Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / January 17, 2016 | Route 66 - Nahum

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January 17, 2016 | Route 66 - Nahum · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: Good morning.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_02: To anyone who's listening to this or watching from a long ways away, it's really cold here.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_02: It's so cold here.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_02: I know some there are people in Africa that follow this.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_02: I'll trade you just for a day, please.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_02: It's seven degrees or something here.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_02: But anyway, no, we're blasting.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_02: We're inside, so we have heat, so we're you know, we're doing great.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: How are you really doing well?
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_02: Good.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um let's see if you still say that in 35 minutes.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I'm gonna start with a question this morning, all right?
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_02: Does your so you know what?
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_02: I just realized how appropriate this is after last night's loss to the Patriots by the Kansas City Chiefs.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_02: Does your soul ever long for justice?
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_02: No, I really mean it.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_02: Is there something inside you that ever cries out for bad guys and bullies and cheaters to get their comeuppance?
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_02: Well, um, a cartoon that expresses this perfectly for me, my favorite, by far my favorite cartoon characters of all time.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_02: Come on, come on.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_02: Of course, Calvin and Hobbes.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, is there any doubt?
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_02: So in the Calvin Hobbes cartoons, there's a bully, and his name is Mo, M O E Moe, and Moe's a bully at school.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_02: Moe's always stealing Calvin's sandwich or knocking him down or whatever.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_02: And so in this one, in the first panel, he says, Out of my way, Twinkie, and he shoves Calvin down.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_02: Calvin's papers, his homework goes flying as he's going to school.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_02: Calvin and second panel sitting on the ground, his head spinning, you know, like, oh, this happened again as Mo leaves.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_02: But in the third panel, in the third panel, uh, Calvin's up, he's daydreaming, he's going, and suddenly the earth opened up.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_02: Wailing helplessly, Mo tumbled head over heels down the smoking chasm until he splashed into the molten magma at the planet's core, where he slowly melted before igniting in a spitting fireball of grease.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my goodness, I love that.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_02: But in the fourth panel, he trudges away in despair, knowing that justice won't happen.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_02: But that's what I'm asking this morning does your soul ever cry out for justice and vengeance and for the thieves and the killers and the cheats and the child abusers and the bullies and the terrorists to get what's really coming to them.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_02: I feel this desire for justice and vengeance occasionally.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, a lot of times, you know, when I hear of children and Christians and innocent people, this is when I feel it most often, being brutally murdered, slaughtered by Muslim radicals.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_02: I felt it yesterday when uh Saturday morning news came out that in a little West African nation, the Burkina Faso, the Muslim terrorists on Friday night hit a hotel.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_02: And among the dozens that were killed was an American missionary, an orphanage director named Mike Rittering.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_02: He was in California.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_02: He'd lived in Florida with his wife, and they'd raised a couple of girls, and then they'd adopted another little girl, and then he said, you know, let's sell our business, let's go to Africa.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_02: And so he's over there.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_02: But he gets shot by a terrorist on Friday night, turning his wife Amy into a widow and leaving his daughters fatherless.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_02: Amy's a woman of faith, and yesterday her statement to the press was heaven has gained a warrior.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_02: And if Mike is a warrior, then Mike is going to feel right at home in heaven because today's book of the Bible, Nahum, tells us that the God of heaven is a warrior too, the greatest warrior in the universe.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_02: And one day soon our warrior God will go to war.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_02: Open your Bible if you have a Bible.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_02: Can you find the book of Nahum?
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_02: Can anybody find it in under two minutes?
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_02: You go to the middle, then you turn right.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_02: All right?
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_02: Last week was Micah.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_02: For those of you just visiting, we're on a road trip through the Bible.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_02: We're calling it Route 66.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_02: And since this is the 34th book, it's the first book in the second half of our road trip through the Bible.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_02: Nahum.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_02: Just three chapters.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_02: Now listen, I am well aware that for some of you, this is a side of God that you are really uncomfortable with.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_02: Perhaps you even reject it outright.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_02: Because, let me use Star Wars terminology, this is the dark side of God.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody loves the light side of God, the bright side of God, the God who is love, who is kindness, who is mercy, who is forgiveness.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_02: There's the God we like.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_02: But we shudder uncomfortably with the dark side of God, his wrath, his justice, his retribution.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_02: No, this is a side of God that we sometimes would prefer to pretend is not there.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_02: But then we come to a little book like Nahum.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_02: And we find that Nahum posts right there at the top of his Facebook page that God is an avenging warrior.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_02: Verses two and three, right after introducing himself.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_02: The Lord, he says, is a jealous and avenging God.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_02: Nahum chapter 1, verses 2 and 3.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_02: The Lord takes vengeance and is fierce in wrath.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_02: The Lord takes vengeance against his foes.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_02: He's furious with his enemies.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_02: The Lord is slow to anger, but great in power.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_02: The Lord will never leave the guilty unpunished.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_02: Who's he talking about?
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_02: Who's the Lord furious with?
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_02: Well, grab your study sheet, that little thing that's in your bulletin, turn.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_02: Look at page one.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_02: I have a summary there.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_02: I have three paragraphs.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_02: These words are not quite inspired, but close.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_02: And they start with a little uh trivia quest.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_02: Do you know which two books of the Bible, which two books of the Bible end, last sentence, end with a question.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_02: Not not evident, by the way, in the King James Version, but the Hebrew is represented well in the NIV, for example.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_02: Well, both of them are minor prophets with an N-A-H in their name.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_02: One of them begins with N-A-H, the other one ends with N-A-H.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_02: Both of them are just under 50 verses.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_02: The first 48, Nahum with 47.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_02: One of them tells a story about God's mercy on Nineveh.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_02: God's mercy on Nineveh.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_02: That's Jonah.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_02: The other one predicts God's vengeance, God's vengeance on Nineveh.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_02: That's Nahum.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_02: So Nahum is the sequel, 150 years afterwards, to Jonah.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_02: Both of them quote the same phrase, God is slow to anger, a quote from Exodus 34, as the reason why.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_02: In Jonah, God says he spares Nineveh because his anger is slow to erupt.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_02: Chapter 4, verse 2.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_02: But here in Nahum, chapter 1, verse 3, it's on the screen right there in front of you.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_02: Nineveh is pronounced dead meat because God says, when my slow anger finally kicks in, when my patience runs out, my enemies are toast.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_02: So here we are.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_02: Let me just, let's back up for a second.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_02: So Jonah is about, let's go, 777 BC.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_02: It's closer, probably to 760.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_02: So about 777 BC, Jonah's a prophet.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_02: Remember, God said, I want you to go preach judgment on Nineveh.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_02: Jonah says, you know, to see if they'll repent.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_02: Jonah says, No way, I'm going the opposite way.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_02: He goes to Tarshish, remember, there's a storm.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_02: He gets swallowed up by a big, goes, flies off the boat, swallowed up by a big fish or a whale, whatever, which then vomits him out, and he goes, you know, to Nineveh and he preaches judgment.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_02: And the Ninevites, including their animals, it says, you know, repent and wear sackcloth.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_02: And God, who always responds to us, who's unchangeable in his judgment, that he will judge unrepentance and pride, seeing that they are no longer proud and are repentant, he says, Okay, I'm gonna give you a stay on judgment.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_02: He retracts it, which makes Jonah mad.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_02: That's Jonah.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_02: That's the book of Jonah.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_02: That's about 700 and let's say 760 BC.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_02: But we know from history that Nineveh repented of her repentance pretty quickly.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_02: Nineveh got up off her knees, stopped being humble to God, and started going back to her behavior before, which is that she is perhaps the most cruel nation who has ever lived.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_02: She lived for violence and cruelty.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_02: She's bloodthirsty.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_02: And so she started going around the Middle East or Near East, it was then called, and she started grabbing countries and slaughtering the people just for fun.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_02: And bragging.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_02: If you go to the British Museum or Berlin Museum and so forth, you can see you see Asher Banipal and Tiglath Pelezer and Shalmaneser and Sennacherib.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_02: They kept records and they bragged about things like I piled up everybody's bodies in a huge pyramid and used it as fuel for the fire.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_02: And again and again they bragged, and we took all of the what we would call teenagers today, the young maidens and the young men, and we threw them all into the blazing fire.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_02: We dismembered the children.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_02: I flayed the skin off of all the people while they were alive, and we coated the walls of their city with their skin.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_02: He brags in detail.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_02: I drove a little dagger, my own personal dagger, up to the jaw of the king, and I put a chain on it, and I dragged him around on his hands and knees like a dog and made him sleep in a kennel.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, this is the kind of violence, this is the kind of cruelty they had.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_02: And finally, you get about 50 or 100 years in, you know what happens is they go down and they defeat the northern kingdom of Israel.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_02: They they just wipe out the ten tribes in the north, 722 BC.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_02: So the northern ten tribes of Israel gone.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_02: Why do you never hear of them?
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_02: Another 50 years, God says, you know, I've had enough of this.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_02: Let's go back, let's go back to the sheet.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_02: Uh second paragraph.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_02: Nineveh was the lion, Assyria.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_02: Nineveh's the capital of Assyria, and was the lion.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_02: When you go to the museums, by the way, that's their animal.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_02: They represented themselves with a lion, lions on their streets, on their sidewalks, on their walls.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_02: Isaiah calls them a lion.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_02: The Bible calls Assyria a lion, who roared terror, who panted for blood, who hunted her lamb-like victims, then tore their throat, says chapter 2 of our book, and dragged them home to her den for her young to devour.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_02: And Israel was a victim, a stray lamb chased by lions, devoured by the king of Assyria, Jeremiah 50, 17.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_02: That happened in 722, and now in 650, the lion is back, pawing at Jerusalem's gate.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_02: I've had enough of you, God roarers in Nahum, Nineveh's dead meat.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_02: And Nahum's prophecy came true in 612 BC.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_02: The lion of Syria was mauled to death by Babylon.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, if you take a record of the fall of Nineveh to Babylon, and you match it up with Nahum chapter 2, verses 1 through 13, you will find a dozen precise statements.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_02: This is one of the most accurate, detailed prophecies in the Bible about what was going to happen to Nineveh 50 years later.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_02: Final paragraph.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_02: Why did God give us this bloody book?
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_02: To comfort us.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, Naham Nahum means comfort.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_02: To comfort us.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_02: I'm your warrior, I'll protect you, I'll avenge you.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_02: Alright?
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_02: So the first thing that we learn from this book is that God is.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_02: I'm on the back of the sheet.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_02: Now God is the greatest warrior of all.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_02: When you think of great warriors in history and in myth and in fantasy, who do you think of?
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_02: Well, if you're like me, you think of Superman.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_02: Or who's this?
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_02: Thor, yeah.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_02: Or who's the, oh, you can read.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_02: Hercules.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_02: Or my favorite, Lord of the Rings, Gandalf, or Spartacus, or Leonidas, or let's not forget Rambo.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_02: Or even greater.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_02: So um, and I've listed them on your sheet.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_02: We think of Alexander the Great, Achilles, Attila, Beowulf, Captain America, Hannibal, Lancelot, Sergeant York, Sergeant York.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_02: Sergeant York.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_02: You say, okay, I've heard of Achilles and Attila and Alexander the Great, but Sergeant York?
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_02: I included Sergeant York because he's a real life hero.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_02: America's greatest World War I hero, the movie Sergeant York 1941, won Gary Cooper, the Oscar for Best Actor that year.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_02: His name was Alvin York.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_02: He was one of 11 children.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_02: He grew up in the mountains of Tennessee and made a name for himself even as a kid, as a remarkable marksman, a sharpshooter.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_02: But he was a little bit of an alcoholic at age 20 and very violent.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_02: And then he came to Christ, trusted Christ as a savior at age 28, became an absolutely devoted Christian, started leading singing in church, was also a pacifist, did not believe in killing people.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_02: So when he was drafted a year after he trusted Christ as Savior, he pled with the army.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_02: Can I avoid killing people?
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_02: And there's no conscientious objection back then in World War I.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_02: They said, no, we'll do what we can.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_02: And then as he got into the army, he found he had a whole lot of Christians who were his officers and others, and they showed him the Bible and explained to him that it was, you know, you could obey God and the government at the same time and legitimately kill enemies.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_02: And so, well, I want to show you a little video.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_02: A four-minute video of him in World War I.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_02: And the reason I show this to you, the reason I talk so much about this guy is he's significant in my family, the Congdon family.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_02: So I want you to look at what he did in World War I.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: York kept a diary throughout the war and described the events of that day.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: This was our first offensive battle in the Argonne.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: We started over the top at 6.10 a.m.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: And the Germans was putting their machine guns to work all over the hill in front of us and on our left and right.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: So I was in support, and I could see my pals getting picked off until it almost looked like there was none left.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: We got through the shells and the gas and occupied Hill 223, which was to be our jumping off place for the advance on the railroad.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: When the zero hour came, we went over the top and started our advance.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: We had to charge across a valley several hundred yards wide and rushed the machine gun emplacements on the ridge on the far side.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: And there were machine guns on the ridges on our flanks, too.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: So you see, we were getting it from the front and both flanks.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the first and second waves got about halfway across the valley and then were held up by machine gun fire from the three sides.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: It was awful.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: Our losses were very heavy.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: Our boys just went down like the long grass before the mowing machine at home.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: And to make matters worse, something had happened to our artillery, and we had no barrage.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: So we decided to try and get them by a surprise attack in the rear.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: York and 16 others from his battalion were working their way behind the German lines to try to take out the machine guns that were defending the line.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: They were able to overrun one German unit, capturing a large group of German soldiers.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: But while they were contending with the prisoners, they were sprayed by machine gun fire from a ridge beyond them.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: Nine men went down, six dead.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: Corporal York was the highest ranking man left.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: York left his men to guard the prisoners and worked his way toward the German machine gun nest alone.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: Those machine guns were spitting fire and cutting down the undergrowth all around me, something awful.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: And the Germans were yelling orders.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: You never heard such a racket in all your life.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't have time to dodge behind a tree or dive into the brush.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: As soon as the machine guns opened up fire on me, I began to exchange shots with them.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: Every time I see the German, I just tecked him off.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: At first I was shooting from a prone position.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: Just like we often shoot at the targets in the shooting matches in the mountains of Tennessee.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: And it was just about the same distance, but the targets here were bigger.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: In the middle of the fight, a German officer and five men done jumped out of a trench and charged me with a fixed bayonet.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: They had about 25 yards to come, and they were coming right smart.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: I only had about half a clip left in my rifle, but I had my pistol ready.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: I tecked off the six-man first, and then the fifth, then the fourth, and so on.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: That's the way we shoot wild turkeys at home.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: You see, we don't want the front ones to know that we're getting the back ones.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: And then they keep on coming till we get them all.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, I hadn't time to think of that.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: I guess I just naturally did it.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: I know, too, that if the front ones wavered, or if I stopped them, the rear ones would done drop and pump a volley into me and get me.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: Then I returned to the rifle and kept right on after those machine guns.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: I hollered to them to come down and give up.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't want to kill any more and I had to.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: I'd take a couple of them off and holler again.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: Faced with his growing losses, the German lieutenant commanding the unit called out in English to York, offering their surrender.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: York accepted.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: As a memorial, in the French village of Chatel-Charie states, armed with a rifle and pistol, he silenced a German battalion of 35 machine guns, killed 25 enemy soldiers, and captured 132.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_02: Captured 132.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_02: So when I was growing up, we heard about Sergeant York, because uh my dad would tell us that through his mother we were related to him, a distant relation, and that he had won the uh the Medal of Honor.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_02: And so he was honored in our house.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_02: And when Sergeant York died in September of 1964, and I had a little sister born about five weeks later the next month, uh little Rebecca, they gave her the name Rebecca York Conged, and so she's had to explain that to people ever since.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_02: And she was thrilled this week when I said, everybody will know why your middle name's York, at least in Topeka, so feel free to visit.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_02: So, so but but here's my question.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_02: So he's a real life hero.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_02: Now, let me ask you a question.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_02: Which of all of these warriors is the greatest warrior of all?
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know which one you'd pick, but if I ask you, who's the greatest of these, greatest warrior in all of the universe?
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you wouldn't answer any of them, would you?
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_02: You you would answer that, no, God is the greatest warrior of all, wouldn't you?
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_02: Because you know that you put all of these great warriors together, and our God could defeat them all with one arm tied behind his back.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_02: And you read that in verses 3 through 6 of chapter 1 as it describes God the warrior.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_02: His path is in the whirlwind and storm and clouds are the dust beneath his feet.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_02: In other words, some of his weapons are whirlwinds and storms and clouds.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_02: But that's not absolutely unique.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_02: If you know the ancient writings, you know that Baal and other gods bragged that they had the whirlwind and storms at their beck and call.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_02: But then you get to the next verse and you find out that our God's number one weapon, most powerful weapon, is something absolutely unique.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_02: It's his voice.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_02: He rebukes the sea so that it dries up and he makes all the rivers run dry.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_02: Though rebukes is such a mild word.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_02: It's such a bad word.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's a literal one of the literal meanings of the Hebrew word, but this word is used throughout the Old Testament in military contexts for the thunder, you know, when the thunder roars and the battle cry of Goliath and so forth.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_02: No, no, this is speaking, this is saying that the voice of God, his battle cry, makes the sea dry up, his battle cry, simply his battle cry, makes the rivers run dry, that the two most fertile areas of northern Israel wither, that even the flower of Lebanon withers, that God is that kind of a warrior that the mountains quake before him, and the hills absolutely melt, and the earth trembles at his presence, the world and all who live in it.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_02: Well, why not?
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_02: Because this voice is the same voice that actually created the mountains and the hills and all of the Khansmos.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_02: And this voice actually created all of those other hero warriors anyway.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_02: So who can withstand his indignation?
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_02: Who can endure his burning anger?
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_02: His wrath is poured out like fire.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_02: Even rocks are shattered before him.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_02: God is the greatest world.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: Warrior of all.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_02: And this isn't just some guy, Nahum, who who who, by the way, did you notice that Nahum is not a ho-hum book?
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_02: Get it, Nahum, Ho hum.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_02: Boy, guys don't like preacher puns, do they?
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_02: So, but this isn't just Nahum's little thing.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_02: No, this is throughout the Old Testament.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_02: We may prefer to ignore it, but but you find this is the song that Miriam taught the women of Israel as they looked back and watched Pharaoh and his troops get swallowed up by water.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_02: The Lord is a man of war, literally, a warrior.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yahweh is his name, Exodus 15, 3.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_02: David, who is this king of glory?
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_02: The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle, the greatest prophet of all Isaiah.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_02: The Lord shall go forth like a mighty man, chapter 42, 13.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_02: He shall stir up his zeal like a man of war.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_02: He shall cry out, yes, shout aloud.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_02: He shall prevail against his enemies.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_02: Jeremiah 20, 11.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_02: The Lord stands beside me like a great warrior.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_02: Zephaniah, the Lord your God, is with you, the mighty warrior who saves.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_02: Or the 200 times in the Old Testament that we read that one of the names of God is the Lord of hosts, Yahweh Sabioot, the Lord of hosts, the Lord of what hosts?
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_02: What armies?
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_02: Answer, of course, angelic armies, the greatest armies of all.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_02: And he leads them into battle.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_02: And one day we know that on the final day, the book of Revelation tells us the Son Jesus will lead them into battle on a white horse, and a sword will come out of his mouth and slay the enemy.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_02: This is why there are books.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_02: I have a couple in my library that search through this theme in the Bible, and their titles are things like God is a warrior.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, he's not just a warrior, he is the warrior, the greatest warrior of all.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_02: But then the question arises, what kind of a fighter or warrior is he?
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_02: Because we're very familiar, you and I, growing up in school, in elementary, and junior high and high school, the fact that the best fighters in school oftentimes were not the best people.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_02: They were not good.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_02: They were bad, and you had to walk carefully around them.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_02: And they did not protect the weak and the frail.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_02: They ignored them.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_02: What kind of a fighter, what kind of a warrior is God?
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_02: Well, we find out immediately.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_02: God lets us know that I am the great protector of my people.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_02: God the warrior is the great protector of his people.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_02: That's the very next verse, verse 7, chapter 1.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_02: The Lord is what?
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_02: Good.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_02: He's a stronghold in the day of distress.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_02: He cares for those who take refuge in him.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_02: The word cares is so sweet.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_02: He is so strong on the outside, so soft on the inside.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_02: And as a result, we can call out to him as our protector.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_02: And during great wars, Christian leaders have called out to him.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_02: I think of the Second World War, General Montgomery, the commander-in-chief of the British Eighth Army, as the landing was about to happen on Normandy sent out a message to all of the British troops, ending with the words Let us pray that the Lord, mighty in battle, will go forth with our armies and that his special providence will aid us in the struggle.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_02: And he could pray that as a Christian, as a regular Bible reader, Montgomery could pray that because he understood that God is a great warrior and that God protects what is right and what is good, and he protects his people.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_02: But you say, I don't really need protection.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_02: I don't even need protection from ISIS.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_02: I don't live in the Middle East.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_02: I'm safe here.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_02: And in a way you are, but you you, I don't know if you're aware that this last week, Franklin Graham, who's going from one state capital to another this year, to the 50 state capitals early this last week, speaking at one of the capitals up north, I don't remember Iowa or Nebraska, stood there and said, It's open season on Christians in America.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_02: And he explained, there now exists deep-seated antagonism and hostility toward Christianity in every seat of power in this nation, government, media, courts, and education.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_02: It's become open season, he wrote, on Christians.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, that night, Bill O'Reilly considered that important enough that he actually took it as his question, and he agreed that Billy Graham had a that Franklin Graham had a point about that.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_02: Now, I don't know, you may think that this is going over the top, but you know, we can think of many, many examples.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_02: I think of the shock of picking up the AARP magazine, Modern Maturity.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_02: I try to avoid that at all costs because it reminds me of something.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_02: But um seeing, you know, great word cults on the cover and inside the article entitled Let Us Pray, that is PREY, pray on helpless and in this case older people, and listed cultic groups that do that.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_02: And I had no problem with several of them, but I did have a problem when they listed Jews for Jesus as a cult that preys on older people.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_02: I thought, where do you get that?
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_02: We don't go to old folks' homes or anything, but anyway.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_02: But then there are so many other examples.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I think of uh, and perhaps that you you read about it too, of this uh this uh Jack Phillips is his name, who has a business called Masterpiece Cake Shop in Colorado.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, this has happened in my erstwhile hometown of Portland, Oregon already.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_02: Now happening again in the Denver area, facing a year in jail now for refusing to make a cake to celebrate a gay wedding.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_02: Now, now, if if there's no other bakery within 100 miles or 50 miles that makes sense, but if you're in Portland, Oregon or Denver, Colorado, and there's another bakery down the street, it doesn't make sense to me that you would then decide I am so one a cake from your shop, I'm going to sue you and make you spend a year in jail for not wanting to make me a cake.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_02: Or then I think of the two Christians actually arrested in California because they were reading a Bible, sitting on the sidewalk outside a Department of Motor Vehicles office.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_02: Of course, it got thrown out, but why would you get arrested?
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_02: Why would you have to appear before a judge?
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_02: Or I think of Franklin Graham holding up the paper where, and this is before the IRS admitted it had targeted, turned out that it had targeted Tea Party and Christians, conservatives, saying that the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association was one of the groups that had been targeted for special audits a few years ago.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_02: Or I think of the Florida professor at the Florida Atlantic University, who was irate that he had a Christian student in class who kept responding in Christian ways and commanded the student to write the name Jesus Christ on a piece of paper, put it on the ground, and stomp on it.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_02: And the student refused, at which point the professor started disciplinary action.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_02: And of course, when Christians heard about it, and then the governor got involved, then of course, you know, they they threw that out.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_02: The professor hasn't been sanctioned.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_02: But but you understand what I'm saying, that we we live in a strange world, a rather new world, and I can't help thinking of maybe the most poignant and famous of Norman Rockwell's Saturday evening post covers.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_02: It pictures a little restaurant, a cheap little restaurant in what's clearly sort of an industrial modern town.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_02: It seems like it may be raining outside the window.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_02: So you have these people gathering inside.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_02: You have an older man who's come in the door and he's in an overcoat, he's taken off his hat and he and he has an umbrella.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_02: And then you have uh close to us also an older man who's got a newspaper and he's finishing his coffee, and then you have a couple of teenagers at a table, one of them with a cigarette in his mouth, and they're sitting at one of those little tables.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_02: This is one of those cafes where they have no tablecloths and you know where the where the floor is is is very plain tile.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_02: And they're all looking at one thing.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_02: One, two, three, four people, and they're all staring at a little boy and an old woman whose heads are bowed in prayer.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_02: You sort of get the feeling that these other four people are looking at something that they used to be quite familiar with, and perhaps they themselves once participated in, but no longer.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's part of, that's part of, it's not part really of the new world.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_02: And so they just stare, transfixed, by this little boy whose head is bowed, and by this woman whose hat has seen better days and whose hair sort of sticks out, who's got her hands folded, as they're doing a very old-fashioned thing in old-fashioned clothes.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_02: They sit there and they're actually praying of all things.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_02: And this is years ago, Norman Rockwell, however, is trying to communicate that we live in a new world today.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_02: And and some people still are old-fashioned and they do old-fashioned kinds of things, and it's really kind of sweet, isn't it?
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_02: But I would say there's another picture here, a picture that Nahum knows well, and that is that here are two people who know that they live in somewhat of a hostile world, a world that has passed them and God by.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_02: A world in which, however, they still have access to God, who is the mighty, the great warrior.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_02: And they understand what a mighty God we serve, and so they bow in prayer, calling out to this God who loves them to protect them.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_02: Does that make sense?
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_02: Now, you and I need to understand something.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_02: We need to understand why we in America are living in that kind of a world.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_02: Walter Williams, I think, explains it better than anyone I've ever heard.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_02: The distinguished economics professor at George Mason University, an author, a columnist, he said there are good reasons why the elite and the liberal press attack what they derisively call the religious right, and the Ozzy and Harriet family.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_02: Religion, he says, is about moral absolutes.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_02: It routinely condemns fornication and adultery, homosexuality stealing, lying and cheating.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_02: Pretend you're a liberal.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_02: You want open sex and any kind of lifestyle.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_02: You want a nanny government that confiscates the earnings of one American and gives them to another to whom they do not belong.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_02: Remember, uh, Walter Williams is an economist.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_02: What institutions challenge your agenda and stand in your way?
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_02: You've got it.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_02: Families and religion.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_02: So we live in a day in which Christians need to realize that, you know, it's a little bit like that little rural zoo, and the guest walked in and he said to the zookeeper, wow, I really think that's cool.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_02: The cage over there with the lion and the monkey in the same cage.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_02: I just think that's that's so awesome.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_02: Did they get along well?
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_02: And the zookeeper said, Yes, they they really do.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_02: Once in a while they have a mild disagreement, and we have to get a new monkey.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_02: And that's the kind of world we live in, so long as you get along with the lion that seems to be in power today, then things are fine.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_02: But if there's a disagreement, then you know what happens.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_02: You get chewed up and you get spat out.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_02: That's why, you know, you say, okay, God, if you're the mighty warrior and you promise protection, where is this protection?
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not seeing it.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_02: Amy Rettering didn't see it this last less than 48 hours ago.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_02: Where is this protection?
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_02: And that's what the whole rest of the book, chapters 112 through the rest of the book is about.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_02: And they answer it this way: God, the warrior, is able to avenge his people, and he will, and he will.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_02: This is what the Lord says, chapter 1, verse 12.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_02: Though they are strong and numerous, they will still be mowed down and will pass away.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_02: We could add one day.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_02: Desolate, chapter 2, verse 10 pictures it happening.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_02: Desolation, decimation, devastation, hearts melt, knees tremble, loins shake, every face grows pale.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_02: This is a prediction of the fall of Nineveh and what it'll look like, what it'll be like when it happens and we could take it, since Nineveh's now been destroyed.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_02: By the way, so destroyed that just a hundred years later, Alexander the Great could walk, 200 years later, could walk his armies over the top of Nineveh, never even knowing that it was there.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_02: And God says, that's how I will destroy my enemies and your enemies.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_02: Beware, he says to his enemies, I am against you.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_02: Can you imagine if Conan the barbarian, someone, some other great warrior came up to you and said, I'm against you.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you go, Oh dear, please.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_02: And God says that not once but twice.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_02: This is the declaration of the Lord of hosts.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna make your chariots go up in smoke, and the sword will devour your young lions.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_02: I'll cut your prey off from the earth, and the sound of your messengers will never be heard again.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_02: Chapter 3, verse 5.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_02: Beware, he says it again.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_02: I am against you.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_02: Lord, where is this protection?
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not seeing it.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_02: And his answer is, it's coming.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_02: Nineveh's proof.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_02: Wait, trust.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_02: Sooner or later, all people will get what they deserve.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_02: You see it, I think sometimes, briefly, I'll just mention years ago when I was 23, I went down to a little island called Tobago with a friend.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_02: I was in seminary at the time.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_02: Little island, just a few thousand people, 20 miles north and south, seven miles east and west.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, let's see if we can, let's hit every house on the island this summer, let's see if we can talk to everybody about Jesus.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_02: So in the morning we'd get up, we're sleeping on the floor of a little wooden chapel.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_02: Get up in the morning, we'd eat our mango and our banana, and then we'd go out and start going door to door through the island from about 9 till 2, 2.30 in the afternoon.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_02: And knock on doors, we had tracks and we'd talk to people about Jesus.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_02: And about 2.30, you know, we were kids after all, we'd stop and then we'd go play in the water.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_02: We wouldn't just play, we had spear guns and we had to catch our supper, so we would dive down and we'd.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_02: So anyway, that was very interesting.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_02: And then in the evening, we'd come back and we'd hold meetings on street corners or on the beach or something like that, and witness to people.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_02: In the evenings, it was really an interesting, interesting summer.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_02: And we got to talk to a lot of people about Christ.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_02: But the story I want to tell you, the story about Mrs.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_02: Sandy, is a story that one day, as I finished my knocking on doors, I wrote down in my little pad that I carried with me, tomorrow start with Mrs.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_02: Sandy.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_02: Her name was on the mailbox.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_02: It was the next lane that went up.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_02: So I went back, we went swimming, you know, and did our stuff.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_02: And in the morning I got up, ate my mango, and went down there, walked down the long lane to Mrs.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_02: Sandy's place, knocked on the door, kept knocking, nobody's home.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_02: So I left a tract in the door, went back, went to the next house.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_02: Next house had a lady there who was a Christian.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_02: She's really sweet.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_02: And after hearing and talking, she said, Did you go to Mrs.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_02: Sandy's house?
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_02: I said, Yeah.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_02: She said, Well, you didn't find her there.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_02: I said, No.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_02: She said, Well, in one way that's good, this this woman is like a she's a witch and she hates God.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_02: She hates Jesus.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_02: She's an atheist.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_02: She's well known all across the island.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_02: She goes out on Sundays, she hands the kids candy if they'll promise not to go to Sunday school or church.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_02: She's totally opposed to anything Christian.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_02: But she says, the reason he didn't see her is that last night in the middle of the night, this woman, she says she was in fine health, but she started, we could hear her screaming, so my neighbor and I ran over to her house and we went in there and she's just screaming out that she was in pain, she was in pain, so we took her down to the little clinic down here and she died last night.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_02: And then she said to me, strange thing, she said, you know, I wonder if maybe God didn't want you to talk to her.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_02: And when she said that, I thought of that verse in Isaiah that said, Seek the Lord while he may be found.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_02: Call upon him while he is near.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't know whether that's it's the case or not, but I do know that sometimes God's patience runs out and his slow anger comes to its end, and then he goes, you know, you're done for.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_02: I I think that happened, by the way, at a place called Pompeii.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_02: Paul stopped in on his way to Rome when he was in his ship at Putioli, which is the port, right?
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_02: And he saw Mount Vesuvius, went on to Rome, and shortly after Paul's death, something amazing happened.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_02: Vesuvius hadn't erupted in a thousand years.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_02: But it erupted, and in just 40 hours of solid raining down on the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum and a couple of small ones, they were covered with 20 inches of lava.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_02: 16 out of the 20,000 people there died.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_02: Now here's what's interesting that town of Pompeii worshiped two gods, the god of money, Mercury, the god of sex, Venus.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_02: And as a result, it was a money, money flowed in that town.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_02: It was well to do, but also it was the whole town was a Las Vegas.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_02: It was a brothel.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_02: I when I was 22 years old, I went, I went to that town just for, and a girl that I liked at that time, and I walked through that town, and I'd never more embarrassed in my life.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_02: I was trying to impress this sweet Christian girl.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_02: It was horrifying, horrifying to walk through that town as a Christian because after the excavators got the lava out of there, there you have a Roman town which looked exactly the way it did in 79 A.D.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_02: And there you have a town which, even the first moment you walk through the front gate, you see brothel after brothel after brothel.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_02: You see everywhere advertisements for prostitutes, for girls who cost about the cost of a Big Mac today at McDonald's.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_02: But the worst thing of all is I was walking with that girl is the fact that everywhere on sidewalks and on houses and on posts and walls here and there, you have the male sex organ, you have the phallic symbol, just everywhere.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_02: Can you imagine?
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it was a horrifying, it was a shocking thing just to walk through there.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_02: And then I get to a room.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_02: You get to a room close to the end, and someone back then wrote on a wall the words Sodom and Gomorrah.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_02: And your heart sings, you say, Yeah, that's exactly how God looked at it.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_02: And he probably said, you know, I've had my fill, and I'm going to make this city an example, just like I did in Nineveh, of what happens when my patience runs out.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_02: There's a verse in the New Testament that I think comforts us as well.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_02: Vengeance is mine, I'll repay, saith the Lord.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_02: This book, this story of God, the warrior who protects us and will avenge us, is meant to comfort us.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_02: It's also meant to get you to stop lying on your bed at night plotting vengeance against people who've done you dirty.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_02: There's a guy at Wheaton when I was there, I think he's one of the great Christian writers of our day called named Philip Yancey.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_02: And in the years after Wheaton, he was hired and fired, and he went through some tough times, and he was very, very, he was an angry young writer, angry young man.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_02: And he tells about how he used to take anger walks.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_02: He was a Christian, he took anger walks behind his apartment nearly every day, praying the imprecatory prayers.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_02: God smite them dead, God slaughter them.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_02: They're just terrible and so forth.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_02: And he said he just used to dump his anger out on God.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_02: But he says, as time went on, gradually and eventually, as he heard God sort of saying back, I know.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_02: I feel it too.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_02: Let it go, I'll take care of it.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_02: And he said, My anger walk turned into praise walk.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_02: That's what God wants from us, isn't it?
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_02: Leave your avenging to God.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_02: Because He, the greatest warrior of all, says, I'll protect you.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_02: And one day I'll make it right.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_02: Amen?
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_02: Let's pray.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_02: Heavenly Father, I pray for these dear folks.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_02: Some of them quail at this very idea that God would be a God of wrath, God of justice, God of anger, God of retribution.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_02: But thank you, thank you, thank you.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_02: It comforts our hearts to know we can leave this in your hands and you'll take care of it because you, you are our great warrior.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_02: In Jesus' name.