God is Wrathful but He is Good - Pt 1 (Nahum 1:1-8)

Are you saved? Do you believe in the power of Christ’s death and resurrection? Is He your Lord? How do you know if you are saved?

“If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him.
“He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine, but the Father’s who sent Me.
John 14:23,24

Yeah, but I said a prayer when I was 5, and I was told that prayer saves me. Wrong, no prayer will save you only faith in Jesus Christ will save you, which changes your life to live for Him. You are a new creature, your goals are to please Him in all respects of your life, that is the essence of repentance. To change.

You believe that God is one. You do well; the demons also believe, and shudder.
James 2:19

You must be born again to be a true disciple of Christ, you must believe in Him and that faith changes you, it changes the way you think, the way you talk, the way you walk, your desires are for Christ and Christ alone. Will you trip every once in a while and sin? Yes, but your goals should be solely for Christ.

So, how does God see you if you are still in your sin and do not have the saving faith in Christ?

Look at Nahum 1:1-6

Adversary: an adversary is someone who is against something else. It is used also using the words to oppress or to be a foe of someone. We also know that the devil is called our adversary.
Be of sober spirit, be on the alert, Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour
1 Peter 5:8

Because of this close relationship, Christ calls the Pharisees in John 8:44, sons of the devil.


Enemy: Here is the active part of the nouns used to describe God’s foes. If the adversary is who the person is, the word enemy describes the action of that person. The word means to be actively fighting against another. We see this in 1 Peter when it says that Satan prowls around he is active, and he hates us, just as those apart from God are active in their fight and they are called God haters in 2 Timothy 3:3,4. If you are unsaved you might say that you don’t fight against God and you don’t hate God but in God’s eyes if you are not for Him you are against Him.

Guilty: Understand that you are not innocent, you are not a good person. Romans 3:10 says that there are none that are good, no not one. Have you ever sinned? Have you ever lied, even once, ever coveted someone else’s belongings, ever said the Lord’s name as a cuss word, ever hated someone? If you have done this even once, James 2:10 says that you have broken the whole law. Meaning you are just as condemned as a murderer, you are just as condemned as the worst serial killer, just as worse as Hitler.

What does God do to these people? Look again in Nahum 1:1-3

He is avenging and wrathful: to avenge something it means to exact satisfaction for a wrong by punishing the person that did the wrong. How does God do this? Through His wrath and vengeance. It says that He will not let the guilty go unpunished. He takes His wrath out against those by punishing them forever in Hell.



It says that He stores up His wrath for his enemies.

Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord.

Romans 12:19

Just think that every time you sin, it is another way of God storing up more wrath to take against you. If you sin 5 times a day and you live for 80 years you will sin 146,000 times so you allow the Creator of Hell and the Creator of you to store up wrath at least 146,000 times to take out on you for eternity. What will hell be like?

Solomon Stoddard, Edward’s grandfather, used to compare hell to “where they burnt their children to Moleck” at Topheth. There they burnt them as sacrifices to the devil, and made a noise with trumpets, that they might drown the noise of the cries of the poor children, they could not bear their cries. Hell is worse than these. Being in hell would be like suffering in the fire and brimstone that fell on Sodom: men, women, children, all like torches; their bodies blazed; how they scream out in pain and suffering. The difference is that agony was short lived, whereas in hell there is suffering everlasting burnings. Add thousands to thousands, and multiply millions by millions, fill quires of paper with numbers,when men have suffered never so long there is still an eternity remaining. This makes every part of their misery infinite, their pain will be infinite, the terror infinite.”



He would continue; God restrains the devil and his crew, but not in the next. The devil thirsts for the blood of souls, and tis only because God restrains him that they don’t lay hold of the soul before death; but as soon as ever the man is dead, God restrains him no more, but then these hell hounds fly upon their prey, these roaring lions dare then lay hold as it were with open mouths.

If you are not a Christian, be afraid, be fearful, for tomorrow is not promised. Repent tonight, may tonight be the night of salvation. For even the Mountains quake because of God. Nahum 1:8 ends with saying God will pursue His enemies into the darkness.

This is a scary thought, darkness is always meant to show evil and it is also used as a picture for hell. But don’t think you are safe in the darkness, don’t think you are safe when you are in hell, for God will continue to seek you out and will continue to pour out His wrath upon you even when you depart and go to hell. It is never ending, the burning will continue forever, and just when you think you can’t stand the burning anymore, you still have an eternity remaining. How long can you put your hand in a hot fire without screaming? Your whole body will be in the flames and you will never die, you will never rot, but will be as Stoddard put it, a torch.