Each morning when I am skimming the news, I skim the political cartoon of the day. A political cartoon is making a point. It is a caricature; an exaggeration or emphasis of the character being portrayed. For instance, if you see a political cartoon about President Trump, what is the thing that is emphasized? The answer is probably his hair. If you see a political cartoon about Mr. Biden, what is emphasized? Most likely, it is his age. If you see about political cartoon about Mr. Obama, what is emphasized? It is often his ears.
We do the same thing with God. We try to reduce God to one little thing that characterizes Him. Oftentimes people have a misperception of God or they emphasize one characteristic they happen to find palatable. One thing you find when you read Nahum is that God is greater than our reductions of Him.
People have a limited capacity to remember all there is to know about a person in history. So, they tend to reduce it to one thing. For instance, on a headstone in a cemetery, you are not going to find a biography of a person. You are going to read something like, “He was a good father,” “She was a great mother,” or some such thing. You are not going to have an entire paragraph about them. God is greater than any one little characterization of Him. Nahum is a great example of that because chapter 1 is a contrast of characteristics that are in harmony in God Almighty.
Nahum is a burden against Assyria, specifically Nineveh. Famously, God sent a message of judgment through Jonah to the city of Nineveh. They repented, and God did not bring the catastrophe He was going to send to them. But, over time, they lapsed back. It is interesting that Nahum 1:9 mentions that “affliction shall not rise up the second time.” God was not giving them another chance. In Jonah it says, “The word of the LORD came unto Jonah the second time.” When Jonah had rebelled against God, God gave him a second chance, but God is not obliged to do that. So, God is greater than any one thing we may say about Him.
First, notice the contrast and harmony between the burden of Nineveh in verse 1 and the good tidings to Judah in the last verse of the chapter. Burden is the idea of some great weight being placed on someone with a heavy message. It is a message of doom. Ironically, Nahum’s very name means “comfort.” How could this be a book about comfort when it is a book about God’s catastrophic judgment on Nineveh and the empire it represented? The answer is that the doom of Nineveh was the same as the peace for Judah. God was both. God sent judgment and peace.
Notice that God is both slow and certain. Verse 3 says, “The LORD is slow to anger, and great in power, and will not at all acquit the wicked.” Sometimes we think because God hasn’t struck us dead that He is indifferent. Nothing could be further from the truth. I just went through Atlanta several times this past week. The traffic is crazy. Cars are going from one lane to another at high rates of speed. Oftentimes a tiny car, probably running on an extension cord, needs to get over. He will pick the biggest semi he can find and dart in front of it. I think the assumption is because a truck is really slow, it can stop really fast, but that is not true. The bigger they are, the harder they are to stop. So, God is slow to anger, but He is most certain that He will not acquit the wicked, those who will not turn to Him.
God is strong, but He is merciful and gentle. In verses 4-7 you find a God with fierceness of anger, a God of fury in judgment, yet verse 7 says, “The LORD is good, a strong hold in the day of trouble.” He is strong, a stronghold to protect those who come to Him in the day of trouble. Verse 7 continues, “He knoweth them that trust in him.” God is both strong and merciful.
Suppose there is a hunter in Kodiak, Alaska out in the woods with a high-powered rifle. All of a sudden, he hears screams and rushes down toward the lake to see a grizzly attacking another hunter. What is the man with the rifle going to do? Is he going to say, “I don’t want to be harsh here. I want to be merciful to the bear.” No, he is going to shoot the bear to spare the life of the hunter. He is either going to have mercy on the grizzly or mercy on the hunter. In that case, to be strong is necessary to be merciful.
God is both a conqueror and a liberator. Verses 12-13 says, “I will afflict thee [Judah] no more… and will burst thy bonds in sunder.” God was strong and God was gentle. God is both a conqueror and a liberator. He could not liberate Judah without conquering Nineveh. The question today is, “Which side of God are you on?” Are you evoking the burden of the good news? Are you evoking patience or the certainty of judgment? Are you evoking strength or mercy? Are you evoking His conquering or His liberating? Who will you serve? Are you going to serve the God who loves you or the devil who hates you?
We condense what we know about any given person, but God defies our attempts to reduce Him. God is God, and He is greater than our reductions. God is good, powerful, a God of judgment, holiness, and mercy. A wise person would put himself on the right side of such a God.