SERIES: Major Profit from Minor Prophets
What Happens When People Repent of their Repentance?
SPEAKER: Michael P. Andrus
Note: This series, done in the summer of 1999, involved one sermon each on the Twelve Minor Prophets. Obviously, since these books are of varying lengths, from one chapter to fourteen chapters, these sermons are focused on the key message of each prophet, rather than a detailed examination of their words.
Introduction: Two weeks ago Pastor Gene brought a great message on the book of Jonah. Today we come to the sequel. You thought Hollywood invented sequels, but not so. You will remember that God commissioned His prophet Jonah to go to the great Assyrian capital city of Nineveh to warn them that if they didn’t repent within forty days, He would destroy them. Jonah opted to go the opposite direction, much to his eventual regret, but God gave him a second chance to go and preach to Nineveh. This time he obeyed, and the Ninevites did indeed repent. They believed God, they fasted, they turned from their evil ways, and as a result God did not bring upon them the destruction He had threatened.
In fact, Nineveh, already the greatest city of the ancient world (Jonah claimed it was a 3-days’ journey around it), expanded its influence and size greatly. Sennacherib more than doubled the city’s size. The inner wall was 8 miles in circumference, 100 feet high, and so wide three chariots could race around it abreast. It had 1200 towers and 14 gates. Beyond this was a much longer outer wall, with extensive suburbs beyond that. Its wealth was almost indescribable–mostly plunder from other nations. Sennacherib’s palace was called “The Palace with no Rival,” and from its description in ancient literature, it was aptly named.
Nahum, preaching perhaps a century after Jonah, comes to Nineveh with another prediction of absolute and total divine judgment. Think about this a moment. To predict the destruction of Nineveh at the very peak of its power and influence, as Nahum does, would be tantamount to a preacher today predicting the complete obliteration of Tokyo or Hong Kong or Rome or New York City. We’re talking major unlikely here. Anyone who predicted such today would probably be considered a nutcase.
But you know something? Very unlikely things happen. We’ve seen something quite like the fall of Nineveh in the past decade. Nineveh, you see, was more than a city; it was the capital of an empire. In a period of a few short years in the early 90’s we saw the collapse of an empire–one of the two superpowers of the 20th century–the Soviet Union. As we’re going to see a little later this morning, there is a significant similarity between these two empires, and I believe the same God who brought Nineveh’s downfall also engineered the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Why does God send this second message of judgment against Nineveh? And why, in contrast to Jonah, are there no calls for repentance in Nahum’s words, only promise of destruction? I have tried to hint at the answer in my sermon title this morning: “What happens when people repent of their repentance?” Repentance means to turn around and go in a new direction. Biblically it means to forsake sin and self-sufficiency and to go hard after God. Nineveh did that when Jonah preached to them. But then they repented of their repentance. They turned and went back to their old ways. They started saying to themselves, “I think God was bluffing. That crazy old prophet Jonah was just another purveyor of gloom and doom.” And God’s anger was stirred up in a major way.
You know, repentance is still what the Gospel calls a sinner to do–to turn from his self-sufficiency, his pride, his assumption that he can save himself, and turn to Christ, the only sufficient Savior. But every once in a while I meet a person who has repented of his or her repentance. He turns away from Christ, away from the truth, away from the Church, and he returns to his former life of sin and self-sufficiency. Did you know that the Bible addresses such choices in the strongest possible terms–not unlike the tragedy that befell Nineveh?
Now I have outlined the book of Nahum very simply:
Doom declared
Doom described
Doom deserved
Doom declared
Let’s read the first 8 verses of this little book, sixth from the end of the OT:
(Nahum 1:1-8) “An oracle concerning Nineveh. The book of the vision of Nahum the Elkoshite. {2} 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 maintains his wrath against his enemies. {3} The LORD is slow to anger and 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. {4} 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. {5} The mountains quake before him and the hills melt away. The earth trembles at his presence, the world and all who live in it. {6} Who can withstand his indignation? Who can endure his fierce anger? His wrath is poured out like fire; the rocks are shattered before him. {7} The LORD is good, a refuge in times of trouble. He cares for those who trust in him, {8} but with an overwhelming flood he will make an end of Nineveh; he will pursue his foes into darkness.”
The portrait of God that is painted here is different from how Jonah described Him, namely, “I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity.” Instead, Nahum presents God as a God who is good and angry at Nineveh. Both words are important. He is angry all right, for in the first paragraph Nahum uses the following terms of God: jealous, avenging, vengeance, wrath, vengeance, wrath, anger, indignation, fierce anger, and wrath. But the very next statement, verse 7 is, “The Lord is good.”
You and I have a hard time being good and angry at the same time, because our anger often gets the best of us and causes us to sin. We also have a hard time being good and jealous at the same time, because our jealousy, more often than not, is generated by feelings of insecurity. But God’s anger and God’s jealousy are righteous and holy. We sometimes refer to His anger as “righteous indignation.” In fact, if he weren’t angry at the kind of sin Nineveh was displaying, He would be an evil God, not a good one.
But a second theme is also touched upon in these verses, and it is repeated elsewhere in the chapter and in the book, namely that God has not forgotten His people. Several decades after Jonah’s successful mission to Nineveh, the Assyrians (who had already begun to turn their backs on their recent commitment to the true God) attacked the Northern Kingdom of Israel and obliterated it. We have previously referred to “the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel,” who were the victims of this atrocity. The Southern Kingdom of Judah, though it survived, was constantly being threatened by Nineveh. Jerry read earlier the account of how Judah’s King Hezekiah cried out to the Lord as the Assyrian King Sennacherib taunted him and threatened him with his vast armies.
It is in view of such continuing threats, I believe, that Nahum says in verse 7, “The Lord is good, a refuge in times of trouble. He cares for those who trust in him.” In verse 12 the prophet is more explicit: “Although I have afflicted you, O Judah, I will afflict you no more. Now I will break their(i.e. Nineveh’s) yoke from your neck and tear your shackles away.” And verse 15: “Celebrate your festivals, O Judah, and fulfill your vows. No more will the wicked invade you; they will be completely destroyed.” God had not forgotten His people.
By the way, Nahum 1:7 is one of those verses that is well worth memorizing. I was talking about my sermon in a phone call with my parents on Friday and my mom told me this was the first verse my grandmother memorized: “The Lord is good, a refuge in times of trouble. He cares for those who trust in him.” Count on it.
In chapter 2 the prophet moves from declaring doom on Nineveh to describing it.
Doom described (2:1-13)
I wish we had time to examine the details offered here, because there is an amazing similarity between what the prophet predicts and what actually happened to Nineveh–so much so that some liberal scholars have declared the book of Nahum a “vaticinium ex eventu,” Latin for “a prophecy made after the event.” Obviously, nearly anyone can predict things with a fair degree of accuracy after they happen. But only a bias against the supernatural drives the liberals to go with that option. The evidence indicates Nahum wrote this at the height of Nineveh’s power. His detailed description of Nineveh’s coming fall is evidence for the divine origin of God’s Word.
The first part of chapter 2 talks about how the city will be invaded, and the last part talks about how the city will be destroyed. This chapter is a masterpiece of ancient literature, unsurpassed for its graphic portrayal of a military assault. It talks of Nineveh’s preparations for the coming invasion, the first sighting of the enemy’s armies, the overrunning of the city’s suburbs by enemy chariots, the attempted defense of the walls, the undermining of the city’s foundations by the river, and the plunder of Nineveh’s wealth by her conquerors.[i]
Secular history reveals that in the early spring of 612 B.C., the combined armies of the Babylonians and Scythians marched up the left bank of the Tigris River and surrounded the city. Since the rains were especially hard that year, the Tigris flooded and washed away a portion of the huge walls, leaving a breach for the enemy armies to enter the city.
The Greek historian Diodorus tells us that the king, having abandoned any hope of saving himself, built a gigantic funeral pyre in the royal palace, heaped up large quantities of gold and costly clothes, shut his concubines and eunuchs in a chamber he had made in the middle, and then burned himself, his family, his servants, and the palace. The conquerors slaughtered innumerable inhabitants and destroyed everything else. Diodorus writes, “So great was the multitude of the slain that the flowing stream, mingled with their blood, changed its color for a considerable distance.”[ii] There was also unparalleled looting.
This whole account coincides remarkably with some of Nahum’s predictions: (6) “The river gates are thrown open and the palace collapses.” (8) “Nineveh is like a pool, and its water is draining away.” (9) “Plunder the silver! Plunder the gold. The supply is endless, the wealth from all its treasures!”
The invasion of the Babylonians and Scythians resulted in destruction. Look at verse 13: “‘I am against you,’ declares the Lord Almighty. ‘I will burn up your chariots in smoke, and the sword will devour your young lions. I will leave you no prey on the earth. The voices of your messengers will no longer be heard.” Believe me, it’s a tragic thing when God says, “I am against you.” Do you recall Romans 8:31: “If God be for us, who can be against us.”? Well, how about this question, “If God is against you, who can be for you?” You’re toast.
You might be wondering, “Why is God so angry? What had Nineveh done that deserved such devastating destruction? When they repented of their repentance, what did they go back to?” Those question are answered in chapter 3, where the prophet speaks of …
Doom deserved (3:1-19)
Nineveh practiced incomparable evil. Listen to the first four verses:
(Nahum 3:1-4) “Woe to the city of blood, full of lies, full of plunder, never without victims! {2} The crack of whips, the clatter of wheels, galloping horses and jolting chariots! {3} Charging cavalry, flashing swords and glittering spears! Many casualties, piles of dead, bodies without number, people stumbling over the corpses— {4} all because of the wanton lust of a harlot, alluring, the mistress of sorceries, who enslaved nations by her prostitution and peoples by her witchcraft.”
Right there you see listed some of the actions for which Nineveh was notorious: violence, deception, plunder, and witchcraft. Gene spoke to us two weeks ago about the cruelty of the Assyrians, but allow me to quote one of their own kings, Ashurnasirpal, who wrote on a monument,
“I flayed all the chief men in the city of Suru who had revolted, and I covered the pillar with their skins; some I walled up within the pillar, some I impaled upon the pillar on stakes, and others I bound to stakes round about the pillar; many within the border of my own land I flayed, and I spread their skins upon the walls; and I cut off the limbs of the officers, of the royal officers who had rebelled. Ahiababa I took to Nineveh, I flayed him, I spread his skin upon the wall of Nineveh.”
That’s just a sample of the evil that was commonplace in Nineveh. And that is the first reason Nahum offers as to why their doom was deserved.
When I was in Russia last winter, I had time to read 6 or 7 books on the history of the Soviet Union. These were books by renowned historians and well-known journalists, and they all agreed that Communism under Stalin was one of the most brutal regimes in human history. It clearly rivaled ancient Assyria. While Hitler killed perhaps 6 or 7 million, Stalin exterminated a minimum of 20 million and perhaps as many as 60 million. Hitler killed his enemies, or those he perceived as his enemies, but Stalin killed his friends. At one point he purged his armed forces to the point of executing over 90% of all his military officers. At one point, one of his henchmen wrote for permission to eliminate 8,000 alleged counter-revolutionaries in a particular city. Stalin’s response was, “Make it 12,000!” The suffering of the Russian people, to say nothing of subjugated foreign countries, is almost indescribable. Is it any wonder that God eventually had enough?
A second reason why Nineveh’s doom was deserved is found in verses 8-10 of chapter 3:
Nineveh refused to learn from history. (8-11) Look at verses 8-10, where Nahum is compared to the Egyptian city of Thebes:
“Are you better than Thebes, situated on the Nile, with water around her? The river was her defense, the waters her wall. {9} Cush and Egypt were her boundless strength; Put and Libya were among her allies. {10} Yet she was taken captive and went into exile. Her infants were dashed to pieces at the head of every street. Lots were cast for her nobles, and all her great men were put in chains.”
Thebes was the greatest city of ancient Egypt, the capital of the 18th Dynasty. If you have ever seen pictures of the massive ruins of Karnak and Luxor, or the amazing burial sites in the Valley of the Kings, you have a hint about the wealth and political prominence of Thebes. It was very well situated for defense, located on the Nile, as Nineveh was on the Tigris. It also had a number of significant allies, several of which are mentioned here. Yet Thebes fell, and no one should know this better than the people of Nineveh, for it was their armies under their King, Ashurbanipal, who conquered Thebes. He took captive everyone he could and killed the rest. The children were massacred in the streets.
Friends, if history teaches us anything, it seems to be that history teaches us nothing. Just as Nineveh refused to learn from the destruction of Thebes, so we are in danger of refusing to learn from the destruction of the USSR in our own day. Countless nations–many of them superpowers, have been dismissed by God when their sin and disobedience became too much of a stench in his nostrils. The United States is not immune. As far as I know, the only nation that is promised survival until the Lord returns is Israel, and its survival is only through the fiery furnace.
But this is not just a national lesson; it is also an individual one. We desperately need to see in other people’s lives that sin wrecks everything, to quote our dear brother, Paul Stolwyk.
Nahum’s final point is that …
Nineveh’s demise is applauded by the world. (12-19) We only have time to look at the last two verses:
(Nahum 3:18-19) “O king of Assyria, your shepherds slumber; your nobles lie down to rest. Your people are scattered on the mountains with no one to gather them. {19} Nothing can heal your wound; your injury is fatal. Everyone who hears the news about you claps his hands at your fall, for who has not felt your endless cruelty?”
Again, I can’t help but compare Assyria to the Soviet Union. Who, besides Castro and Khadafi and Milosovic have mourned the demise of the Evil Empire, as President Reagan aptly called it? God brought it to its knees. No other nation dropped a bomb or launched a missile against it, but the world applauded.
Now what lessons would God have us learn from this ancient prophet?
Lessons to be learned
1. Though we are surrounded by evil, it will not go unpunished. This will be a major theme of Habakkuk next week, so I won’t elaborate on it this morning except to say there were many times when Judah must have despaired of their harassment and persecution by Nineveh. Jerry read earlier in our service how the emissaries of Sennacherib mocked King Hezekiah for putting his faith in God. But listen to what it says just a few verses later in Isaiah 37:
(Isaiah 37:36-37) “Then the angel of the LORD went out and put to death a hundred and eighty-five thousand men in the Assyrian camp. When the people got up the next morning—there were all the dead bodies! {37} So Sennacherib king of Assyria broke camp and withdrew. He returned to Nineveh and stayed there.”
I know there are times in your life, as there are in mine, when you wonder, “How long will that antagonist at work get away with his evil behavior? How long will that immoral politician continue to pull the wool over people’s eyes? How long will the wicked prosper while the righteous suffer? Why doesn’t God do something?” Well, God is doing something–just not on our timetable. He has promised that the wicked will get theirs and the righteous will get theirs. Though we are surrounded by evil, it will not go unpunished.
2. When a person repents of his repentance, he puts himself in a special category for judgment. It’s a frightening thing to think that God denounced Nineveh without any call for repentance, without even a hint this time that “if you change your ways, I’ll delay or call off the judgment.” I think the only conclusion we can draw is that Nineveh had exhausted the patience of God. I almost hate to say that because the patience of God is, in one sense, infinite, but yet the Scriptures clearly quote God as saying, “I will not always strive with man.” (Genesis 6:3) God gave Nineveh every opportunity. He blessed them and extended their empire for a century after their repentance in the days of Jonah. But what is God to do when those who know His truth and have experienced His grace and have been given every opportunity still turn against Him?
I think Nineveh’s example is very relevant today. There are professing believers who, after walking with God for a period of time, have gone back to their former way of life. They are flirting with danger. I want to say right up front that I am a firm believer in the sovereignty of God. I believe in election, predestination, and the perseverance of the saints, rightly understood. But friends, there are some statements in the Word of God about those who repent of their repentance that don’t fit easily into some of our systems of theology. I want to read a couple of those this morning, and I’m not going to apologize for them or try to massage them. I would encourage you not to try to explain them away but to simply take heed to them.
(Hebrews 6:4-6) “It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, {5} who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age, {6} if they fall away, to be brought back to repentance, because to their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace.”
(Hebrews 10:26-31) “If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, {27} but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. {28} Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. {29} How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? {30} For we know him who said, “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” and again, “The Lord will judge his people.” {31} It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”
(2 Peter 2:20-22) “If they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning. {21} It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them. {22} Of them the proverbs are true: “A dog returns to its vomit,” and “A sow that is washed goes back to her wallowing in the mud.””
This is what the Lord says. When a person repents of his repentance, he puts himself in a special category for judgment.
Thirdly and finally…,
3. It’s never too late to cast yourself on the mercy of God. This may sound contradictory to the previous point, but I think it is not. If the passages I just read sound like they are teaching that the person who repented of his repentance cannot be saved, it is not because God won’t let him even if he desperately wants to be; rather it’s because the person himself no longer cares. The callouses on his heart are so hard that nothing can get through.
Have you reached that point? Probably not. At least not if you’re concerned about it. Not if your conscience is still stirred when you hear a message like this. But you may be dangerously close to your last opportunity. Will you bow with me for prayer as each of us examines his own heart before God.
DATE: July 18, 1999
Tags:
Repentance
Judgment
National evil
[i] James Montgomery Boice, The Minor Prophets, Two Volumes Complete in One Edition, 63.
[ii] Cited by Boice, Ibid., 63.