Obadiah

Discussion Questions

1. Why is it important to study the Minor Prophets? Since Jesus himself studied these words, how much more important is it for us to do the same?
2. If pride distorts, disrupts and deceives us and is often hard to spot in ourselves, how important is it to surround ourselves with others who can help us see what we cannot? How can we find community that edifies, encourages, and provides Godly course correction when needed?
3. How do we move from self-sufficiency to God-dependency? Are we relaxing into His sovereignty or wrestling with our own crippling need to control the trajectory and outcome of our lives?

Transcript

We do study through books of the Bible here at The Village Chapel. If you’d like a paper copy, just lift up your hand and someone will bring one along to you, so you can follow along in the text. Today, I’m going to invite you to open your Bibles to the Book of Obadiah. How many of you have heard that before? And just to clear the air, there’s no shame in turning to the table of contents to find the Book of Obadiah, page 656 in your pew Bibles if you’re looking. And if you’re still on the hunt, if you go to the New Testament Book of Matthew and just turn back a few pages, you’ll find it tucked between Amos and Jonah. I also want to welcome all those online who are worshiping with us. Last week, we had folks from Jamaica and the United Arab Emirates, as well as the Philippines and North Carolina, among many others. So glad you’re here. May the Lord bless you wherever you might be.

Well, we are continuing our series this summer studying several of the minor prophets. Like Kim said, it’s what the Hebrew Bible calls The Book of the Twelve, the last 12 books of our Old Testament. And our study of Obadiah, the smallest book in the Old Testament, will give us a window into the heart of a nation called Edom. And the students of the Bible, you’ve likely read about Edom or the Edomites often as one of the enemies of God’s covenant people, Israel. They also go by the name of the Temanites named after the city of Teman or the Idumeans in the New Testament.

We’re going to put a timeline up here on the screen. About 2,000 years before the time of Jesus, in the Book of Genesis, we read about Abraham and Sarah having a son named Isaac. And Isaac marries Rebecca. And Isaac and Rebecca have two sons, Jacob and Esau. And Jacob becomes the father of the nation of Israel and Esau becomes the father of the nation of Edom. They came out of the womb fighting. Do you remember this story? And they continued to be at odds with one another for most of Old Testament history. Yet they were still kin, they were still family. They were neighbors; they were family, and we’ll look for that in our texts this morning as we study it.

We don’t know much about the Prophet Obadiah. There are at least five Obadiahs mentioned in the Old Testament. We also don’t know with certainty when this book was written, although clues from the text seem to indicate it was written sometime after the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians. And you can see that in our timeline there.

Why study a book like this? Why study the minor prophets? You’re not going to see Obadiah artfully printed on a coffee mug. You’re not going to see a text about Edom on grandma’s living room wall. But anytime we come to the study of the Old Testament, it’s good to remind ourselves that Jesus Himself would have studied these words, would’ve known these words. He taught us that everything written in the Psalms, in the law and in the prophets find their fulfillment in Him. All scripture is breathed out by Him. This book isn’t ultimately about Edom, it’s not ultimately about Israel, it’s about God and His work and history to call people back to Himself to set us free from the tyranny of ourselves, from our pride, the values of the world, and to bring His kingdom on Earth as it is in Heaven, as we prayed before. God spoke in the time of Obadiah, and He’s still speaking today. If you believe it, say amen. Amen.

And Holy Spirit, I pray You would do that, illuminate this word. Let me pray for us, and we’ll get started: Lord, open up Your Word to us and open us to Your Word. Tune our ears to hear Your voice and lead us to Your Son, Jesus, in whose name we pray. And we all said amen.

In Obadiah, there are no chapters, so we’re just going to start with verse one. It’s just one big book, or small book, really. The vision of Obadiah, “Thus says the Lord God concerning Edom…” Anytime we see, “Thus says the Lord God,” we should pay attention. “We have heard a report from the Lord, and a messenger has been sent among the nations: ‘Rise up. Let us rise against her for battle.’” Verse two, “Behold. [This is God speaking.]  I will make you small among the nations; you shall be utterly despised. The pride of your heart has deceived you, you, who live in the clefts of the rock and your lofty dwelling who say in your heart, ‘Who will bring me down to the ground?’ Though you soar aloft like the eagle, though your nest is set among the stars, from there I will bring you down,’ declares the Lord.” And in my Bible, I put a little arrow between those two questions, connecting them. Edom, it rhetorically says, “Who will bring me down to the ground in pride?” And God says, “I will.” The pride of their heart had deceived them.

Let me pause here for just a minute, and we’ll continue in just a second. I’m going to put a map up on the screen to help situate us. Edom was located in the mountainous region southeast of the Dead Sea, covering much of what today we would call the country of Jordan, which we prayed for today. Also, here are a few photos. This first photo gives us a sense of the terrain. This is a modern photo, but this is what it would’ve been like then as well. You can see the mountains; they had pride in those mountains. They were up in the mountains high above. And in the second photo, you can see modern day, this is a monastery at Petra. Some of you have been there, some of you have seen the picture of this. This was actually constructed into the mountains about 500 years after the writing of Obadiah.

But it gives you a sense of the fortress-like nature of this mountain range, the Seir mountain range. It’s a strategic advantage to be higher than your enemies. It’s good to be higher than your enemies. It gives you tactical advantage, it gives you better visibility, improved defense. But according to God’s assessment there, if you look at verse three, their strategic position, among other things, had so captured their heart that pride had deceived them into thinking they were like God. “Who will bring me down to the ground?” If we look in the New Testament, James and Peter quoting from the proverbs, says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” Andrew Murray said it this way: “There is nothing so natural to man, nothing so insidious and hidden from our sight, nothing so difficult and dangerous as pride.”

Let’s keep reading here, verse five. “If thieves came to you and if plunderers came by night – how you would’ve been destroyed! – would they not steal only enough for themselves? If great gatherers came to you, would they not leave gleanings? How Esau has been pillaged!” And Esau, now the proper name of the father of the Edomites. “How Esau has been pillaged, his treasures sought out!” Verse seven, “All your allies have driven you to your border; those at peace with you have deceived you; they prevailed against you; those who eat your bread have set a trap beneath you – you have no understanding.” You, who are up lofty, dwelling in the mountains like an eagle. Verse eight, “Will I not, on that day, declares the Lord, destroy the wise men out of Edom, and understanding out of Mount Esau? And your mighty men shall be dismayed, O Teman, so that every man from Mount Esau will be cut off by slaughter.”

If you look at verse eight, we have the wise men, the intellectuals, the nerds, if you will. They were known for their philosophy. Verse nine, the mighty men, the athletes, the military, they were proud. Why? Why was God bringing this judgment against them? Verse 10, “Because of the violence done to your brother, Jacob,” that’s Israel, the nation next to them, “shame shall cover you, and you shall be cut off forever. On the day you stood aloof [or arrogant] on the day that strangers carried off his wealth and foreigners entered his gates and cast lots for Jerusalem, you were like one of them.” With moral clarity, God speaks into and says, “Your sins of omission are just as heinous as sins of commission. You were like them, the marauders who went into Israel, who pillaged who destroyed, who brought violence to Israel. You, who stood aloof, watching as this all happened arrogantly, you were just like them.” That’s why in our confession of sin we often pray before communion, “Lord, we confess what we have done and what we ought to have done.”

Verse 12, “But do not gloat over the day of your brother in the day of his misfortune; do not rejoice over the people of Judah in day of their ruin; do not boast in the day of distress. Do not enter the gate of my people in the day of their calamity; do not gloat over his disaster in the day of his calamity; do not loot his wealth in the day of his calamity. Do not stand at the crossroads to cut off his fugitives; do not hand over his survivors in the day of distress.” We see moral clarity cutting through. And do you see the progression there? At first, it was a sin of omission; they stood on the sidelines. But it certainly looks, according to the text, that towards the end of verse 13 and 14, they’re participating in the violence to their brother, Jacob.

Verse 15, “For the day of the Lord is near upon all the nations.” Now there’s a hinge verse. We’re not just talking about Edom, we’re not just talking about Israel, we’re not just talking about the nations that are Babylon that’s taken over Israel; we’re talking about everything. God’s watchful eye is over all, and the day of the Lord is near. “As you have done, it shall be done to you; your deeds shall return on your own head. For as you have drunk on my holy mountain, so all the nations shall drink continually; they shall drink and swallow, and shall be as though they had never been.” The cup of wrath is a theme throughout our Scriptures. We see judgment against Edom for these sins of omission, and also likely commission, against their brother. Heinous acts. See what pride does? Twists your soul, twists a nation, deceives.

Verse 17, we see here a little bit of restoration. “But in Mount Zion there shall be those who escape, and it shall be holy, and the house of Jacob shall possess their own possessions. The house of Jacob shall be a fire, and the house of Joseph a flame, and the house of Esau stubble; they shall burn them and consume them, and there shall be no survivor for the house of Esau, for the Lord has spoken. Those of the Negev shall possess Mount Esau, and those of Shephelah shall possess the land of the Philistines; they shall possess the land of Ephraim and the land of Samaria.” That would be the northern kingdom. “And Benjamin shall possess Gilead. The exiles of this host of the people of Israel shall possess the land of the Canaanites as far as Zarephath, and the exiles of Jerusalem who are in Sepharad shall possess the cities of the Negev.” Now, friends, underline this last verse. “Saviors shall go up to Mount Zion to rule Mount Esau, and the kingdom shall be the Lord’s.” Well, this is God’s word.

Obadiah is largely a book of judgment against sin and evil rooted in pride and arrogance. It’s a tragic account of presumption, presumption against God and against His people. God will not be mocked. His patience is long, but it does have a time limit. “The day of the Lord is near,” it says there verse 15, “for all nations.” In other words, for everyone, for all people. Let’s tease out just a few of the ways Edom had begun to buy the lie that they were God-like. They had pride in their position, we see in verse three, an overinflated trust in their strategic place in the mountains, like we saw there. “Who could possibly bring me down?” They had pride in their production. We see that with the grape harvesting, wealth, their alliances. They had an overinflated trust in their diplomatic prowess; their political savvy. They had pride in their intellect.

In the Book of Job, for example, Eliphaz, the Temanite and Edomite, speaks to Job. They were well known for their philosophical aptitude, and they were proud of it. They were beginning to buy and believe their own press. Of course, they had pride of strength, their military power and everything else. Both nerdy intellectuals and accomplished athletes can fall into the pit of arrogance. The farmer and the wealthy businessman or woman alike can face this kind of deception. The pride of Edom made them believe they were immune from judgment, a fortress that even God Himself couldn’t bring down, or so they thought.

Obadiah is honest, and it shows us the root of their pride. It also shows us some of the fruit. They were aloof, they were arrogant. Eugene Peterson put it this way. He said, “Edom stood across the fence and watched, glad to see their old relative get beat up.” They were indifferent to suffering. Do you see what pride does? Indifferent to suffering; makes me believe I’m better, gloating over suffering. Pride twists our souls until we do unimaginable things. Pride is ugly on everyone. And ironically, I don’t know about you, but I can read a text like this, and it can lead me so effortlessly into smugness, just another form of arrogance: “At least I’m not like them.”

Listen, whenever we read about God’s judgment in the Scriptures, we should do so with tears and trembling. But for the undeserved mercy and grace of Christ, purchased on a humble cross for a prideful heart like mine and perhaps like yours, I might face the same assessment that we read about here, but for the grace of Christ. Pride is so deceptive, isn’t it? For nations, for families, for individuals. C.S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity, a famous passage on pride, he says, “The essential vice, the utmost evil is pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that are mere flea bites in comparison.” I love that. “It was through pride that the devil became the devil. Pride leads to every other vice. It’s the complete anti-God state of mind. It is pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began.”

And look, pride is a tyrannical dictator to the human soul that is gripped by it. In other words, it’s cruel. It promises so much, but it offers so little. Leaves us emptier and emptier. Leaves us hollowed out. Martin Luther says it actually curves us in on ourselves. It dims our vision of anything except for ourselves. John Wesley said, “It’s like telling the Lord, ‘I have no need of you.'” And here we come to our first takeaway this morning. The tyranny of pride can be seen in this text for exactly what it does, its deception and its destruction. The deception of pride and the destructiveness of pride is all over. Lewis Smedes, a wonderful Bible scholar, would call pride the grand illusion. Pride distorts reality, doesn’t it? Conversely, humility sees things as they really are; who we truly are and who we are not. I am not God. And that’s our first and deepest problem, isn’t it?

Look with me again in verse three. “The pride of your heart has deceived you.” Or some of your translations will say, “The arrogance of your heart has deceived you.” And you could translate that deception word several different ways. The pride of your heart has cheated them, had cheated them, had seduced them, had diluted them. Everything they had built for themselves high up in the impenetrable mountains had made them believe they were self-sufficient, their own supreme authority.

Now, I don’t think many of us here today are building mountain fortresses. And if you are, just lift up your hand. That’s kind of cool. But today though, I’m not so sure that we’re that different. Frank Sinatra sang what might be the prevailing sentiment of our time. “I faced it all, I stood tall, and I did it my way.” Now, I was reminded this week, and it’s not lost on me that the very first line of that entire song, “And now the end is near.” It’s the first line.

Do we ever notice the pride in our own hearts maybe this week, maybe this morning, maybe even right now? For example, pride turns the good gift of ambition into self-absorption. Ambition is working hard towards a goal that develops a skill, builds an institution that serves a community, serves a family – all good things. But pride creeps in and twists ambition into selfish ends. It deceives me into believing I am superior. I can construct my own life of significance. And worse, I can do it at any cost: my family, my friends, my church.

Pride perverts the good gift of sexual desire into unrestrained lusts, deceives me into believing this good gift designed for marriage is not enough; I need more. Pride subtly deceives us into thinking our wealth or our possessions is synonymous with our self-worth. And that affects the young professional or the retiree alike. “I need more,” Pride deceptively whispers, “You have no limits.” You can never say no to anyone or anything because you can’t bear to miss out or you can’t bear to go unnoticed. On the other hand, pride deceptively whispers sometimes, “Your time is so important that you can’t attend to that need that’s right in front of you.” It turns suffering into bitterness, steals our joy. I have no capacity to enjoy anything other than me.

Pride is ugly on everyone, and it’s nearly impossible to spot in ourselves. That’s why we need the outside assessment of God’s Word. That moral clarity that we see here today and through the whole council of God’s Word. And we need His Spirit to eliminate it, and we need His people in our life, not just my own internal assessment, that’s important, but we need all of them. Tim Keller says it this way: “Self-deception is not the worst thing you can do, but it’s the means by which we do the very worst things. The sin that is most distorting your life right now is often the one you can’t see.”

Listen, everyone within the sound of my voice, including the preacher up, here wrestles with one of the evil one’s best tools. It’s the world’s greatest lure, and my heart is vulnerable to it, but there is grace available. For all who are caught in the web of pride, in its cruel tyranny, there’s freedom. The Scriptures are constantly bringing us to the end of ourselves so that we might find life in His name. The Book of Obadiah ends with proclaiming the coming kingdom, and the message of Jesus begins with the arrival of the kingdom. Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And other words, the kingdom is for those who have finally come to the end of their own resources and laid down all the ways that they were trying to be God. And the call of Jesus is an imitation to be set free from the tyranny, the cruelty of pride. We do see that the tyranny of pride in its deception and we see it in its destructiveness.

But the hope of a kingdom… And we see that kingdom there in a couple of different places. Obadiah would’ve only known it in part, of course, when in verse 21, “The kingdom shall be the Lord’s.” The hope of that coming kingdom is a reversal of pride’s destruction, and ultimately it puts an end to it together. In a sense, the redemptive work of God throughout history, from the Garden of Eden to Cain and Abel, to the Tower of Babel to the hubris of Solomon and other kings, to James and John in the New Testament. Do you remember them? They come up to Jesus. “Okay, Jesus, now can we sit at your right hand and your left?” And they were so humble. They didn’t say, “I want this one and I want that one,” they let Jesus decide that. But they thought they deserved it; they were entitled to sit next to him in His kingdom. From the Garden of Eden to James and John, to the man up here, the redemptive work of God has always taken place in the arena of a prideful heart.

And that’s why the good news of Jesus is so radical, it’s so transformational. The life and ministry of Jesus is a great reversal because it cuts to the core of the human condition to our hearts. His kingdom begins and ends with utter humility, God Himself laying in a manger, God Himself laying down his life for enemies; a great reversal.

In the inward curve of original sin, that pride can only be healed by the grace of our Lord. It’s a spiritual surgery that begins to reverse the ways that pride has mangled our souls. It takes a work of the spirit. The Apostle Paul knew this well. If you remember, he had all the credentials, all the religious credentials, the family heritage, the pedigree. And in a sense, he had built himself a religious fortress in the mountains from which he thought in some way he was invincible, but then the grace of Christ woke him up from his deception.

And we’ll read about, this is basically a little biography of him in Philippians. Philippians 3, 7 to 9. “But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord. For his sake, I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish in order that I may gain Christ and be found in Him.” True humility is laying it down. It’s all rubbish compared to knowing Christ.

The Apostle Paul had come to the end of himself and realized he had been deceived by his own heart, twisted by pride. And the great reversal of the gospel of Jesus brought him to his knees in humble submission. And, oh, that’s painful. He finally realized he had nothing to offer, and it was there that he was brought to life.

And look, this isn’t a one-and-done kind of a thing. Every morning we wake up, we need to remind ourselves who actually holds the world in their hands. And it’s not me and it’s not you. Those in Christ, we can relax into the sovereignty of Christ. We can get to work at the same time, serving Him and serving others out of love rather than self-interest. But this great reversal isn’t pain free because my heart, like Edom, wants to be the supreme authority. John Bloom says it this way: “Humbling ourselves often feels like death, but it really is not. It’s holy chemotherapy that kills the cancer of pride.”

I started by saying Obadiah is a book of judgment, but it’s also a book of hope, isn’t it? The hope of a coming kingdom. Again, look with me at verse 21. If you set your eyes there for a minute, there’s so much packed in here. “Saviors shall go up to Mount Zion.” Okay, there’s Jerusalem, there’s Israel, “to rule Mount Esau,” there’s Edom, “and the kingdom shall be the Lord’s.” In other words, the kingdom won’t ultimately belong to Israel or to Edom or to any other nation, but to Yahweh Himself in Christ Jesus.

And this side of the cross, we know the kingdom has begun, and we pray for that final day of the Lord when pride will be no more: no longer operative, no longer twisting, no longer deceiving. And in that day, we will boast in one thing, knowing Jesus. And praise God, our king has gone up to Mount Zion, and He has taken the cup of wrath in our place so that we might stand forgiven so that we actually might look forward to the day of the Lord and so that we might tell others this great news, this freedom that’s on offer from the tyranny of pride.

Pride is a cancer. It steals joy. It exhausts us. It accuses us. And the Gospel of King Jesus gives life. It is realistic. We’re more prideful than we ever realized, but God’s love is far greater than we’ll ever know. The Kingdom of God is not a place on a map, the Kingdom of God is a disposition of heart. It’s a recognition of His sovereign rule wherever it might be. And the Kingdom of God is an invitation to come with the only thing that we have on offer or to offer, and that’s need. That’s all we have. We come with our need and our need alone.

I love the words of hymn writer, Isaac Watts, that get at this freedom of the kingdom. “Blessings abound wherever He reigns. The prisoners leap to lose their chains. The weary find eternal rest.” Are you weary? All who suffer want are blessed. Friends, we pray for the day when the tyranny of pride will be no more. Come, Lord Jesus, come. Let me pray. Just take a moment of silence just to give thanks to the Lord. Ask for His spirit’s work in our own heart and mind.

Father, we pray along with David “Search me, O God, and know my Heart. Try me and know my thoughts and see if there be any grievous way in me,” any prideful way in me, but then “lead me in the way of everlasting life.” Lord, we confess our need of You and Your Word for us today. Many of us are worn out from trying to carry the world on our shoulders, and we confess this morning we didn’t make ourselves and we can’t keep ourselves, but we ask for the grace to see things as they really are. You are Lord. Help us delight in that. Restore unto us the joy of your salvation. Holy Spirit, wake us up, set us free. In Jesus’ name, we all said amen.