I. Introduction
1 The burden of the word of the
LORD to Israel by Malachi. 2 I love you, says the LORD. You ask,
How have you shown love to us? Is not Esau Jacob’s brother? answers
the LORD: I love Jacob,
3 but I hate Esau: I have
turned his mountains into waste and his ancestral home into a lodging in the
wilderness.
1. Obadiah
This Scripture is
from Malachi 1:1-3. However, the book I want
to focus on is Obadiah, because Obadiah takes these concepts and expands on
them moreso than any other prophet. The name Obadiah means “the one who serves
the Lord”, or "worshiper of YHWH". We really don't know who wrote
this small book. However, this writer fulfills the position of a servant as his
name implies. He comes, does his work and fades into the background.
Obadiah is one of the few books in the Old
Testament that initially does not appear to be about The Children of Israel. It
is addressed to Edom.
2. Edom
Who is Edom? If
we turn back to Genesis we read in 25:30:
And Esau said to Jacob, Feed me, I pray you, with that
same
red pottage; for I am faint: therefore his name was called Edom,
and Genesis 32:3:
And Jacob sent messengers before him to Esau his
brother
into the land of Seir, the country of Edom.
Esau was the older twin brother of Jacob,
born to Isaac and Rebecca. He later
became known as Edom (Genesis 25:30), which means ‘red’, because he traded his
birthright to Jacob for some red stew, possibly also because when he was born
his skin was described as red (Genesis 25:25).
3. The Prophecy Against Edom
What had Obadiah been called to say about
Edom? Look at vss. 1, 2, 4 & 9:
“Thus says the Lord God concerning Edom: we have heard
a rumour… an
ambassador is
sent among the heathen,” saying, "Arise… let us rise up against
her in battle. 2 Behold, I have made you small among the heathen: you are
greatly despised…4. I will bring you down, says the LORD...
9. And you
mighty men, O Teman, shall be
dismayed, to the end that every one
of the
mount of Esau may be cut off by slaughter.
Obadiah has been
given the message, the prophesy, of the downfall and destruction of Edom.
4. The Error of Edom
Why is this being prophesied against
Edom? There were at least three
things God had against Esau and his descendants the Edomites because of what they had done:
1.
In the first place, God was not happy with Esau because he did not have proper respect
and
appreciation for God’s promises to him,
for the covenant he should have been an heir to.
You recall Pastor George talking last
Sunday about the serious covenant God had established with Esau's grandfather
Abraham. It involved the sacrifice of
animals, blood, and even the symbol of circumcision. It was a covenant that
came with a great price. What had Esau done? He was rather famished one day
when he came home from hunting and sold his birthright to his younger brother
Jacob for a bowl of stew. That was how lightly Esau regarded the great promises
made to his ancestors Abraham and Isaac. As the eldest son, according to
custom, he should have been the bearer of the covenant, the one to be most
blessed from it. Now it was his younger brother Jacob’s. Esau was just living to
fulfil the desires of the flesh, living for the present.
2. The
second failure on Esau’s part was that he again
seemed to show his disregard for the
faith of his fathers by marrying outside
the faith. His taking Hittites as wives was described in Genesis "a grief of mind to Isaac and Rebecca",
his parents.
3. For the third item look through verses 10 – 14:
"For your violence against your brother Jacob
shame shall cover you, and you shall be cut off for ever... thou should not
have looked on the day of your brother in the day that he became a stranger;
neither should you have rejoiced over the children of Judah in the day of their
destruction;
The sin of the Edomites was their failure
to uphold the covenant of brotherhood. What God is so upset about here is that the
Edomites didn’t act like brothers to Jacob in their time of trouble. Instead of
coming to their aid they helped the aggressors against Jacob. Instead of being
hospitable they turned their backs on their brother’s descendants. They seemed
to be actually encouraging and joining in on the destruction of Jacob.
God was already punishing the descendants
of Jacob by sending them into exile, probably to Babylonia, in the events
referred to here. But God seems to be saying, no matter what I am doing, in my
righteousness and justice, that doesn’t give you, Edom, brothers of Jacob, the
right to gloat. We must never exult over others’ misfortune and say they had it
coming.
These then were the errors of Edom: 1. despising the God-given birthright, the
covenant made with their
ancestors
2.
marrying outside the faith
3.
being unkind, unbrotherly, to family
5. The Lesson of Edom
Obadiah thus tells
the story of two nations, Israel and Edom, behind which is this
story of two brothers, Jacob and Esau.
The conflict between these two brothers
began before they were born. God had told Rebecca when she inquired about the
struggle in her womb that two nations were warring there, that the older would
be servant to the younger, Jacob.
We remember the
feelings of ill will between the two brothers after the trading of the
birthright that led to Jacob having to leave his home for many years (Genesis
27:41-45). Even 400 years later, when Jacob's descendants returned from Egypt,
the book of Numbers tells us the Edomites refused to let The Children of
Israel, of Jacob, pass through their land, which meant a considerable detour. This animosity continued for a long time.
All the way from
Genesis through Malachi there is the threat of struggle and unbroken antagonism
between Israel and Edom, Jacob and Esau. Genesis records the beginning of these
nations and the enmity between them. Obadiah and then Malachi, being the last
book of the Old Testament, seem to bring and end to the story. God is a great illustrator.
He has taken these two men and the subsequent nations that came from them and
used them through the Bible as a consistent picture of the conflict between the
flesh and the spirit - Jacob and Esau, Israel and Edom. Esau simply wanted to
satisfy the longings of the flesh. Jacob was the one who wrestled with God, who
wrestled with spiritual things. He was the one in the end who kept the faith
and through whom God was able to carry out his promises and fulfil the covenant
made with him and his ancestors.
Why
did Edom make the mistakes that brought the judgment of God upon it?
1. The
trouble with Esau, with the flesh, is pride. Pride
is the root of all human evil, the basic characteristic of what the Bible calls
the flesh. The flesh wars against the Spirit, against God's purposes, continually
defying what God is trying to accomplish. Each of us has this struggle within
us, and its basic characteristic is pride, the number one identifying mark of
the flesh. This is the satanic nature
implanted in the human race since The Fall of Adam and Eve. Our corrupted universe
centers around the rival god, self. That is pride - Esau - Edom.
This pride is
referred to in Obadiah (verses 12, 13):
“But you should not have
gloated over the day of your brother
in the day of his misfortune; you should not have rejoiced over the people of Judah in the day of their ruin; you should not have boasted in the day of distress.”
in the day of his misfortune; you should not have rejoiced over the people of Judah in the day of their ruin; you should not have boasted in the day of distress.”
God charges Edom
with the sin of gloating as a
manifestation of pride. Did you ever say in your own heart? "You had it
coming." When someone fails and you say, "Well, I told you so. I knew
that would happen. I expected it all along"? That is gloating. It’s pride.
It’s like the hypochondriac who had written on his tombstone the words, "I
told you I was sick." In our pride and unconcern we don't care what
happens to someone else, as long as everything is all right with us.
2. Pride can be expressed secondly
in a feeling of reliance on self or self-sufficiency
(verses 3, 4), God
quoting Edom here:
...who say in your heart, “Who
will bring me down to the ground?"
To which the Lord replies:
"though you soar aloft like the eagle,
though your nest is set among
the stars, yet I am able to bring you down."
This is a very literal reference to the
nation of Edom whose people felt that because of their natural defenses they
were impregnable. They lived way up on those steep, seemingly impassable red
rock mountains of Seir southeast of the Dead Sea, and they thought that made
them safe.
They thought
that nothing could overthrow them, but God said it would be done. Years even
before our Lord's days on earth, the Jews under the Maccabees went in and
destroyed the cities of Edom and took those apparently impregnable fortresses,
fulfilling vss. 17 & 18:
“the House of Jacob shall
possess their own possessions…for the Lord has
spoken…those wwo find safety on Mount Zion shall rule over
Mount Esau;
and the Kingdom shall be
the Lord’s.
Edom has been in
ruins ever since.
3. Here is another form of
pride - verse 11:
“On the day that you stood
aloof, 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.”
Indifference is a form of pride. Some say this is by far one of the major causes
of marital difficulty. When it comes to marital difficulties, almost
invariably, somewhere along the line, you hear: "Well, he is simply
indifferent to me. He doesn't care about me. He ignores me." Or, "She
pays no attention to me. She isn't interested in the things that I am
interested in." How quickly this can start after courtship. During the
courtship it is, "What are you thinking about? Tell me what you would
like?" But when marriage comes, it is, "Where's dinner? Where is the
paper? What's on TV?" And the concern is entirely different. Esau is at
work again.
4. Then, we come to the form
of pride that seemed most reprehensible, in (verse 10):
For the violence done to
your brother Jacob, shame shall cover you,
and you shall be cut off for ever.
and you shall be cut off for ever.
This is destructiveness, or violence - the man who strikes his wife, the parent who beats
their child. What is behind this violence of the human heart? Pride - centered
only on itself strikes out against anything that dares to challenge its supreme
reign in life. Where does this violence come from? It is the pride of the
flesh. It is Edom.
5. Another manifestation
of pride is exploitation (verse 14):
“You should not have stood at
the parting of the ways to cut off his fugitives;
you should not have
delivered up his survivors in the day of distress”
When calamity
fell, Edom took advantage of it. They moved in on a fallen people, fugitives,
and used their trouble and misery to their own advantage. They delivered up the
survivors in the day of Israel's distress. God hates it when we utilize
another's weakness or bad luck to our advantage.
Perhaps the worst
thing about all of this, the real tragedy of Esau, is already given way back in
verse 3, where God says,
The pride of your heart has deceived you...
That is the
awful thing about pride. It is inherently self-deceiving. It is like the patients I see who are in an episode of mania. They
think they know everything. They are above everyone. They don’t have to listen
to anyone. That’s the way it is with pride. We don't recognize it until we are
too late. Everyone
else can see the
trouble we are having, but we go blissfully on, sawing away on the limb,
totally unaware that the limb we are sawing through is the limb we are sitting
on, until it falls down and we are suddenly exposed for who we really are.
The lesson of
Edom begins with a denunciation of the sin of pride and arrogance, the feelings
of
superiority that can lead to taking
advantage of others. It is a message
from God about the flesh. He will never make peace with it. It is a story rather
of God's judgment on it, personified as unbelieving Edomites, Gentiles, who
oppressed his chosen and beloved people Israel. It is about the justice of God.
His loving righteousness demanded vengeance on Edom, Israel's perennial enemy,
for what it had done regarding its brother Israel. Judgment against Edom is mentioned 14 times
in the Old Testament, more than against any other foreign nation. That is
understandable in the light of the relationship between the two nations. The
expectations for brothers to get along would obviously be higher.
V. The Hope of Obadiah
This book begins with an address to Edom.
However, from verse 17 to the end there is a message for Israel. As with most
books of prophecy, this book does contain a note of hope for the Children of
Israel. There is a reminder of God's grace to those who believe as we already
read in verses 17, 18):
“But in Mount Zion there
shall be those that escape, and it shall be holy;
and the house of Jacob shall possess their own
possessions… for the LORD
has spoken.”
It reassures the descendants of Jacob,
even in the despair and desolation of their being in captivity in Babylon and
Assyria, that justice will be done.
Unrepentant
stubborn Esau had to be destroyed. That is the whole story of the coming of the
Holy Spirit into the human heart; he has come to destroy Esau and all these
characteristics of the flesh. He will destroy them in those who are his and
bring his people Jacob into the full inheritance of all his possessions - and
the weapon he uses is the judgment of the cross.
Yes, Obadiah,
like many prophets also pointed forward into the New Testament. There you find
these same two principles personified again in two persons who meet in the
pages of the Gospels. In the last week of our Lord's sufferings, He stands
before Herod the Idumean, which is simply another spelling of Edom: Jesus, a prisoner
- the representative of Jacob and King Herod, the representative of Esau, face
to face. Herod plied Jesus with many questions, but for the son of Esau there
is no answer from the son of Jacob. God has nothing to say to the flesh,
nothing except judgment, which comes in God’s time.
VI.
Application
The question for us is, Are we, like the
children of Edom, guilty of sins against our brothers and sisters? Who are our
brothers and sisters? Are they just
fellow Mennonites, people of the same race? The teachings of Jesus tell us that
everyone is our neighbor. If so, are we
standing by while the forces of evil are destroying our neighbors, whether
those forces be the pleasures of affluence, the suffering of poverty, the loss
of being a refugee, the victim of war, prejudice, discrimination or other form
of abuse? Are we guilty of
self-righteously condemning and thereby promoting the downfall of our
neighbors? What are we doing to help our neighbors?
We who believe are God's people. Where
are we going to be on the judgment day with respect to God’s
anger? When God’s hatred is expressed in
all its terrible finality? Will we be cast out for treating the faith of our
ancestors as lightly as Esau? Have we sold our birthright, our inheritance in
the Kingdom of Heaven for some fleeting and temporary earthly desire of the
flesh, like Esau? Are we just living for today, not thinking of tomorrow, of an
eternity that we need to be ready for? Have we joined our bodies unfaithfully
to a bridegroom other than the Christ? Are we guilty of the sins of pride?
Are we a king like
Herod the Edomite or a prisoner like the Messiah of Israel ? Is Esau or Jacob
ruling? The cross that together with the resurrection and ascension set that
prisoner free to be the King of Kings denies us any right to pride and
gloating, to reliance on self, to indifference, to the use of the forces of
destructiveness and exploitation. Have we learned to reign with Christ, not only
in heaven, but right now? Have we learned to possess our possessions - as Jacob
is intended to do - so that the kingdom of our life shall be the Lord's? Or are
we still prisoners, like Herod, fancying ourselves to be free, on a throne in
authority, but still bound by unbreakable chains because we refuse to pass with
the Lord through the punishment of death into the resurrection that sets us
free?
How can we escape When
God Hates? We know the answer. The only way is
through coming to realize first of all that we too have been guilty of not
seeing God for whom he is. The God who in justice punishes evil is also the God
who extends grace to us. This grace has come in the person of His Son, who died
and rose for us. Let us not therefore, as we read in II Corinthians 6:2:
“Let it go for nothing. God’s own words are: In the hour of my
favour
I gave heed to you; on
the Day of Deliverance I came to your aid”.
God himself provides a way out from the wrath
of his anger. Let us not ignore that invitation.
*******
Lorne Brandt, 2004-5-23
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