Guards Like Locusts (Nahum 3:17)

 


Wednesday, September 25, 2024


Psalms 62; 63

Nahum 3:8-19

Ephesians 5:6-20


Observance: Sergius of Moscow, abbot and teacher (d. 1392)


Guards Like Locusts (Nahum 3:17)


Usually when we get to the end of a book by a prophet, we get a “happy ending” clause, something to remind the reader of God’s re-creation promised at the end of the age. As Christians, we have the New Testament to teach us that this re-creation is the second coming of the Lord Jesus, heralding the new heavens and the new earth, the time and place of no sickness, no war, and no tears. Yet Nahum feels it appropriate to finish his work with rejoicing at the end of evil, rather than the beginning of perfect peace.


This perhaps gives us some biblical permission to feel relief at the end of evil. The general sense one gets, as a student of the Bible, is that we should not concern ourselves with what will happen to the wicked, but rather to focus on the goodness of God. This is a good sense to have; it seems human nature to take a little and turn it into a lot, and we should be taking a lot of God’s goodness. When it comes to what will happen to the wicked, if we take any more of what we have been given, we risk falling headlong into the ditch ourselves. The little that we have been given is a sense of relief; and Nahum has given us just the little we need.


In the middle of this passage Nahum speaks of merchants, guards and civil rulers as “locusts”; here today, gone tomorrow. Covering the earth one moment, completely vanished the next. The global coverage of merchants, guards and civil rulers seems just as “locus-ty” today, if not moreso. There is always someone trying to get our money, or tell us what to do, or making rules to control us, and not in the way God intends. Commerce can be holy, just as a peaceful society and government legislation can be holy. But quite often it is not. And it is like a horde of locusts covering the earth, consuming everything.


When God gives us relief from these locusts, and God does more often than we give him credit for, we may breathe a sigh of relief – in fact, we should. Jesus promises this to us, even: replace the hard yoke and heavy burden of the locusts for his, for his yoke is easy and his burden is light. (Matthew 11:29-30)


Where is the burden of the locusts heaviest in your life? Where might you accept Jesus’ invitation to take his burden instead?


O God of my relief: banish the burden of locusts from my life and give me Jesus, so that I may be a co-worker in building the world you desire.

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