Obadiah: The Kingdom Will Be The Lord’s
Introduction
Judah and Edom are sibling nations because they share common ancestors. Judah descended from Jacob and Edom descended from Esau. Throughout Judah and Edom’s history, Edom was a consistent enemy to Judah (Numbers 20:14-21; Judges 11:17-18; 2 Chronicles 20; 2 Kings 8:20-22; 2 Chronicles 21:8-10; 2 Kings 14:7; 2 Chronicles 25:11-12; 2 Chronicles 28:17). Jacob’s family grew into a nation deserving punishment for forsaking the covenant with God. Edom also resembled their patriarch, Esau. They despised the promises of God and sold out their family privileges for short-term gain.
The Text
1The vision of Obadiah. Thus says the Lord God concerning Edom— We have heard a report from the Lord, And an envoy has been sent among the nations saying, “Arise and let us go against her for battle”—
2“Behold, I will make you small among the nations; You are greatly despised. 3“The arrogance of your heart has deceived you, You who live in the clefts of the rock, In the loftiness of your dwelling place, Who say in your heart, ‘Who will bring me down to earth?’ 4“Though you build high like the eagle, Though you set your nest among the stars, From there I will bring you down,” declares the Lord. 5“If thieves came to you, If robbers by night— O how you will be ruined!— Would they not steal only until they had enough? If grape gatherers came to you, Would they not leave some gleanings? 6“O how Esau will be ransacked, And his hidden treasures searched out! 7“All the men allied with you Will send you forth to the border, And the men at peace with you Will deceive you and overpower you. They who eat your bread Will set an ambush for you. (There is no understanding in him.) 8“Will I not on that day,” declares the Lord, “Destroy wise men from Edom And understanding from the mountain of Esau? 9“Then your mighty men will be dismayed, O Teman, So that everyone may be cut off from the mountain of Esau by slaughter. 10“Because of violence to your brother Jacob, You will be covered with shame, And you will be cut off forever. 11“On the day that you stood aloof, On the day that strangers carried off his wealth, And foreigners entered his gate And cast lots for Jerusalem— You too were as one of them. 12“Do not gloat over your brother’s day, The day of his misfortune. And do not rejoice over the sons of Judah In the day of their destruction; Yes, do not boast In the day of their distress. 13“Do not enter the gate of My people In the day of their disaster. Yes, you, do not gloat over their calamity In the day of their disaster. And do not loot their wealth In the day of their disaster. 14“Do not stand at the fork of the road To cut down their fugitives; And do not imprison their survivors In the day of their distress. 15“For the day of the Lord draws near on all the nations. As you have done, it will be done to you. Your dealings will return on your own head. 16“Because just as you drank on My holy mountain, All the nations will drink continually. They will drink and swallow And become as if they had never existed. 17“But on Mount Zion there will be those who escape, And it will be holy. And the house of Jacob will possess their possessions. 18“Then the house of Jacob will be a fire And the house of Joseph a flame; But the house of Esau will be as stubble. And they will set them on fire and consume them, So that there will be no survivor of the house of Esau,” For the Lord has spoken. 19Then those of the Negev will possess the mountain of Esau, And those of the Shephelah the Philistine plain; Also, possess the territory of Ephraim and the territory of Samaria, And Benjamin will possess Gilead. 20And the exiles of this host of the sons of Israel, Who are among the Canaanites as far as Zarephath, And the exiles of Jerusalem who are in Sepharad Will possess the cities of the Negev. 21The deliverers will ascend Mount Zion To judge the mountain of Esau, And the kingdom will be the Lord’s.Obadiah 1-21
Summary of Text
For generations, Judah rebelled against God, broke His law, and rejected His covenant. And for all those generations, God sent prophets to proclaim His coming judgement and urge the believers to repent. Finally in 586 B.C., God sent Babylon to destroy Jerusalem and threw the people into captivity God. But during the destruction of Jerusalem, Edom, which covered land southeast of Judah, helped destroy Judah and even celebrated it. The prophet Obadiah, whom we know nothing about, prophesied this one-chapter sermon to Edom for their sin.
God appointed Babylon to discipline Judah for her sin, but Edom took this opportunity to join Babylon instead of Judah. If you look at verses 10 and 11, God will punish Edom for enjoying in and profiting from Jerusalem’s fall. So, in verse 1, God ordains that an envoy of nations will rise and attack Edom.
In verses 2 through 4, God humiliates Edom for their arrogance against Judah. If you look down to verse 12, Edom took the time to celebrate and gloat Judah’s demise. Edom thought aiding the Gentiles in defeating Judah would make them great. But God will make them small. Just as Esau despised his birthright (Genesis 25:34), so will the nations despise Edom.
In verses 5 through 7 God promises Edom’s wealth will be stolen because in verse 11, they aided the looters in stealing from Jerusalem.
God will further punish Edom with confusion which will only add to their destruction when He visits them in His wrath (vv. 8-9). The Lord singles the town of Teman (v.9) which was named for the grandson of Esau (Genesis 36:9-11). One particularly evil act Edom enjoyed was killing and kidnapping survivors from the siege at Jerusalem (v.14). Because they profited from the dismay of refugees, God will visit Edom and give them what they gave to Judah (v.15).
In verse 17 through 19, you see a reversal of fortune. What Edom gained by wickedness will be lost and soon Judah will regain what was stolen from them. On the day of the Lord, God will deliver His people, judge His enemies, and prepare for His coming kingdom (v. 21).
In 553 B.C., Babylon destroyed Edom and 15 years later, in 538 B.C., the Jews returned to Jerusalem.
I will focus today’s sermon on 3 points.
1. God Rules the Nations
God judges nations and individuals. God judged Judah for continuous sin and sent Babylon to punish them. But later God also judged Babylon for the evil they did when they captured Judah. God used the service of Babylon, then punished Babylon for sinning as they served. (Jeremiah 51:24). Edom was like a little brother laughing at his older brother getting a spanking. So, after God disciplined Judah, he punished Edom.
We must have a category in our minds that’s everywhere in the Bible—God rules over both individuals and nations. The title of King of Kings and Lord of Lord isn’t just a nice thought to sing at Christmas time (Revelation 17:4). Jesus really does rule the nations and calls them to repent and believe Him. Remember, Jesus commissioned us to disciples all nations (Matthew 28:19), not just individuals.
This means part of our evangelism should have the entire nation in view. Sadly, modern missions focus merely on converting 1-2% of a population, not on discipling the whole nation. We think of mission work as simply telling a remote tribe in Indonesia about Jesus. Yes, it is that! But it’s also discipling that tribe’s laws, customs, and institutions to follow Jesus.
2. Beware of Gloating
There’s a difference between enjoying your team won and enjoying the other team lost. Edom’s great sin was enjoying the suffering of Judah. Their gloating grew into outright violence against Judah when they kidnapped and killed the refugees (v.14). We should learn from Edom’s sin and follow God’s word.
Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, And do not let your heart be glad when he stumbles; Or the Lord will see it and be displeased, And turn His anger away from him. Proverbs 24:17–18
We are also a people learning to love the Psalms. And the Psalms teach us to pray for God bring an end to the wicked (e.g., Psalm 6:8-10; 7:6). How does this work? How do we pray imprecatory Psalms down on the wicked while also not sinning as we do it? Many Christians avoid the Psalms for this reason and are immature and weak because of it. We should rather pray for God to defeat His enemies while not acting and living like His enemies. An enemy of God rejoices at the downfall of others. But friends of heaven rejoice when a sinner repents of His sins (Luke 15:7). God’s enemies gloat when others lose while God’s friends glorify God for winning the victory.
Christians should glorify God when He answers our prayers and destroys wicked and evil plans, people, and nations. He can and does destroy through fire, war, and pestilence. But He also destroys through conversion, salvation, and grace. God wins through both annihilation and invitation. When the early Christians prayed for the destruction of Saul, they were utterly shocked to find God answered their prayer and gave then Paul. A gloating heart would not have welcomed him, but a glorifying heart did.
3. The Day of the Lord Brings both Salvation and Judgement
In the OT prophets, you see the phrase “the day of the Lord.” Sometimes it means God will deliver His people on the day of the Lord (Joel 3:14). Most of the time it means He will punish for sin (Obadiah 15). “The Day of the Lord” means God promising to visit a people. On that day, He treats that people the way they deserve. He gives them what is coming to them. For Edom, He punished them with the evil they committed against Judah. Just as Esau despised his birthright, so too will the nations of earth despise Edom (Obadiah 2; Genesis 25:34).
But for God’s people, the Day of the Lord is a time when God shares His goodness to us because we live in Christ. Christians worship every Sunday on the Lord’s Day (see Revelation 1:10; 1 Corinthians 16:2). But in Greek, “day of the Lord” and “the Lord’s Day” are the exact same phrase—we just translate it different in English. One phrase we attribute with judgement while the other we attribute with worship. Instead, think of it as both. When we come in God’s presence to worship Him on the Lord’s Day, He brings judgment—“repent for the end is coming.” But He also brings comfort—“behold, I am with you.”
The same God who visited destruction on Edom, chaos on Babylon, ruin on Persia, and catastrophe on the Sanhedrin, He visits us and dines with us today. Do you sense the gravity of the God we serve? Who prepared their heart to meet the Lord today?
4. Salvation Comes from Zion
I had a seminary professor quip that Obadiah possessed no value for Christians today. Well, I disagree because Obadiah’s fingerprints are on two important OT quotes in the NT. First, the prophet Joel used Obadiah 17 in his book. Joel says in Joel 2 that on the day of the Lord, certain things will happen: God will pour out His Spirit (v. 28), old men will dream while the young prophesy (v. 28), the sun will darken (v.31), and all who call upon the name of the Lord will be saved (v. 32a). At the end of verse 32, Joel quotes Obadiah 17 where Obadiah says those who escape Mt. Zion will inherit Mt. Esau. This is important because Peter quotes Joel 2 in his sermon at Pentecost. What this means is that the church is the new Mt. Zion, and our escaping is actually our invading.
Second, Obadiah 19 alludes to Amos 9:12. In both Amos and Obadiah, the prophets talk about a time when Mt. Esau will be possessed by Mt. Zion. God will take possession of Edom through the booth of David. Now, remember because David was a man of war, God would not permit him to build a temple for the ark. So, for David’s reign, the ark was housed on Mt. Zion in a tent or booth. This is important because at this tent, the priests learned to sing praises to God. God taught His people to sing at David’s tent. And according to Amos, when God rebuilds the choir tent, that’s when God will take over the remnant of Edom. This is why James, the brother of Jesus, quotes this passage of Amos during the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15:12-21. The Jewish Christians were wondering what to do with Gentiles singing praises to God. James, Amos, and Obadiah all say, when Gentiles sing praises to God that means Zion has just invaded Edom.
Finally, Obadiah 21 anticipates a deliverance for Judah greater than mere vindication. Yes, the Jews returned to Judah, rebuilt the temple, and established a kingdom but that kingdom was eventually annexed by Rome. They eventually placed King Herod over Judea who was an Edomite. So, salvation came to Jacob then it seems Edom comes back from the grave and ruled over him. Not quite. Jesus, the son of David, was born right under Herod’s nose, grew up to preach against Herod’s dynasty and against the corrupt leaders in the temple of Zion. After Jesus ascended into heaven, God gave Jesus the nations of the earth as His inheritance and Jesus visited Jerusalem in A.D. 70 destroying the temple and ending the reign of Edom in Jerusalem.
Paul says that the true Jew are Jews inwardly (Romans 2:29). And that the church will one day judge the world (1 Corinthians 6:2). This means that the coming kingdom that delivers the world comes through Jesus working in His church. The kingdoms of this world will become the kingdom of our Lord and His Christ (Revelation 11:15).
Conclusion
Remember God’s promise to Abraham, “I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you (Genesis 12:3). We serve a God who limits His curses to three or four generations but promises blessing to thousands of generations (Deuteronomy 5:9-10). God will destroy His enemies either by destruction or conversion. Either nations will be crushed, or they will be saved. But by the end, all the nations of the earth will bow and serve Him.
I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. And the city has no need of the sun or of the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God has illumined it, and its lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. Revelation 21:22–24