Minor No.4 Obadiah

This is what the Sovereign Lord says about Edom. We have heard a message from the Lord. An envoy was sent to the nations to say, Rise and let us go against her for battle.

See, I will make you small among the nations. You will be utterly despised. The pride of your heart has deceived you.

You who live in the clefts of the rocks, or you who live in Sila, the translation is the clefts of the rocks or Petra, and make your home on the heights. You who say to yourself, Who can bring me down to the ground? Though you soar like the eagle and make your nest among the stars, from there I will bring you down, declares the Lord. If thieves came to you, if robbers in the night, oh, what a disaster awaits you! Would they not steal only as much as they wanted? If grape pickers came to you, would they not leave a few grapes? But how Esau will be ransacked, his hidden treasures pillaged.

That means stolen, taken away. All your allies will force you to the border. Your friends will deceive and overpower you.

Those who eat your bread will set a trap for you, but you will not detect it. In that day, declares the Lord, will I not destroy the wise men of Edom, men of understanding in the mountains of Esau? You warriors, oh, Teman. It's one of the cities of Edom.

You warriors, oh, Teman, will be destroyed, will be terrified, and everyone in Esau's mountains will be cut down in the slaughter. Because of the violence against your brother Jacob, you will be covered with shame, you will be destroyed forever. On the day you stood aloof while strangers carried off his wealth and foreigners entered his gates and cast lots for Jerusalem, you were like one of them.

You should not look down on your brother in the day of his misfortune, nor rejoice over the people of Judah in the day of their destruction, nor boast so much in the day of their trouble. You should not march through the gates of my people in the day of their disaster, nor look down on them in their calamity in the day of their disaster, nor seize their wealth in the day of their disaster. You should not wait at the crossroads to cut down their fugitives, nor hand over their survivors in the day of their trouble.

The day of the Lord is near for all nations. As you have done, it will be done to you. Your deeds will return upon your own head just as you drank on my holy hill.

So all the nations will drink continually. They will drink and drink and be as if they had never been. But on Mount Zion will be deliverance, it will be holy, and the house of Jacob will possess its inheritance.

The house of Jacob will be afire, and the house of Joseph aflame. The house of Esau will be stubble, and they will set it on fire and consume it. There will be no survivors from the house of Esau, the Lord has spoken.

People from the Negev, that's a desert area, people from the Negev will occupy the mountains of Esau, and people from the foothills will possess the land of the Philistines. They will occupy the fields of Ephraim and Samaria and Benjamin will possess Gilead. This company of Israelite exiles who are in Canaan will possess the land as far as Zarephath.

The exiles from Jerusalem who are in Sepharad will possess the towns of the Negev. Deliverers will go up on Mount Zion to govern the mountains of Esau, and the kingdom will be the Lord's. Well, that's the whole chapter of Obadiah's prophecy, and it's a book that is rarely preached on.

Checked the sermons of George in this afternoon and discovered that in how many years, thirty-odd years of ministry, he only published one address on Obadiah. Well, one of the great disappointments I had in my early twenties was getting out to Jerusalem, having driven there in a bus, and discovering that one of the main springs of the vehicle had developed a hairline crack. As a result, the bus had to be taken to some Arab garage, and there they worked on it for a day or two.

And because of this, the crossing that I'd hoped to make, or rather the journey that I'd hoped to make down into southern Jordan, had to be cancelled. You can travel down in southern Jordan to the limits of the negotiable road, then you pay a few shekels, and you get on a camel, and after some weary miles, and presumably developing soreness in tender areas, you dismount, you go through a very narrow crevice in a rocky outcrop, and you move through to behold one of the most spectacular sights, I'm told, in the whole world. There are the remains of the city of Petra.

Some of the temple area and majestic buildings visibly on display, because they were cut into a rock, or into many rocks. I'm told that it's a phenomenal sight, and well worth the camel ride to get to it. But though you were to scour the whole city, and the area south, and to the east of the city, you would find no residents.

You might find tourists, and the occasional Arab, but nobody lives there. The city is but a graveyard, a gravestone, a monument to an age gone by. It's the city of Petra, which once was the capital city of Edom, the land to which Esau went, and ultimately was to be populated by his descendants.

And that city, Petra, is mentioned in Obadiah's prophecy, because that prophecy has to do with the pouring out of judgment on the descendants of Esau. So in the third verse, which we read together, halfway through, you come across this statement, you who live in the clefts of the rocks. And that little phrase, clefts of the rocks, if you're following the NIV version of the Bible, you'll discover down at the bottom of the page is referred to as Sila, which is another name for Petra, which means a rocky place.

So I never got to see Petra. But those remains are an outstanding example to the authority of God, and to the fact that when God passes judgment on an individual, or on a nation, ultimately, sooner or later, and more often than not, sooner than later, that judgment is meted out, and the word of God comes true. I could give you many an example of that from Old Testament scriptures.

But I move too quickly, as is my normal weakness. Let's go back to what I've put here on the chart for a moment or two. Jacob versus Esau.

I suggest to you that you can understand the prophecy of Obadiah in terms of that little phrase. Why so? Well, Jacob and Esau, you remember, were brothers. They were twins.

And their mother, Rebekah, had the most extraordinary pregnancy. There aren't many mothers who have to bear an argument between the children that she brings forth before they're actually born. Most mothers have to cope with the kids after they're born, and that's bad enough.

But for Rebekah, she had some anticipation that these two twins were not going to get on very well together in the prenatal state. In fact, in the stark language of the NIV, we read in Genesis 25 and 26, 25 and verse 22, rather, we read of poor Rebekah's pregnancy. The babies jostled each other within her.

And she said, as well she might, why is this happening to me? So she went to inquire of the Lord, and the Lord said to her, two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you will be separated. One people will be stronger than the other, and the older will serve the younger. And later on, you read the final episode of the pregnancy, when in the 26th verse, we come across these words.

After this, the birth of the first of the twins, his brother came out with his hand grasping Esau's heel. So he was named Jacob. And Isaac, the father, was 60 years old.

Not bad to be a father when you're 60, is it? 60 years old when Rebekah gave birth to them. So that sets the scene for a conflict that Rebekah has to look after during her life as a mother, and a conflict that's going to be passed on. Because you see, Israel, the Israelites descend from Jacob.

And Edom are the descendants, or the Edomites are the descendants of Esau. And if you trace this further on historically, then you discover the most important person who descended from Jacob was Jesus. And perhaps the most notorious Edomite that ever there was, was Herod.

And you will recall from your reading of New Testament Scriptures, and maybe if your memory is good from an address I preached earlier on in the year, that Jesus and Herod were on a collision course. And when Jesus appeared before Herod, he'd got nothing to say to him. The lifestyle of Herod, typical of that of all the descendants of Esau, was godless and insensitive to the end that the Lord Jesus has nothing to communicate to Herod.

Now you say, well that's all well and good, but what's this got to do with the prophecy of Obadiah? Well, I want to quote to you from a man who was a liberal scholar, that means he didn't accept the authority of Scripture, but sometimes said some very interesting things, by the name of G. Adam Smith. Let me read the quote that's on the board, because those who are taking the tape of this won't be able to read it in our notes, as it's not there, it's too long. From that far-off day when their ancestors wrestled in the womb of Rebekah to the very eve of the Christian era, when a Jewish king dragged the Idumean under the yoke of the law, the two peoples scorned and fought each other with a relentlessness that finds no analogy between kindred and neighbor nations anywhere else in history.

Jacob didn't like Esau, and the compliment was returned. And if you trace the history of Israel and Edom, the nations to which these men gave birth, you will discover that there was, if I can apologize for using the word, but I do so literally, there was a bloody conflict that ensued century after century, and perhaps the last bout of that conflict, in some senses, was when Jesus exposed Herod by having nothing to say to him, indicating that he'd gone beyond the boundaries of God's grace. Well, the prophecy of Obadiah has to do with the prediction that Edom would cease to exist as a nation, and the reasons why that was to be was because of her treatment to her brother nation, Israel.

Let me tell you one or two things about this fascinating little book before we start to open it a little more from the perspective that I've already painted. I think I mentioned in my digression, as you were finding the scriptures a little while ago, that this is the shortest book in the Old Testament, not directly quoted, as far as I can discover, in the New Testament at all. As to the author, Obadiah, it's not easy to work out who he is.

There are some who think that he's that Obadiah who gave sanctuary to some of the servants of God during the time when Elijah was a preacher in Israel. You remember Obadiah who hid, what was it, 450 or thereabouts, prophets of the Lord because Jezebel was on the war path. Well, it's an interesting suggestion, but it's probably wrong.

The most you can say about Obadiah is that he was a Jew born in the south of Palestine, that he seemed to have witnessed, or certainly predicted, probably witnessed the downfall of Jerusalem when Nebuchadnezzar's armies came up against it, and he saw the treatment that the Edomites leveled towards the people of Israel in those days. Obadiah means, as I say, a servant of or a worshipper of Jerusalem, of Jehovah, and you see that he received his address in the form of a vision. Look at the first verse.

The vision of Obadiah. He saw dramatically what was going to happen to the Edomites, and what he describes in the prophecy that bears his name are the pictures that flash in front of his mind. There are two things that you can say about the doctrinal convictions of Obadiah, and they are these.

One, in the words of a song, he's got the whole world in his hand. In other words, God rules over the nations. And the second thing that becomes very important in the convictions of Obadiah is that not only Jewish people, that is the descendants of Jacob, are responsible to God, but those who are not Jewish people.

As Amos discovers, as you found out when Ken Jowett was bringing our Bible study in the opening chapters of the prophecy that bears his name, all nations, ultimately, even in Old Testament prediction, are said to be responsible to the Lord God. Well, those are little introductory comments which I think will help us. But let's just set the scene geographically for a moment.

Those of you who are at the back may not see too well, so let me describe this map, if you can describe a map, for a moment or two. Here is obviously the Mediterranean Sea, here is the Red Sea, and here is the Gulf of Aqaba, where there's so much oil these days around here. Iran and Iraq are over in this area.

Here is Egypt, here is Israel, over here to the north is Syria. Here you've got the Sea of Galilee, and down there you've got the Dead Sea, which actually is connected to the River Jordan, but looks as though it's not on my map, and if I got a blue, I could correct it, and I have a blue, so I shall correct it, being a pedantic sort of person. Now, where did the sons and daughters, the descendants of Esau, go and live after he'd quarrelled with Jacob? Well, they went down here, to this whole area that I've sketched in, in the southeast of our map, in green.

Edom is the place where the children of Esau came to settle, and Sila is the city that I've referred to before, called in other terms Petra, and here is another main area, another main city of Edom, called Basra, and here is a very interesting line. It's a trade route. In fact, it's not so much a trade route as a highway.

From here, the Gulf of Aqaba, right through up to the frontiers of Syria, there was a road which was in use even in the time of Abraham, and what that has got to do with the prophecy of Obadiah, you will see in a moment or so. This land is very important. If the Egyptian merchants want to get to Syria, then they have to come round here.

That's the best route. If they come round here, they've got to go through the land of Edom, and so they will tax them. If gold comes from India, which is way over here, on ships up the gulf here, it has to stop off.

The cargo has to be taken off in the territory of Edom, and therefore this port was very, very important indeed. Pun there, completely unintentional. So, you can see where the geography of the whole thing lies, the land of Edom.

Well, we've got two or three things now into perspective. The land, and the fact that historically it's very important. Very often it was attacked.

The Jews liked Edom, and Solomon sometimes brought his men down there and tried to push the Edomites out of the hill country in which they were living, because he wanted to control this sea strip and to take merchandise from the ships coming from India. The land itself, very, very rugged, but in between the crags, there's a lot of fertile areas where they grow to this day luscious things like oranges and fruit of that variety. Well, there we are.

We've got the thing a little bit in perspective now. Let's start to talk about what Obadiah has to say concerning the people who were the occupants of this whole area. These descendants of Esau.

What does he say? Well, it seems to me that the first part of his prophecy, as I've indicated on the outline that you've got and just changed the wording on my overhead projector, the first part of his prophecy has to do with the security which was false. The security which was false. The Edomites, because they lived in this land surrounded by mountains, thought that they could never be sacked by opposing armies.

And they were to discover that that wasn't the case and that ultimately they would not only just be pushed out of their stronghold, but as a nation they would be more or less exterminated. Far from being utterly secure because of the way that they had treated the descendants of Jacob, as we'll see in a moment or so, they were under the judgment of God. And you can't hide from God's judgment.

And whether you're an individual Edomite or whether you're a prophet, as we'll see next week, like Jonah who tries to run away from God, or whether you're a nation today who is savagely treating other nations, ultimately you will be brought to book. There is no misconduct in Africa at this moment or elsewhere in the world that is outside the inspection of God. He is in control and nations are responsible to Him.

So Obadiah deals in the first verse right through to the ninth verse with the false security of the Edomites. Why did they feel they were so secure? Well, because, as I say, of the mountain strongholds that they had. Look at the third verse.

The pride of your heart has deceived you, you who live in the clefts of the rocks and make your home on the heights, you who say to yourself, who can bring me down to the ground? Why, says Obadiah, as he's speaking to the Edomites, if you will like the equivalent in the bird world to the lion, the king of the jungle, if you will like the eagle, if you could soar on those mighty wings, if you could make your nest among the stars, even then you couldn't get away from the judgment of God which is likely to befall you. That's a very graphic picture, isn't it? Whatever you might think, says God to these ungodly people, you will one day be brought to book. There is no hiding place from me.

And so severe is the judgment that's going to fall upon the Edomites that it will be worse, verse 5, than if a robber came into a home or if someone collecting grapes was let loose in a vineyard. Why does the Prophet say that? Well, let's imagine that your house was plundered. It would be a very unfortunate thing for you to go back home and to discover that it had been ransacked.

But they wouldn't have taken everything. There would have been bits and pieces, presumably, they'd have to leave behind. It's not easy to steal a fitted carpet, for example.

It's been done, but it's not easy. There are bits and pieces which a thief would leave behind because a thief works quickly and he goes for the main chance. He takes the best of the plunder and he escapes with it.

But not so Edom. When the judgment of God falls, there will be no trace left of the Edom civilization. No homestead will still be in use.

What they have done is so wrong that the judgment shall be unqualified. A grape picker goes into the vineyard and unless he is very acute at his job, he'll leave some grapes, one or two, hanging around, still an indication that there was fruit there. But not Edom.

Using the analogy of the vineyard, there'll not be a grape left. If grape pickers, the last part of verse 5, came to you, would they not leave a few grapes? But how Esau will be ransacked, his hidden treasures pillaged. And what's more, the very friends who they might have thought would have come to their rescue, verse 7, will no longer be around.

All your allies will force you to the border. Your friends will deceive and overpower you. And so on and so forth.

It's a very, very solemn message that Obadiah, the worshipper of God, has to direct towards the Edomites. What was Esau noted for? Well, like Jacob, he was quite cunning. Jacob was more cunning than Esau, but Esau was quite a bright spark as well.

In fact, it seemed to be a common trait of the Edomites. You know, remember when Jesus was talking about Herod on the occasion before he was brought into his presence, he said, that fox Herod. Oh, what's a fox indicate? Slyness? Subtle? Well, the Edomites were legendary in their day as being reasonably cute people.

As the Jewish friends to this day are very able and very discerning. But all the compounded wisdom of the Edomites will not avail them anything at all when God releases judgment. Look at the 8th verse.

In that day, declares the Lord, will I not destroy the wise men of Edom, men of understanding in the mountains of Esau? And even such a big city as Teman, which I didn't put, which I didn't indicate on the map, even such a large city as that will have its warriors absolutely terrified when the mountains are laid low and when God cuts down the inhabitants of Edom. But why? The security which was false. The behavior which was fatal.

Why is this nation going to be so judged? Well, because no nation can get away with the conduct that the Edomites meted out to the descendants of Jacob at a time of need. No nation can get away without being condemned by God. And that doesn't just apply to the Edomites.

It applies to the Soviet Union. It applies to the United States. It applies to the country that we fondly refer to as Great Britain.

What we have done that is wrong. We are answerable to God for. No one escapes the ultimate judgment of God.

And many of these Old Testament nations knew that judgment within the span of ancient history. But what was it that the descendants of Esau had done which was so horrible? Well, I'll tell you. And I'll tell you in a way that will make you easily recall it.

Do you remember two other brothers who were always scrapping? The third and fourth people on this earth. Cain and Abel. Abel was the first one to be murdered.

And when he was murdered, God came to Cain. And Cain said in response to the question, Where is your brother? Am I my brother's keeper? And the implication behind the question was, or behind the response was, No, I'm not responsible for my brother. And he could not have been more wrong.

We are responsible. We're responsible for people alongside whom we live. And as a nation we are responsible for the well-being of other nations.

And when the European economic community has a surplus of milk and butter and cheese and what have you, and they're starving in Bangladesh or Chad or any other part of the globe where there is need, when we get rid of what ought to go to people who are in need, then I say in an unqualified fashion, we are responsible before Almighty God. And individually and collectively, we will answer, the mills of God may grind, or the wheels of His mills may grind slowly, but they do grind. Now, what was the basic problem with the descendants of Esau as opposed to the descendants of Jacob? When Jacob's descendants were in need, what did Esau's descendants do? They laughed.

In the year 587, something happened to the Jews which they never forgot, and in one sense they never got over. Nebuchadnezzar with his mighty armies came in from the north and surrounded Jerusalem. It was a disaster that was predicted by the prophets.

It was absolutely horrific. The people were carted off like slaves. Indeed, they were slaves.

Some suffered the indignity of fish hooks being placed in their nostrils, and they were pulled along by their captors into exile. They were treated abysmally. In one sense, it was the outworking of God's judgment on them.

But we'll leave that aside for a moment. These were a cousin people, desperately in need. And when Esau's descendants discover what happens to the descendants of Jacob, they will have no pity whatsoever.

They are not concerned to come to their aid. Look at the tenth verse, and it makes it plain. Why is Edom to be judged? Because of the violence against your brother Jacob.

You will be covered with shame. You will be destroyed forever. On the day you stood aloof while strangers carried off his wealth and foreigners entered his gates and cast lots for Jerusalem, you were like one of them.

You should not look down on your brother in the day of his misfortune, nor rejoice over the people of Judah in the day of their destruction. Time and time again, that word, the day, is repeated in the following verses. This was a day when if ever a nation that was a cousin nation of the Jews should have tried to have helped, that was the time.

And they didn't. Neither did they just stand idly by. That would have been blamable enough, but they went beyond that.

Look at the 14th verse. You should not wait at the crossroads to cut down their fugitives, nor hand over their survivors in the day of their trouble. That's what they did.

The poor Jew who managed to escape the barbaric treatment meted out by the armies of Nebuchadnezzar, who went down into the southern part of Sinai, who moved down towards the Gulf of Aqaba, when the Edomites discovered the Jew, they sent them back to suffer the fate of the treatment of Nebuchadnezzar's men. And as a result of that, they were not forgiven. That is not the way to treat your brother.

So you see, they relaxed behind a security which was false. You can't get away from God's judgment, however safe you might seem physically. And God's judgment was poured out upon them because of the behavior, which as I work out, was fatal.

But there's just one last thing that we have to mention before we draw the whole of our study this evening to a conclusion, and I open it for question and for comments. From the 15th verse and onwards, it seems that we discover the Prophet doing what we found Joel did when we were looking at the book that bears his name a few weeks ago. And that is, he takes a leap, a mighty long step into the future, and he speaks about another day, which is yet to dawn.

Look at that 15th verse. The day of the Lord is near for all nations. And then follows a statement which is very much like the golden rule that our Lord gives in his ministry.

You remember? As you would that men should do to you, do ye also to them. That's, as far as I can work out, the only New Testament scripture that has any relationship with the book of Obadiah. The day of the Lord is near for all nations.

As you have done, it will be done to you. Your deeds will return upon your own head. And the very context suggests that Obadiah does not only have Eden in mind, but like Joel, he has in mind all the nations of the earth.

And wherever there is misconduct, wherever there is bestiality, wherever brother has exploited brother and could have come to help and did not, then on that basis, Gentile nations shall be judged. Do you remember some while ago when I was preaching from the Garden of Gethsemane, the story of our Lord in the Garden of Gethsemane, I made reference to the cup that he drank. You remember how he said to the Lord, take this cup from me, as though he recoiled against that cup.

And I tried to describe to you what I understand as being the cup. It was a poetic thing. Jesus wasn't speaking literally of a literal drink that he was going to have to imbibe.

He was thinking in terms of all that was in store for him, Calvary and being estranged from God the Father. And I brought other scriptures to bear, one from Isaiah, for instance, which refers to the cup of God's wrath and the cup of staggering, the cup that sinners have to drink when they are judged by the Lord. Now, it's that cup of judgment, if you followed what I have to say, and I trust you have, that the prophet has in mind right now.

Look at the 16th verse. Just as you drank on my holy hill, just as the Jews came under the judgment of God when Nebuchadnezzar's armies ransacked Jerusalem, so all the nations will drink continually. When the nations finally are judged by the Lord, they will drink and drink and be as if they had never been.

This is a horrific picture. He has moved from the middle of history, so to speak, right through to the end time, when God is bringing nations to account for the way that they have lived their lives. Where is their salvation? Where is their security? Well, on the day of judgment, my friend, there is only security and salvation within the provinces of the gospel of God.

And so in the 17th verse, a reference is used to the holy hill on which Jerusalem is built, a poetic reference, which speaks of all the blessings that God has made possible to the Jewish people and by extension through the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ to all nations. On Mount Zion will be deliverance. It will be holy.

And the house of Jacob will possess its inheritance. Men and women who put saving faith in our Lord Jesus Christ become the spiritual descendants of Jacob, as, of course, they are the spiritual descendants of Abraham. And on the day of judgment, when Jew and Gentile are brought before the Lord, there is only one group of people who will be able to relax with a sweet confidence.

And those are the people, Jew and Gentile, who have put faith in the living God. And I reckon that those final verses within the prophecy of Obadiah have to deal with a state that is yet to be when the final purposes of God are worked out and when His glory covers the earth as the waters cover the sea. Now, not everyone will accept that interpretation and some will want to see this worked out more historically in terms of people taking up residence within geographical locations in the Middle East.

Well, I acknowledge that there is that interpretation. But I have brought to bear my understanding of the prophecy of Obadiah and my understanding of ultimate prophecy. But the thing that is beyond contention and needs to be emphasized more than anything else as we now draw our studies to a conclusion is this, that the Edomites, like many men and women today, relaxed in a false security.

They engaged in a behavior which was reprehensible and ultimately the disfavor of God was directed against them. As the disfavor of God is directed against all those who continue in sin and do not live according to the gospel of Jesus Christ. And ultimately, there is a reckoning coming for all the power blocks that ever were on planet earth and for every individual.

And however you interpret those final verses of this prophecy, the one thing that can be said in an unqualified fashion is this, it is only as a result of the grace of God and the deliverance of His gospel that men and women can be saved from the wrath that is to come. So Obadiah speaks to us of a man who had a message from God and he declared it faithfully and history showed a literal outworking of that message in terms of the sacking of the Edomites and almost the total elimination of that race from the earth. Obadiah believed in the promises of God and in the predictions of the Lord and God ultimately proved that his faith in the will of God was not misplaced.

And as it was yesteryear, so it is today. And we are called ourselves to be Obadiahs, worshippers of the living God, bringing to the people of Worthing a message that unless they repent and believe the gospel, they will be brought before the judgment seat of God and that same wrath that was poured out on the descendants of Jacob, on the descendants rather of Esau, will be poured out on all the godless that thank God for the positive side of the gospel that in and through Jesus Christ there is deliverance from our sins. And in Mount Zion, the church of the living God, there's a refuge place for the likes of people as ourselves.

Amen.