God's Character

Nahum 1:2-7

Nahum 1:2-7.

The character of God.

The Lord avenges and is furious. The Lord will take vengeance on His adversaries, And He reserves wrath for His enemies; 3 The Lord is slow to anger and great in power, And will not at all acquit the wicked. The Lord has His way In the whirlwind and in the storm, And the clouds are the dust of His feet. 4 He rebukes the sea and makes it dry, And dries up all the rivers.

Bashan and Carmel wither, And the flower of Lebanon wilts. 5 The mountains quake before Him, The hills melt, And the earth heaves at His presence, Yes, the world and all who dwell in it. 6 Who can stand before His indignation? And who can endure the fierceness of His anger? His fury is poured out like fire, And the rocks are thrown down by Him. 7 The Lord is good, A stronghold in the day of trouble; And He knows those who trust in Him.

Nahum is placed just before Habakkuk. One of the major areas that is neglected in teaching and preaching so often is a proper emphasis on the nature and character of God. We have today an abundance of sermons and articles and books that are on man.

how to be a happy Christian, how to be a Spirit-filled Christian, how to be happily married, how to get along with your kids, how to discipline your children, how to have a happy home, how to build the church, how to know your own mind, how to get out of debt, Great emphasis and constant concentration on men.

Somehow, we have gotten ourselves a little out of perspective. Somewhere along the line we need to get the emphasis in the right place. The emphasis today is man centred. Even though it’s a kind of a Christian man centred, its nevertheless man centred.

Never do we see a book on God. You may look in your bookstore high and low, and rarely will you find one of any current eras. We must not fail to declare the whole counsel of God. So much preaching and writing is sentimental and pseudo- spiritual psychoanalysis. We have lost the real preaching and the real instruction on the character of God, which is the basis of everything.

Even when preaching on Jesus Christ, we must constantly emphasize not so much what He did, but who He was. In other words, the motive for everything is the identity of God. The real motive of everything is to glorify God.

Why I do love to preach to you?

Why do I love to preach to Latvian?

Why do I love to preach Russian?

Is it because I love them? Yes and no. I don’t love them particularly, but I love God.

All our teaching and preaching must be God-centred. When we preach on the Holy Spirit, it must be in terms of His attributes as God, not some mystical experiences. We had Jesus movement, and much of it is unbiblical. When is Jesus isolated from the Father and the Holy Spirit it is not right?

We had Holy Spirit movement. Since when does He have the right to be isolated from the other two personas of the Trinity? Any movement that is isolated to one member of the Trinity is dangerous. The Holy Spirit movement, inevitably, without a basis of theology, winds up in emotionalism.

Jesus movement, without a basis of solid theology, winds up in humanism. What we really need to understand is a Triune God movement. The ministry of the Holy Spirit was to point to Jesus Christ. The ministry of Jesus Christ was to point to God.

Therefore, the ultimate design of both was to drive us to an understanding of the identity, the character, and the personality of God. God is the ultimate vision. We are to concentrate on the person of God.

Deuteronomy 6:12, then beware, lest you forget the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.

Who is God? Some might say non-existent. The equation on which the universe is built is nobody times nothing equals everything. Others say there is a cosmic force, but He could care less about us. He put the thing together, and He’s letting it run, but He’s off doing something else. He’s indifferent, emotionless, and He’s waiting for the whole thing to wind down.

Others say God is a practical joker who played the biggest joke on us. Life, existence without meaning. He gives us the feeling that He ought to be there, but He’s not. Some others say, God is a glorified grandfather type, a heavenly Santa. Naive, indulgent, syrupy, with no convictions, who pats everybody on the head and says, ‘It’s all right.’”

The pantheist says, God is the essence of everything, which is the same as saying, “God is nothing.”

Some people believe that God is the universal party-pooper, a kind of a cosmic killjoy who reigns on everybody’s parade. Some have even concluded that God died, although that’s kind of passed. The majority of people just manufacture a God out of their own minds.

Who is God? Four truths are abundantly clear in Scripture. God is one God.

Deuteronomy 6:4, “Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is one Lord!” If you want a theological term, you can call it monotheism. One God. We do not believe in a plurality of God’s – one God.

God is in three persons. He is one God, yet manifest in three persons. You say, “I don’t understand that.” You are not supposed to but to believe it. God is Spirit. God is an indication in Scripture that God is a spirit.

God is Creator. “In the beginning, God created.” One God in three persons. His essence is spirit, and He is the source of all things. That is the basic identity of God. Specific characteristics, many of them are revealed in Scripture. But rather than extend ourselves endlessly to all these various passages, we are going to look at Nahum 1:2-7.

Nahum is an interesting little book. Fascinating book. In the first chapter of Nahum, we have the introduction of a specific prophecy against a specific city called Nineveh. God is bringing to bear vengeance on the Assyrians, particularly on Nineveh, for their treatment of Israel. They had already been responsible in great measure for dragging off the ten tribes into captivity, and now they were coming in military force against Hezekiah.

God was, in effect, saying, “There’s no more tolerance for this kind of activity.” The book of Nahum is a judgment against Nineveh for persecution of God’s people. Within this very specific prediction, we find the identity of God.

Because based on the identity of God that God has the right to judge. God has the right to judge because of who He is. The basis for the judgment is the character of God, and thus that appears at the very beginning of the first chapter.

Nahum presents the majestic character of God, and he tells us three things. Three major attributes of God. 1. God of inflexible justice,

2. God of irresistible power, and

3. God of infinite mercy. 1. God is a God of inflexible justice. When we talk about justice, we are talking about a legal term that has to do with divine. God has the absolute right to rule and authority over His creatures because He is God.

God makes the laws. God determines the standard, and God judges in terms of the results.

He created everything at His own pleasure, but He didn’t have to. Therefore, He has the total and a perfect right to set the principles by which His creation must function. God has the right to do what He wants to do. If a creature rebels against God’s divine government, if a creature provokes under God’s rule and violates it, he then falls immediately under the judgment of God.

Thus, it is evident that when a man reaches his highest destiny, it is when he stops resisting his Creator and starts conforming to His will. The destiny of man, in its highest point, is conformity to the will of God. If a man does not conform to the will of God, he incurs the inflexible justice of God.

V 2-3, God is jealous, and the Lord avenges; The Lord avenges and is furious. The Lord will take vengeance on His adversaries, And He reserves wrath for His enemies; 3 The Lord is slow to anger and great in power, And will not at all acquit the wicked.

The Lord has His way In the whirlwind and in the storm, And the clouds are the dust of His feet. God is vengeance, fury, and wrath. God is jealous. God resents the insults and the indignities of men who rebel against Him. He hates them.

Why? Because He’s God. People might say that God is self-centred.

Where’s the competition? God is God! God has the right to be self-centred because He’s God. He is the essence of being in Himself. And God hates the disgraces of those who rebel against Him, because His is the glory. Therefore, He demands glory from all His creatures. Any creature in His universe that refuses to give Him glory He places apart from His presence.

Those who destroy His laws, those who ridicule His words are dismissed from His presence forever. God is jealous for His own honour, and jealous for His own praise. God demands it from every creature.

Exodus 20:3-5, “You shall have no other gods before Me. 4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth

beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; 5 you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, God is a jealous God.

Now, we know that we’re in the age of individual responsibility now, but that does not change the fact of God’s jealousy. God is jealous for His own glory and tolerates glory given to no other.

Exodus 34:14, (for you shall worship no other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God), He even takes the name jealous to identify Himself intrinsically with jealousy. God does not tolerate rebellion against giving Him glory.

Deuteronomy 4:24, For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.

Ezekiel 39:25, “Therefore thus says the Lord God: ‘Now I will bring back the captives of Jacob, and have mercy on the whole house of Israel; and I will be jealous for My holy name—

To violate that, to worship a false God, or to rebel against God and if you rebel against the true God, incites the jealousy of God.

Ezekiel 38:18-23, “And it will come to pass at the same time, when Gog comes against the land of Israel,” says the Lord God, “that My fury will show in My face. 19 For in My jealousy and in the fire of My wrath I have spoken: ‘Surely in that day there shall be a great earthquake in the land of Israel, 20 so that the fish of the sea, the birds of the heavens, the beasts of the field, all creeping things that creep on the earth, and all men who are on the face of the earth shall shake at My presence. The mountains shall be thrown down, the steep places shall fall, and every wall shall fall to the ground.’ 21 I will call for a sword against Gog throughout all My mountains,” says the Lord God. “Every man’s sword will be against his brother. 22 And I will bring him to judgment with pestilence and bloodshed; I will rain down on him, on his troops, and on the many peoples who are with him, flooding rain, great hailstones, fire, and brimstone. 23 Thus I will magnify Myself and sanctify Myself, and I will be known in the eyes of many nations. Then they shall know that I am the Lord.”

God tolerates no rivals. God tolerates no rebels. We see the same thing portrayed in Jesus Christ in the words of Jude.

Jude 1:14-15, Now Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about these men also, saying, “Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of His saints, 15 to execute judgment on all, to convict all who are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have committed in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.”

God tolerates no rivals, no rebels. God is jealous for His glory. God is also jealous for His love. Jealousy really only belongs to those who love. A husband and a wife, jealousy is possible. A girlfriend and a boyfriend, jealousy is possible.

Jealousy fits into a love relationship. So, it does with God. God is jealous because He loves.

Joel 2:18, Then the Lord will be zealous for His land, And pity His people. Hosea the prophet, God gave him really a wonderful illustration to live in his own life. God told him to marry a woman, Gomer, who turned out to be a prostitute. God then said, this is a graphic illustration of what Israel has done to Me. Israel has been an unfaithful wife. God was jealous over Israel because Israel was His love.

God’s heart was grieved, God’s heart was indeed broken. God gets jealous when those He loves are stolen from Him by somebody else. God’s jealousy is not only the jealousy of honour, but it’s the jealousy of love. All through the Old Testament God says, I am jealous for My people, I am jealous for My land, I am jealous for those things that are Mine.

When God sets His affection on something, and something robs Him of that, He’s jealous.

Matthew 25:31-32, “When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory. 32 All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. Jesus goes on to talk about judgment here upon the sheep and the goats. The judgment is on the basis of how they treated people.

What Jesus is saying here the judgment and the tribulation is directly related to how nations treat Jews. Certainly, how they treat Israel during the tribulation will be an indication of whether they are godly or not godly.

But God actually, at that point, uses His children as a standard for judgment. God is indeed angered and made jealous over the stolen affections and love of His own. The supreme jealousy of God is on those men who mistreat His Son. God, above all things, loves His Son, and to mistreat the Son brings down the wrath of God.

Galatians 1:8-9, But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed. 9 As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you than what you have received, let him be accursed.

2 Thessalonians 1:8-9, in flaming fire taking vengeance on those who do not know God, and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 These shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power,

God is jealous over His Son.

1 Corinthians 16:22, If anyone does not love the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be accursed. O Lord, come!

God is jealous for His own honour. God is jealous for those He loves. God is jealous for the Son. V 2, God is jealous, and the Lord avenges; The Lord avenges and is furious. The Lord will take vengeance on His adversaries, And He reserves wrath for His enemies; This verse is doing is repeating.

The repetition is solemn. It is fearful. It is serious.

Deuteronomy 32:35, Vengeance is Mine, and recompense;

Their foot shall slip in due time; For the day of their calamity is at hand, And the things to come hasten upon them.’ You do not violate the glory and the honour of God. You do not violate those He loves. You do not violate His Son and get away from His wrath.

V 3, The Lord is slow to anger and great in power, And will not at all acquit the wicked. The Lord has His way In the whirlwind and in the storm, And the clouds are the dust of His feet. The Lord is “furious.” The Hebrew means He is the Master of His fury.

It’s a controlled kind of fury. In the book of Nahum, He is furious over Nineveh. But in all of God’s revelation, He indicates the same fury over all those who reject Him, who rebel against Him, and who refuse to love the Lord Jesus Christ.

The wrath of God could be as violently as anywhere portrayed in Revelation 19th Chapter, where we see the final end to the battle of Armageddon. Early in Revelation, when it talks about treading the winepress of the wrath of God, how that the unbelievers are crushed in the fury of God.

God is furious. God does not tolerate one rebel to exist in His presence.

Romans 1:18, For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, He reckons with men who rebel. “He will take vengeance on His adversaries,” Nahum says. “And He reserves His wrath or His fury or His anger for His enemies.” Because He is just. He must do so. V 3, The Lord is slow to anger and great in power, And will not at all acquit the wicked.

The Lord has never done anything, and we haven’t seen any big judgments going on. All this hell fire and damnation preaching that’s been going on, I don’t see any hell fire and damnation going on. God’s up there and He’s so powerful, why doesn’t He do something?

2 Peter 2:9, then the Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptations and to reserve the unjust under punishment for the day of judgment,

God knows what He’s doing.

2 Peter 3:3-5, knowing this first: that scoffers will come in the last days, walking according to their own lusts, 4 and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation.” 5 For this they wilfully forget: that by the word of

God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of water and in the water, All the people are talking about Jesus is coming, God’s going to invade the world in vengeance but where is He?

2 Peter 3:9-10, The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. 10 But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up. Don’t ever confuse patience with impotence.

What God does not do is not because He cannot it is because He is longsuffering, not willing that any should perish. God stays His anger in mercy. Don’t ever confuse mercy with impotence. God is not impotent.

V 3, The Lord is slow to anger and great in power, And will not at all acquit the wicked. Nobody gets off the hook who’s violated God’s laws and remains in that situation. Justice is inflexible, inevitable for those who violate.

Proverbs 29:1, He who is often rebuked, and hardens his neck, Will suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy.

Nehemiah 9:29-31, And testified against them, That You might bring them back to Your law. Yet they acted proudly, And did not heed Your commandments, But sinned against Your judgments, ‘Which if a man does, he shall live by them.’ And they shrugged their shoulders, Stiffened their necks, And would not hear. 30 Yet for many years You had patience with them, And testified against them by Your Spirit in Your prophets. Yet they would not listen; Therefore You gave them into the hand of the peoples of the lands. 31 Nevertheless in Your great mercy You did not utterly consume them nor forsake them; For You are God, gracious and merciful. Don’t ever believe for a moment that God can’t act because He doesn’t act. That’s mercy. Don’t ever question God’s justice. To question God’s justice is an affront to His glory.

He says He’s just that settles it. So, for the rebel, God is a God of inflexible justice.

How do you avoid that?

Romans 8:1, There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. So simple. If you have taken refuge in Jesus Christ, will you ever know the judgment of God? Never, because Jesus Christ is God’s standard. If you have been obedient to that standard, you will never know judgment.

God of inflexible justice. 2. God of irresistible power. This is a verbal display of majesty. V 3, The Lord is slow to anger and great in power, And will not at all acquit the wicked. The Lord has His way In the whirlwind and in the storm, And the clouds are the dust of His feet.

Whenever there’s a whirlwind, whenever there’s a storm, God controls it. God makes His way through that storm. He goes His way in it. He accomplishes His purpose by it. Exodus chapter 19, God appeared in the mountain in fire and smoke. In the Old Testament, God has appeared in the wind and the whirlwind. God moves through the atmospheric heavens. He is a God of irresistible power, and the first witness to testify to that is the atmospheric heavens.

The heavens declare the glory of God. The clouds, the whirlwinds, the storms are God’s to control. Clouds are often in the Scripture, connected with judgment. When Jesus comes in judgment, we see Him coming in in great glory.

Yes, God is a God of irresistible power, and it’s inevitable by the heavens. Men should be able to look at the heavens and know God. God has such power over the heavens, that because men have refused to recognize Him in the heavens. The heavens are going to collapse. God’s going to judge men for their failure to see Him in the heavens, and they are going to fall apart.

During the tribulation we read in the book of Revelation.

Revelation 6:12-14, I looked when He opened the sixth seal, and behold, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became like blood. 13 And the stars of heaven fell to the earth, as a fig tree drops its late figs when it is shaken by a mighty wind. 14 Then the sky receded as a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island was moved out of its place. That’s the collapse of the sky. God controls the whole thing.

Revelation 8:12, Then the fourth angel sounded: And a third of the sun was struck, a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of them were darkened. A third of the day did not shine, and likewise the night.

Revelation 16:8-9, Then the fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun, and power was given to him to scorch men with fire. 9 And men were scorched with great heat, and they blasphemed the name of God who has power over these plagues; and they did not repent and give Him glory.

God controls the heavens, and someday you are going to see the collapse of the heavens. We see it as we look at the prophetic word.

But not only the testimony of the heavens speaks of His irresistible power, but the testimony of the waters. V 4, He rebukes the sea and makes it dry, And dries up all the rivers. Bashan and Carmel wither, And the flower of Lebanon wilts.

God is saying that God has such control that He can rebuke the sea, that He can dry up the rivers. God is going to dry up the rivers.

Revelation 8:8-10, Then the second angel sounded: And something like a great mountain burning with fire was thrown into the sea, and a third of the sea became blood. 9 And a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed. 10 Then the third angel sounded: And a great star fell from heaven, burning like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water. God’s going to wipe out the water.

Revelation 16:20, Then every island fled away, and the mountains were not found. 21 And great hail from heaven fell upon men, each hailstone about the weight of a talent. Men

blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail, since that plague was exceedingly great. The mountains and the islands are going to fly apart. The sea is going to be moved out of its places when God comes in judgment. So, the testimony of the heavens, the testimony of the waters.

The testimony of the land or the earth. V 4, He rebukes the sea and makes it dry, And dries up all the rivers. Bashan and Carmel wither, And the flower of Lebanon wilts There you have the northern, western, and eastern boundaries of Israel.

They are the most fertile areas. But if God wants to, He can destroy the fertility of the most luxuriant area. He has total control over the earth. Remember in Genesis 1 how the earth was designed for God – for man by God.

Then when Adam sinned, what happened? The earth was cursed. We know that it’s going to be that way when God judges.

In Revelation 16:20, the tremendous judgment that’s going to come upon the land. Revelation 8 “There was hail and fire, mixed with blood, cast upon the earth. A third part of the trees were burned up, and all green grass was burned up.”

The demise and the destruction of the earth. He can cause the flower to fade; He can cause the grass to wither. He can change the shape of the earth at will. At will. V 5, The mountains quake before Him, The hills melt, And the earth heaves at His presence, Yes, the world and all who dwell in it.

So, His power is seen in the earth, as the earth moves. Earthquakes are controlled by God. We know about that. Paul in Acts chapter 16, and he saw the same thing and the tremendous results of it. The Philippian jailer and the jail started to shake, and the results were a salvation of a whole family. Praise God for earthquakes. We have seen salvation through them.

We remember that Jesus died on the cross, and the earth shook, and He rose from the dead, and the earth shook.

God runs this earth, and He will shake it any time He wants. The Bible tells us that someday in Revelation 6, 11, and 16. God’s going to shake the earth with a shaking from which the earth will never recover. When God gets ready to shake this earth, He shakes it. He controls the earth.

The hills melt if He wants them to melt. It says in 2 Peter the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the atomic disintegration of the globe. His power is irresistible. V 6, Who can stand before His indignation? And who can endure the fierceness of His anger? His fury is poured out like fire, And the rocks are thrown down by Him.

Who can stand before His indignation? Nobody. Who can abide in the fierceness of His anger? Nobody. When God begins to move, nobody can resist Him. This is judgment. His power is absolutely irresistible. Don’t let any man ever be a fool and think that He can resist the power of God. It can’t be done. No one can stand against this kind of inflexible justice and this kind of irresistible power.

Our God is a consuming fire.

Hebrews 12:25-29, See that you do not refuse Him who speaks. For if they did not escape who refused Him who spoke on earth, much more shall we not escape if we turn away from Him who speaks from heaven, 26 whose voice then shook the earth; but now He has promised, saying, “Yet once more I shake not only the earth, but also heaven.” 27 Now this, “Yet once more,” indicates the removal of those things that are being shaken, as of things that are made, that the things which cannot be shaken may remain. 28 Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace, by which we [l]may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear. 29 For our God is a consuming fire.

God is a God of irresistible power, and there is no hope for escape from that power apart from Christ. 3. God of infinite mercy. V 7, The Lord is good, A stronghold in the day of trouble; And He knows those who trust in Him.

Malachi prophecy was being given, they were shaking and rattling in their shoes, to put it mildly. God was bringing this judgment down.

Malachi 3:16-17, Then those who feared the Lord spoke to one another, And the Lord listened and heard them; So a book of remembrance was written before Him For those who fear the Lord And who meditate on His name. 17 “They shall be Mine,” says the Lord of hosts, “On the day that I make them My jewels. And I will spare them As a man spares his own son who serves him.”

Malachi 4:1-2, “For behold, the day is coming, Burning like an oven, And all the proud, yes, all who do wickedly will be stubble. And the day which is coming shall burn them up,” Says the Lord of hosts, “That will leave them neither root nor branch. 2 But to you who fear My name The Sun of Righteousness shall arise With healing in His wings; And you shall go out And grow fat like stall-fed calves.

God always remembers the remnant, the faithful. For those of us who are faithful to Jesus Christ, who are not rebels from God, but by faith in Christ have come into a living relationship with God.

Do you fear God? I love Him. I don’t fear Him because I am not in rebellion against Him. He is good.

To say the Lord is good is hard to swallow for a lot of people. A lot of people think the Lord must be a real manipulator. A cruel individual. Look at the disease, Look at the death, Look at the poverty, Look at the mental disease and disorder, Look at the vengeance and Look at all the horror in the world.

If God is good, how do you relate this? We have got to go to the Word of God, and we have got to see that God is good. We see that God is good, and we see it in many places. It’s, number one, revealed in His Word.

Psalms 52:1, Why do you boast in evil, O mighty man? The goodness of God endures continually.

Lamentations 3:25, The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, To the soul who seeks Him. His goodness is not only revealed in His Word.

Jesus Christ said, “I am the Good Shepherd.” Not only revealed in His Word and by Christ but goodness of God is revealed by His works.

Matthew 5:45, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.

Do you ever think that the Lord could have made everything brown? Brown grass, brown flowers, brown sky. But He didn’t.

Why colour? Because there’s joy in the variety of colour. Colour, rain, beauty of the earth. He’s good to all, and especially to those who love Him. The goodness of God is not only revealed in these areas, but it’s experienced by believers.

1 Kings 8:56, “Blessed be the Lord, who has given rest to His people Israel, according to all that He promised. There has not failed one word of all His good promise, which He promised through His servant Moses.

Genesis 48:15, And he blessed Joseph, and said: “God, before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked,

The God who has fed me all my life long to this day, Secondly, God is a stronghold in trouble. He’s a refuge.

Deuteronomy 33:27, The eternal God is your refuge, And underneath are the everlasting arms; He will thrust out the enemy from before you, And will say, ‘Destroy!’

The Lord is our security in the midst of material, physical, mental affliction.

Philippians 4:19, And my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus. He’s a refuge. V 7, The Lord is good, A stronghold in the day of trouble; And He knows those who trust in Him.

Does that mean that the only people He knows about are the ones who trust Him? No. We have told you many times what it means when it says God knows someone.

What is another word you could use for “know?” “Love.” In the Old Testament, it says, “Cain knew his wife, and she bore a child.” It doesn’t mean He knew who she was. It talks about the intimacy of love. Jesus said, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them.” He didn’t mean, “I know who they are.” He meant, “I have an intimate relationship with them.”

John 10:27, My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.

Matthew 7:23, And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’

Does He mean He doesn’t know who they are? No. Jesus means, “I never had the intimacy of a love relationship.” The word “know” implies an intimate love relationship. V 7, The Lord is good, A stronghold in the day of trouble; And He knows those who trust in Him.

He loves those who trust in Him.

Did you know God loves you? Remember the beloved apostle John who entitled himself “the one that Jesus loved?” God loves those who trust in Him. Perfect love casts out that fear. God is a God of mercy. God is a God of love.

Micah 7:18-19, Who is a God like You, Pardoning iniquity And passing over the transgression of the remnant of His heritage? He does not retain His anger forever, Because He delights in mercy. 19 He will again have compassion on us, And will subdue our iniquities. You will cast all our sins Into the depths of the sea.

Is that mercy?

Where is that mercy available? It’s available in Jesus Christ! Those that love Jesus Christ will never be anathema. For all of God’s standards are obeyed by one act, faith in the perfect, finished work of Jesus Christ.