Nineveh Learns The Hard Way

Revival stories can inspire us, but they can also unsettle us. We start with the First Great Awakening in early American history, where preaching helped spark widespread repentance, new churches, and visible change, then we face the haunting reality that cultural Christianity can cool fast. When faith becomes a one-generation memory, what went missing, and what should we learn before we repeat the same pattern? 

From there we step into the Old Testament book of Nahum and the looming fall of Nineveh. Jonah’s generation once heard God’s word and turned, but Nahum arrives more than a century later with a different message: God’s patience has an end point. We spend time on what Nahum emphasizes first, the character of God Himself: holy, just, slow to anger, and unwilling to “clear the guilty.” Along the way we talk about repentance, the justice of God, and why resisting the Creator is always a losing fight. 

Nahum’s prophecy also gets specific, describing the coming destruction that history says the Babylonians carried out, even down to floodgates opening and the palace collapsing. The point isn’t ancient trivia; it’s a warning and a comfort. God’s judgment is real, evil does not win forever, and the gospel matters because Jesus Christ is the only safe place for sinners. We close with a challenge for Christian parenting, church discipleship, and everyday witness: pass the faith on with both our lips and our lives. 

If this helped you think more clearly about Nahum, Nineveh, and why revival must become discipleship, subscribe, share the episode with a friend, and leave a review so more listeners can find it.

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Transcript

Revival That Fades

SPEAKER_00 0:54

A wonderful movement of the Holy Spirit took place in America in 1734. It's called the First Great Awakening. And for about a decade, tens of thousands of people came to faith in Christ under the preaching of Jonathan Edwards and others. In fact, in New England alone, those New England states, more than 30,000 people became Christians. 150 new churches were established. Now, as wonderful as that season of revival was in early American history, one historian noted that within 50 years, the culture of those New England states could be categorized as spiritually dead. Historians have suggested several reasons for this decline, including the American Revolution. But what we do know is the sad truth that the impact of the Great Awakening, for the most part, was limited to one generation. Now, earlier in our wisdom journey, we saw another Great Awakening take place, and that was the conversion of the city of Nineveh. Following the preaching of the prophet Jonah, that entire city had repented and avoided God's judgment. Sadly, the next generation of Assyrians went right back into their idolatry. In fact, less than 60 years after Jonah's ministry to them, the Assyrians will conquer the northern kingdom of Israel, brutally taking the Israelites into captivity. Well, now it's been about 130 years since Jonah preached in Nineveh, and God has another message for the Ninevites, and this time the message is delivered by the prophet Nahum. Now, unlike Jonah, Nahum doesn't go to Nineveh to invite the people to repent, and he isn't delivered there by a great fish either. But Nahum delivers a message from God, and it's simply this their time is up. God's patience has ended. Nineveh's judgment now is certain. Now as we open this little book of prophecy, it's interesting to me that Nahum begins here not by listing some of the sins of Nineveh, but by listing some of the attributes of God. Verse 2 says, The Lord is a jealous and avenging God who takes vengeance on his adversaries. Verse 3 adds, The Lord is slow to anger and great in power, and the Lord will by no means clear the guilty. Simply put, God's holiness demands that sin be punished, and he gives people plenty of time to repent and turn to Him. That's Jonah chapter 4, verse 2. And that truth was confirmed when the people of Nineveh were spared the judgment of God. God is patient. He is merciful, and he does extend his grace and mercy to those, even people like the Ninevehes, if they would repent at the preaching of truth. Let me tell you, I'm glad God is patient with unbelievers, because he was certainly patient with me. Until I was a senior in high school, I didn't want anything to do with God, and certainly nothing to do with repentance. Even though I was a missionary kid and I knew the Bible, my heart was entirely rebellious. I still knew that God was real, and I also knew I deserved his judgment, but I wasn't about to surrender to his control. I wanted to run my own life, and then, fortunately, by the grace and goodness of God, he allowed me to live, and the Lord convicted my heart and made me realize the futility of fighting against the creator of the universe. And he opened my eyes and graciously heard my prayer, my prayer for salvation. Now, as Nahum preaches once again to the Ninevites, he describes the power of the Creator over creation. Verse three says, His way is in the whirlwind and storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet. Verse 4, he rebukes the sea and makes it dry. Verse 5, the mountains quake before him. So in light of God's creative power, Naam asks another question here in verse 6. Who can stand before the Lord's indignation? Who can endure the heat of his anger? The prophet is essentially saying, Don't you realize the futility of fighting against the creator of the universe? Don't you realize that you deserve his judgment? Do you really want that? Well, Nineveh isn't interested in the preaching of Nahum. They're not afraid, they're not ashamed. They had heard the truth through Jonah, through their parents, and they had enjoyed God's mercy in the past, but no, this next generation couldn't care less. They were, as one writer put it, sinning in spite of revealed knowledge. What's the result going to be? Verse 8 says, The Lord will make a complete end of the adversaries. Trouble will not rise up a second time. In other words, their doom is certain. Now the nation of Judah is welcoming the news of their enemy's ultimate destruction, but the people of Judah themselves are warned here in verse 15 to follow God and fulfill their vows. So here in chapter one, God himself, his character, that's the emphasis. Now in chapter two, the judgment of God on Nineveh is the emphasis. Now Nahum is writing about 650 BC, and we know from historical accounts that Nineveh was destroyed by the Babylonians some thirty-eight years after Nahum's preaching. Chapter two prophesies their coming destruction in poetic form. And here's what happens. Verse three describes Nineveh's enemy. The shield of his mighty men is red. His soldiers are clothed in scarlet. The chariots come with flashing metal on the day he musters them. The Cypress spears are brandished. Let me tell you, this is a powerful, well equipped army. We know these Babylonian chariots had sharp blades extending from the sides of the chariot, and that would just mow down, cut down anybody who stood in their path. Verse six says, The river gates are opened, the palace melts away. That's an interesting prophecy because here's what happened. A river flowed through Nineveh. There was a dam on this river just outside the city. Well, the Babylonian army opened the floodgates, it flooded the city of Nineveh, and the king's palace melted away. It literally disintegrated in the flood, and with that the invaders entered the city and plundered it. Now verse ten describes the panic of the city. Hearts melt, and knees tremble, anguish is in all loins, all faces grow pale. Now history records for us the fulfillment of Naam's prophecy that the Lord would make a complete end of Nineveh. And let me tell you, beloved, the city is leveled, and the city to this day has never been rebuilt. Now keep in mind that it wasn't the power and strategy of the Babylonians that brought the downfall of the city. They weren't Nineveh's most fearful enemy. The Lord was. We read this here in verse thirteen. Behold, I am against you, declares the Lord of hosts, and I will burn your chariots in smoke, and the sword shall devour your young lions. I will cut off your prey from the earth, and the voice of your messengers shall no longer be heard. Now again, why was the Lord carrying out this judgment, this destruction of Nineveh? Well, chapter three gives us the reasons. In verse one, Nineveh is called the bloody city. And the last verse of the chapter records that the Assyrians were involved with unceasing evil. You see the brutality and cruelty they inflicted on others for centuries. Now that's all going to fall on them. The Babylonians, well, they spared nobody, but here in chapter three and verse three, we're told of the heaps of corpses, dead bodies without end. Oh, what a judgment day. Now there are a couple of timeless truths for us in in this little book of prophecy that I want to pull out and emphasize. The first one is this while God is patient with unbelievers and desires true repentance, he is not going to overlook sin in the end. In fact, that's why he sent Jesus. We'll either trust in Jesus Christ as the one who paid for our sins, or we will pay for our sins one day eternally. Here's the second truth. We need to be diligent to pass on to the next generation an understanding of the gospel. They need to see a genuine demonstration of our walk with God. Now we can't guarantee that the next generation is going to follow Christ, but we can be sure that we don't stand in their way. We can't force anyone to believe, and that includes our children. But we can, as individuals, as families, as churches, teach them by our lips and with our lives what it means to walk with God. Well, until our next wisdom journey, beloved, may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.