Nineveh? Didn’t they repent and submit to God under the preaching of Jonah a hundred years ago? Yet Israel was taken captive fifty years before Nahum prophesies from Judah. God’s earlier warning through Jonah had been from Israel but somewhere after the national repentance detailed in Jonah (see Devotional, June 3) the Assyrians went back to their warring ways and now God is telling them their time is coming to an end.
To Judah, ‘The LORD is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; he knows those who take refuge in him.’ 1 This is the encouragement of the LORD through Nahum to Judah for the Assyrians have campaigned against them after Israel was captive. God declares that Assyria will not be victorious over Judah. But the prophecy goes further: what God had warned Nineveh through Jonah that was coming and for which they had repented, is now declared through Nahum as being at hand. What had been delayed through repentance is now at hand. God is not given to the plots of man to overcome His determinate values. Temporary repentance only brings temporary relief. Judgment will come for sin especially when pause gives way to resumption.
Those who make opposition toward God the hallmark of their ways should expect God to fulfill His stated ways of dealing with sinful rebellion against Him. God is not slack concerning His promises concerning righteousness and justice. To those remaining repentant He gives grace but to those presuming to be able to go their own way before Him, judgment is certain. ‘He will make a complete end.’ God had extended mercy and grace when Ninevah repented but when they went back to their own way, the end came. God gave the Assyrians into the hands the Medes and Babylonians and so ended their empire.
What is the consequence of our repenting before God and then reclaiming our right to what we had repented? Do we push the limits of God’s forgiveness when we re-establish sinful practices in our lives, becoming adversaries of God? Let’s be sincere, honest and convinced in our repentance before the merciful God and be named among those who are ‘friends’ of God.