AP

Nahum 3:18-19  King of Assyria, your shepherds slumber; your nobles lie down to rest.  Your people are scattered on the mountains with no one to gather them.  Nothing can heal you; your wound is fatal.  All who hear the news about you clap their hands at your fall, for who has not felt your endless cruelty?

The Apostle Paul wrote a very insightful and helpful doxology that is good for us to keep in mind as we read through the Old Testament narrative: “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!  How unsearchable his judgements, and his paths beyond tracing out!  Who has known the mind of the Lord?  Or who has been his counsellor?  Who has ever given to God, that God should repay them?  For from him and through him and for him are all things.  To him be the glory forever!  Amen.” (Romans 11:33-36)

In the time of Jonah, God demonstrated the utter depth of his compassion and mercy  in regard to the wicked City of Nineveh, capital of the cruel country of Assyria.  Much to Jonah’s discomfort the people of Nineveh, from the greatest to the least, responded in genuine repentance to Jonah’s message of God’s impending judgement on their sinfulness, and they were spared!  Now, only 150 years later, they have forgotten this mercy and returned to their old ways, and God’s compassion and mercy have ‘run out’.

As Paul reminds us, we cannot always fathom the complexities of God’s providence along the way, but we can know that he is always just in all his ways, and we must be very careful that we don’t fall into the danger of presuming upon his amazingly profound compassion.  Perhaps the most effective way for us to avoid this danger is to keep our eyes forever focussed on the cross of Jesus, and realise that in its shadow is the only place where there is a safe refuge.  God’s justice must be satisfied, and if we remember that the only thing that prevents his wrath being poured out on us sinners is that at Calvary it was poured out on Jesus, his Beloved Son, who took our place of condemnation, we are less likely to make the mistake the Assyrians made.  Keeping our eyes focussed on the cross will help us not to presume upon God’s grace and compassion.

“Beneath the cross of Jesus I gladly take my stand, the shadow of a mighty rock within a weary land; 

A home within a wilderness, a rest upon the way from the burning of the noonday heat, and the burden of the day.  

O safe and happy shelter!  O refuge, tried and sweet!  O sacred place where heaven’s love and heaven’s justice meet; 

As to the sleeping patriarch the wondrous dream was given, so seems my Saviour’s cross to me a ladder up to heaven. 

There lies beneath its shadow, but on the farther side, the darkness of an awful grave that gapes both deep and wide; 

And there between us stands the cross, two arms, outstretched to save, like a watchman set to guard the way from that eternal grave. 

Upon that cross of Jesus my eyes at times can see the very dying form of One who suffered there for me; 

and from my stricken heart, with tears, two wonders I confess: the wonder of redeeming love, and my own worthlessness.  

I take, O cross, your shadow for my abiding place!  I ask no other sunshine than the sunshine of your face; 

Content to let the world go by, to know no gain or loss, my sinful self my only shame, my glory all – the Cross!” (Elizabeth Cecilia Clephane)

– Bruce Christian