Intermediate Lesson 21 - Book of Nahum

MESSAGE FOR PEOPLE TODAY FROM THE BOOK OF NAHUM

Church: Thyatira                                      Lesson 26 out of 39                                 Theme: Covenant

Background Information:

ü  We asked in the book of 2 Samuel, “How can the creation know how to remain faithful to a covenant?"

ü  In Nehemiah we were awakened to learn how the world will try to confuse the message of Jesus’ sacrifice by teaching covenant unfaithfulness as opposed to covenant faithfulness.

ü  In the Song of Solomon, we learned from a man and woman how to remember to be a witness who can understand how to present our body as a living sacrifice by realizing that love is as powerful as death.

ü  In Hosea, we learned how to be a witness who lines up our testimony with the Chief Cornerstone (the sacrifice Christ made) by repenting with zeal when we make a mistake. This also included a message of forgiving a person who repents with zeal.

Statement of Faith to Say Amen to for the Book of Nahum:

I can live among a person with peace who is choosing not to look at the sacrifice Christ made and is being unfaithful to the commandments of God because God is a jealous God, and He will protect the people whom He is in a covenant with.

Essential Question:

How does the world teach people to deny God’s commandments and Jesus’ sacrifice and build their temple with unfaithfulness?

Book of Nahum

Have students read pages 121-124 in The Pattern of Sound Teaching.

After students read the information ask them, "What do you want to talk about?"

Remember the Issue:

Realizing that Jesus made a sacrifice for our sin and how He can make an intersession for us is important. The world is not teaching us how to look to Jesus’ sacrifice and for husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church and died for it. A wife obeys the husband as we obey the church.

Remember the Truth Jesus Brought:

The world teaches a message for people to love what they desire. We are to look to God’s agenda to understand the new covenant is “till death do us part” and not dissolve our promise when we are not satisfied. The world will teach a worldview that supports an unfaithful attitude. The world will try to have us give or get a heart of stone.

Remember the Rock God Established:

Nahum was the prophet who had a vision that told him whatever we plot against the Lord, He will bring to an end. Then the problem will not surface two times.

People today have their own view of God’s personality. People make God’s character fit their idea of what the character and style of God should be like. God is love; this is how people view the character of God. People leave out the part about God being jealous and angry with fury to protect the people with whom He is in a covenant.

If someone wants to understand the way God loves and can be jealous, they should read Nahum’s warning to Assyria. The Nation of Nineveh (Assyria) continually tormented and imagined evil things to do, and they were doing it with and to God’s people who are in a covenant relationship with God. Nineveh did not keep the vow they made to God. Jonah had come, and the people repented. God saved the city of Nineveh because they repented. But then future generations returned to their evil practices. The people of Assyria (Nineveh) realized that Judah was in a covenant with God, and they ignored this and continued to torment God’s covenant people. This made them an enemy of God.

Nahum is prophesying that the Assyrians will be entirely destroyed, and Judah should continue to keep their vows to God that they had made. God was telling the people of Judah that if you sin you can repent, but then you must continue to be faithful to the covenant and obey the commandments.

Nahum told the people there would be a fire. Nineveh was a world power when Nahum made this prophecy. Babylon was not a superpower yet. When Nineveh was destroyed by Babylon, God wanted everyone to know that it was not Babylon that destroyed Nineveh, and it was God who allowed Babylon to go in and overtake the city of Nineveh. God clearly wants everyone to know that He did this to Nineveh; God wants people to know that when people protect what they love with His commandments, God protects people He is in a covenant with.

People who are not in a covenant with God will be jealous of people who are in a covenant with God. The people who are committing fornications against their body will try and interrupt a person’s covenant who is not committing fornications against their body. Because love is such a powerful force if we do not enter into a covenant in the way God intended for us to, we will get a jealous heart of stone.

Being unfaithful in the church of Thyatira will spiral into a more serious behavior in the church of Sardis. Nahum explained how unfaithfulness will spiral into listening to the Jezebel spirit when Nahum said, “Because of the multitude of the whoredoms of the well-favored harlot, the mistress of witchcrafts, that selleth nations through her whoredoms, and families through her witchcrafts” (Nahum 3:4). When we are unfaithful we will listen to the Jezebel spirit. In Sardis, the next church, the next sinful behavior is listening to the Jezebel spirit.

Activity:

The activity directions are located in Appendix 5 – Step 5.

Students will build two different structures that will represent the choices we make in life when we are building our internal temple. One will line up with the Chief Cornerstone and the other will not.

Conclusion:

Does the world teach us to line up with the Chief Cornerstone (the sacrifice that Jesus Christ made)?

Next Lesson:

The next church, Sardis, teaches us how behaviors will spiral from accepting God’s grace to sharing God’s mercy, repenting, and exhibiting faithfulness, and it will spiral into listening to the Holy Spirit when we line up our living sacrifice with the Chief Cornerstone. When we do not line up our living sacrifice with the Chief Cornerstone, we will work for prosperity and celebrate pride, believe lying vanities, and be unfaithful, and it will spiral into listening to the Jezebel spirit. The prophet Nahum wrote about how unfaithfulness would spiral into committing fornications against our body to satisfy the flesh. A Holy Spirit will love with God’s commandments and this is how to love with covenant faithfulness.