear the guilty. Listen to Nahum 1.1-14,
1 An oracle concerning Nineveh. The book of the vision of Nahum of Elkosh.
2 A jealous and avenging God is the LORD, the LORD is avenging and wrathful;
the LORD takes vengeance on his adversaries and rages against his enemies.
3 The LORD is slow to anger but great in power,
and the LORD will by no means clear the guilty.
His way is in whirlwind and storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet.
4 He rebukes the sea and makes it dry, and he dries up all the rivers;
Bashan and Carmel wither, and the bloom of Lebanon fades.
5 The mountains quake before him, and the hills melt; the earth heaves before him,
the world and all who live in it.
6 Who can stand before his indignation? Who can endure the heat of his anger? His wrath is poured out like fire, and by him the rocks are broken in pieces.
7 The LORD is good, a stronghold in a day of trouble; he protects those who take refuge in him, 8 even in a rushing flood.
He will make a full end of his adversaries, and will pursue his enemies into darkness.
9 Why do you plot against the LORD?
He will make an end; no adversary will rise up twice.
10 Like thorns they are entangled, like drunkards they are drunk; they are consumed like dry straw. 11 From you one has gone out who plots evil against the LORD, one who counsels wickedness.
12 Thus says the LORD, “Though they are at full strength and many, they will be cut off and pass away. Though I have afflicted you, I will afflict you no more. 13 And now I will break off his yoke from you and snap the bonds that bind you.”
14 The LORD has commanded concerning you: “Your name shall be perpetuated no longer; from the house of your gods I will cut off the carved image and the cast image. I will make your grave, for you are worthless.”
The name Nahum means ”Comfort, Consolation, or Relief’.’” That comfort and relief was for Israel and Judah and not for the Assyrians.
Nahum was a contemporary of the prophets Isaiah and Micah and his book is dated between 663-612 BC. Nahum came from Elkosh (1:1) and though the location of Elkosh is uncertain, Capernaum, where Jesus’ home synagogue was located, is literally translated ”the village of Nahum.”
A few generations earlier, Nineveh had repeated as a result of Jonah’s preaching. But now, many years later, Nineveh was worse than ever. Nahum described it as a place, “full of lies, full of plunder, never without victims!” (Nahum 3:1). He described the magnitude of their destruction: “piles of dead, bodies without number, people stumbling over the corpses” (Nahum 3:3).
Nahum, like many other Biblical writers, tells us that God is “slow to anger.”
God is patient and waits for us to repent, turn, and change. But God doesn’t wait forever. God isn’t like a wishy-washy person who makes threats, but never follows through with action.
Nahum 1:3 reminds us, “The LORD is slow to anger but great in power; the LORD will not leave the guilty unpunished.” God desires repentance and prefers life over death, but justice will be served, and the guilty will reap the seeds that they themselves have sown. There are several things we learn from Nahum.
Nahum teaches that the Lord is an avenging God (1:2).
The Lord is not a God solely of love and mercy, but also a God of justice. God gets angry because God is a God of love.
Some people want to believe that God wouldn’t condemn anyone because God is totally love. Nahum says the opposite: God has enemies. God can condemn someone.
Although the Lord becomes angry, God doesn’t get angry easily or quickly.
God doesn’t just decide to become angry; the Lord only does so when provoked.
God is not a God who wants to be angry, but God does demand justice and will not clear the guilty.
According to the prophet, God’s anger can be found in the whirlwind and storm. God dries up bodies of water. Flowers fade. Mountains and hills fall before God’s anger. The whole earth lies in terror. Nahum says, “Who can stand before his indignation? Who can endure the heat of his anger? (1:6). God’s anger is fierce and terrifying.
Nahum declares that the Lord protects the faithful (1:7).
While God executes judgment on wrongdoers, God protects those who do right and fear and serve the Lord. Unfortunately, in a broken world, the innocent and the righteous are often the victims of the violent and the evil as we’re seeing right now not only in Ukraine, but in other places in the world as well. Sometimes, sadly God’s protection means at the Judgment to come, not in this world as the lives of martyrs have demonstrated throughout history.
Nahum says that the Lord destroys his enemies (1:9).
None of God’s adversaries can rise up against him twice; The Lord completely destroys them. God is sovereign. No one can compete with God. Anyone plotting against or seeking to thwart God’s good will for humanity and creation will ultimately be destroyed.
Nahum shows that God keeps his promises.
God promised to destroy Nineveh (2:10, 13) and in 612 BC, Nebuchadnezzar with the assistance of the Medes conquered the city. The destruction was so total that Nineveh was not found by archeologists until 1842. God kept his promise to destroy Nineveh.
When we see terrible events unfolding in the world, like people being killed, wounded, displaced, and traumatized in Ukraine or those suffering in a nation like Yemen where some 13 million people may soon be facing starvation, or the treatment of the Uyghurs in China, just to name three situations, it should remind us that a God who is good and loving, also gets angry when people are hurt or taken advantage of.
God has expectations of you and me and every person.
We hear this not only in the Old Testament but in the New Testament as well.
In Mark 11.15-18, Jesus overturns the tables of the money changers in the temple. This was not an outburst of temper, or uncontrolled rage, but the energy of righteousness against religious leaders to whom religion had become a business and a means of exploitation.
In the final book in the Bible, in Revelation 21.1-8, we hear again that God’s ultimate intention is an eternal relationship with you and every person.
Because God is good and holy, John describes heaven as a place where God will be with us and will wipe away every tear. Death, mourning, crying and pain will be no more. It’s a beautiful vision of life after death in heaven with God.
But everyone is not going to be there in the presence of a good, holy, and just God.
John warns in Revelation 21.8, “But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted, the murderers, the fornicators, the sorcerers, the idolaters, and all liars, their place will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”
If any statement should motivate you to stop any of those behaviors in your own life, that verse should. It should also motivate you not to support anyone who engages regularly in those behaviors.
We can all be thankful God is loving, kind, good, and patient. But those qualities are intended to cause us to turn our lives around and to draw us into an eternal relationship, which is life transforming.
God is not to be ignored, dismissed, opposed, or plotted against.
Nahum, Jesus, Paul, and John all warn there will be a time of judgment.
As Paul writes to the church in Rome in Romans 2:4-8 (NRSV),
“Or do you despise the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience? Do you not realize that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? But by your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath, when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed. For he will repay according to each one’s deeds: to those who by patiently doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; while for those who are self-seeking and who obey not the truth but wickedness, there will be wrath and fury.”
Like Paul and John, the prophet Nahum emphasizes one of the most important and fundamental lessons about life: There are consequences for our actions, whether in this life or the next.
We’re fortunate that God is good, patient, merciful, and forgiving. But that doesn’t mean that anyone can — and will — get away with sins, evil, violence, or wickedness.
In the end, the righteous will be rewarded, and the wicked will be punished. This truth should guide and shape how we live our lives. Don’t say I never warned you.
Let’s pray.
Blessing: Ephesians 5.8b-10, (NRSV), “Live as children of light— 9 for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true. 10 Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord.”
Questions for Discussion or Reflection
- How were feelings expressed in the family you grew up in? Specifically, how was anger expressed? Were voices raised? Was there strong language? Was there violence or abuse? Did individuals attack or withdraw? What was your experience?
- In Nahum, God is described as slow to anger, yet the Lord will not clear the guilty. What makes a good God, angry?
- Do you ever get angry when someone doesn’t do what they should do or what you expect them to do? How do you handle your anger?
- Love and anger are not mutually exclusive; how do love and anger connect in your close relationships?
- Does the strong anger and wrath of God in Nahum surprise or shock you? In what sense is Nahum a story of great love and great judgment?
- What warning is there in Nahum for you individually or for a nation? How do Nahum and other prophets we’ve heard say that the Lord responds to injustice, oppression, violence, and pride?