Obadiah - Bad Nation and a Just God

It is the end of another week here on Tabernacle Talk, and we have just spent the last 29 episodes, so about the last six weeks going through the Gospel of Mark every single weekday, and I hope that it was an encouragement and a challenge to you.

I feel like we covered so many different topics and just amazing things about Jesus, His grace, His resurrection, His power, how He doesn't think the same way that we do, His sacrifice for sin, just amazing things.

So thank you for joining me on that journey, and I would love to hear if you've got maybe an upcoming Book of the Bible that you would like us to, I say us, well, yeah, it is a thing. It's me and all of you guys.

If there's something that you would like us to go through, please message me, text me, call me, email me, whatever, and I would love to hear what you guys would be interested in us going over next.

I've tried to bounce back and forth a good bit between the Old and New Testament, and today we're actually gonna be in the one chapter book of Obadiah. This is the shortest book in all of the Old Testament, and it is only 21 verses.

So I'm looking forward to the time. I would invite you, if you have any suggestions on maybe our next study, please let me know. And I'll probably do one other shorter book as well for maybe like next week or the next two weeks.

But I would invite you, like, please let me know if there's a book of scripture you would like us to go over. Okay, background on the Book of Obadiah. Some of you might not even have known that Obadiah was a book.

It is probably either as not well known or equally as not well known as the Book of Zephaniah that we went through, man, a very, very long time ago. And Obadiah is in what used to be called the Book of the Twelve.

What we call today the Minor Prophets. And these were all shorter prophetic books, shorter than Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Ezekiel. Technically Lamentations could have been one of those, but he got put in a different classification.

So, Obadiah is one of these 12 shorter prophetic books.

And that collection, the Book of the Twelve, ranged everywhere from during the time of the divided kingdom of Israel, where there was the northern kingdom of Israel that was wicked, never had a king that followed God or pursued God.

They pursued idolatry and all sorts of immorality. And so there were lots of prophets that were preaching against Israel.

Then there was the southern kingdom of Judah that had a few kings that followed God, got rid of idols, brought righteousness back into the land, read through the scriptures, like those kinds of things.

And there were some prophets that were preaching to the southern kingdom as well. And then, so it goes from that time frame all the way to when they got back from the exile after Babylon destroys Jerusalem in 586 BC.

They take the kingdom of Judah captive. The northern kingdom of Israel had been destroyed by Assyria in the century previous. So Babylon takes a bunch of Jews, the people of Judah, captive, and they spend about 70 years in Babylon.

And then after the Medo-Persian Empire conquered Babylon, then they were there for just a little bit. And then there were large groupings that went back to the nation of Judah.

And you can read about some of that in Esther, Nehemiah, Ezra, and I want to say there's another book or two that would be great if you want to read about some of that.

So this covers a time period of about, you know, somewhere around five to six hundred years that the Book of the Twelve includes. Obadiah is in about the mid-eight hundreds BC is the time period.

So this was while there was the divided kingdom, Israel up north, Judah down south. There were nations surrounding Israel and Judah. There was Moab, Ammon, Edom, Egypt.

Assyria was a little further away, had some other nations as well and even some nomadic tribes. And so those nations around Israel were sometimes friendly, oftentimes not.

And this book details what happens after an event that occurred in the mid-800s where a group had come in and had fought against Judah, had laid waste to portions of Jerusalem, and lots of evil had been done.

And one of the groups that participated in that was the nation of Edom. These were the descendants of Esau who was Jacob's brother. So Abraham had his son Isaac who had his sons Jacob and Esau.

Jacob would be renamed Israel later after he wrestled with God, and that's a story I'm looking forward to going over in our Sundays. It's not next year. I think it's in 2026 that we'll be in that portion of Scripture.

So Jacob eventually becomes Israel. He was the one that had God's like specific blessing that the Messiah is going to come from your line. Esau was one that didn't really care much for God, didn't really care for what God's plans for him were.

He didn't listen to what God had said about who he married. He in fact married some women out of spite, married multiple women just as Jacob did as well. All of his descendants had kind of a habit of participating in idolatry and in cruelty.

Esau settled down kind of southeast, southeast of where Judah was at in a place that, as I've mentioned before, is called Edom. Sometimes it might be called Timan, which would be one of Esau's descendants as well and kind of called by that name.

And this would be where modern day Petra is. So if you've ever seen those really cool, like carved into the mountainside outcroppings and fortresses, you can look it up. I would strongly encourage you to.

It looks amazing. And so this is where this country of Edom was. Now, when the children of Israel were coming out of Egypt, they were freed from slavery, the ten plagues on Egypt, the crossing of the Red Sea, all of that had happened.

And now Israel was making its way to the promised land. And on that journey, Edom would not let them go through their territory. But God told Israel, hey, like don't attack them, don't try and take retribution on them or anything like that.

They are your family members. But Edom didn't view their relationship like that. So over the course of centuries, there was just constant harassment and attacks and all of this that was happening from Edom to Israel.

And so now in the mid-800s, because of the attack on Judah and on Jerusalem itself by a couple of the smaller nations and Edom joining in with them, now God sends the prophet Obadiah to let them know that what they had done was going to come with

serious consequences. So I'm going to read through the book and then we'll look at just a couple of highlights. Again, this is the shortest book in the Old Testament and it's not one of those ones that really highlights God's mercy.

This is God's wake up call to nations that would mess with his people, with his children. And there are righteous consequences for unrighteous actions.

But the way God does that is almost never through like fire and brimstone down or through something like that. He always has, almost always has a desire to use human instruments.

Not that he specifically tells them, hey, I want you to go do this thing, but he moves in the hearts of leaders and rulers and generals that in what they do unwittingly, they accomplish God's will.

So let's read through Obadiah and then we'll look at a few things that we can learn for our life today. The vision of Obadiah. This is what Yahweh God has said about Edom.

We have heard a message from Yahweh. An envoy has been sent among the nations. Rise up and let us go to war against her.

Look, I will make you insignificant among the nations. You will be deeply despised. So God says there are armies that are coming for you and you are going to be made small.

Deeply despised. Verse 3. Your arrogant heart has deceived you.

You who live in clefts of the rock, in your home on the heights, who say to yourself, who can bring me down to the ground? That would be kind of that Petra area that I talked about earlier.

Though you seem to soar like an eagle and make your nest among the stars, even from there I will bring you down. This is Yahweh's declaration. He says you're not going to be safe just because of the geography of where you live.

Your wickedness, your pride is going to bring you down. He says if thieves came to you, if marauders by night, how ravaged you would be. Wouldn't they steal only what they wanted?

If grape pickers came to you, wouldn't they leave some grapes? He says if there were just some stealers, some robbers, they would leave you some stuff. He says how Esau will be pillaged.

His hidden treasures searched out. Everyone who has a treaty with you will drive you to the border. Everyone at peace with you will deceive and conquer you.

Those who eat your bread will set a trap for you. He will be unaware of it. This is exactly what ended up happening to the Nation of Edom.

So they had lots of treaties with other nations, and there was the Nabateans that had an alliance with Edom, and they had gotten together for a meal, had kind of just had, hey, let's have like an alliance, let's all meet together.

And they did it in Edom, and once they were inside, then the Nabateans killed all of the guards, and they drove out the Edomites, and the Nabateans took over that land.

And so the nation of Edom ended, and they moved into southern Judah, the land of Ijmaea, where then one of the Maccabees, who was a Jewish individual, they ended up conquering Ijmaea, and made all of the Ijmaeans into Jews, and I'm putting quotation

marks here, because you can't really force people into believing in God. And so they do that. Herod, King Herod, was actually an Ijmaean. He was descended from Edom.

So there that animosity that existed between Edom and Israel continued even until the time of Christ. And you can think of the death of the children, Herod even being one of the ones that was like, yeah, you know, you can kill Jesus.

I'm not going to protect him. I'm not going to tell you guys no. So all of that happened.

So here God tells them, hey, your treaties, you're trusting in people, you're trusting in nations. They aren't going to be able to help you. They're going to betray you and they're going to drive you out.

He says, in that day, this is Yahweh's declaration. Will I not eliminate the wise ones of Edom and those who understand from the hill country of Esau?

Timon, your warriors will be terrified so that everyone from the hill country of Esau will be destroyed by slaughter. He says, just as you did to others and you attacked people, you are going to be attacked.

It's that endless boomerang thing that we keep referencing from the Psalms and Leviticus and all of that. He says, you will be covered with shame and destroyed forever because of violence done to your brother, Jacob, your family members.

He says, on the day you stood aloof, on the day strangers captured his wealth while foreigners entered his city gate and cast lots for Jerusalem, you were just like one of them. Do not gloat over your brother in the day of his calamity.

Do not rejoice over the people of Judah in the day of their destruction. Do not boastfully mock in the day of distress. Do not enter my people's city gate in the day of their disaster.

Yes, you do not gloat over their misery in the day of their disaster. And do not appropriate their possessions in the day of their disaster. Do not stand at the crossroads to cut off their fugitives.

And do not hand over their survivors in the day of distress.

So here God tells them something that we would even read in Proverbs of when you see disaster happening, when you see death, when you see disorder and chaos and devastation, like don't rejoice in that, don't be happy about that, don't gloat because

God might turn that back on you. And here what God tells them is you weren't even just fine being aloof and standing off and not helping or just gloating from the back and going, ah, yeah, that's what they get.

He says it wasn't even enough that you did that. You actually ended up participating and you captured people, fugitives that were running away and you delivered them back over, handing over the survivors.

So God says because of all of this, this is the reason why you are going to be destroyed as a nation, because of your wickedness that when you could have done good, you did not do good. And when you had the opportunity to not do bad, you did it.

And you took advantage of those that were really at the lowest possible point of their lives. Then verse 15, he says, For the day of Yahweh is near against all the nations. As you have done, it will be done to you.

What you deserve will return on your own head. As you have drunk on my holy mountain, he says, as you celebrated and got wasted on Jerusalem, he says, so all the nations will drink continually.

They will drink and gulp down and be as though they had never been. But there will be a deliverance on Mount Zion and it will be holy.

The house of Jacob will dispossess those who dispossessed them, which would happen centuries later with the Maccabees.

Verse 18, then the house of Jacob will be a blazing fire and the house of Joseph a burning flame, but the house of Esau will be stubble. Jacob will set them on fire and consume Edom.

Therefore, no survivor will remain of the house of Esau, for Yahweh has spoken.

Here he says this nation that right now thinks they're so great that they're in a better position than Israel, that they can take advantage of others, they can steal others' things and they can gloat over God's possession.

He says, nope, your nation is going to be completely wiped out. You guys will not have any authority. It will be like you never existed as a nation.

Verse 19. People from the Najev will possess the hill country of Esau. Those from the Judean foothills will possess the land of the Philistines.

They will possess the territories of Ephraim and Samaria, while Benjamin will possess Gilead.

The exiles of the Israelites who are in Halah and who are among the Canaanites as far as Zarephath, as well as the exiles of Jerusalem who are in Sefirot, will possess the cities of the Najev.

Saviors will ascend Mount Zion to rule over the hill country of Esau, but the kingdom will be Yahweh's.

Here God says all of these people that right now are in such dire straits and they're fugitives and they're on the run and they're in faraway Babylon, they're going to come and they are going to enjoy this land that I have promised to them, that I

have given to them. What can we learn from this book? I'd say a couple of things that we need to learn. Number one, God is just.

So don't sin. Don't follow your own way. Don't think that you're going to get away with lying.

Don't think that you're going to get away with immorality. Don't think that you're going to get away with treating others poorly, unkindness. Don't think that you will get away with shady business practices.

God is just, and we ought to fear the fact that our sin has natural consequences, that it doesn't have to be that like, hey, God hates you, and so that's why you should do good. No, no, no, not that at all.

There are natural consequences to your behavior.

Here as Edom did all of these things, and they were shown to be untrustworthy even to those that were related to them, then other people were like, yeah, well, I don't know if we can really trust them, so let's make sure that we attack them before

they attack us. So number one, realize that God is just. So pursue righteousness, pursue good, pursue following his way, because sin will never pay off. Number two, God knows when wrong has been done, and he will make it right.

Many of us are mistreated, are maligned, are hurt, any one of a thousand things. We go through struggles, and often we can go, hey, God, where are you?

I would kind of expect that you wouldn't allow this type of thing to happen because I know that you're righteous.

Well, even as we see here, this was written in the mid-800s, and it wasn't until after 586 BC, it wasn't until after that time that Edom was driven out of their geography, their national place, and then even later that they got absorbed into Israel,

and even later than that in about 8070 when they joined forces with Israel to fight against Rome and lost and were absolutely demolished. All of those things took place centuries and centuries and centuries after, almost half a millennia in some

cases. So God might not do everything right away, but that doesn't mean that he doesn't see, and it doesn't mean that he's not just. It just means that he is patient and loving to be able to give people space to return, to repent.

Are you offering people that same opportunity to repent, to turn from their way to God's way? Are you having a patience that says, I can endure things knowing this world's not the end. I've got a much better home that's waiting for me.

And so because I know what my father's like, I can be like him and I can have patience in my life. So number one, God is just, so live righteously. Number two, God is patient with his justice.

And so let's have that same patience towards other people that we're not just quick to fly off the handle.

Then lastly, God has a desire to restore, to bring back, even as he says, hey, for these fugitives, these ones that are in faraway Babylon, these people that are over by Tyre and Sidon, they're going to come and they're going to have an inheritance.

And so look forward with hope to your future because God's plans are not to harm you, but they are to better you.

It is to, as Romans 8.28 would say, his plans are for your good and for his glory, that as he works in your life and you're able to testify of the goodness and the grace of God that has gotten you through each situation that you endure, that then

that brings glory to him, that people would say, oh, okay, well, this person is really, really convinced that even in hard times, even in difficulties, God is there for them and that God brings them through and that God gives them a new perspective

that they wouldn't have had otherwise. Yeah, maybe there is something to this God. So with those three thoughts, I want to leave you this week with the Book of Obadiah, that God is holy and just. He loves his children.

If anyone were to hurt Evelyn, you can be sure as a dad that I would go after them and I'm not going to let them hurt my baby girl. And for you, God loves you so much more than any earthly parent could love their child.

And don't you think that he will do what is right when it comes to your life. Thanks for tuning in and look forward to seeing you on Monday.