Minor Prophets 4: Obadiah
You Can Read and Understand...the Minor Prophets • Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 17:27
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3. Edom’s glee at the plunder of Jerusalem climaxed a long and bitter family rivalry.
2. So Obadiah predicts a bleak future for the Edomites.
1. But all this reminds us that God wills love and unity for his new family in Christ.
Pray for This As You Read the Book of Obadiah.
Sermon
And your mighty men shall be dismayed, O Teman, so that every man from Mount Esau will be cut off by slaughter. Because of the violence done to your brother Jacob, shame shall cover you, and you shall be cut off forever. 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. (Obad 9–11)
Verses from Obadiah probably aren’t among faith-themed magnets stuck on your refrigerator door. You probably won’t find them in the box you might have on your dinner table. And you won’t find them in the warm and fuzzy Facebook posts that people like and share.
Why is that? It’s because the tone of the prophet is angry and vengeful. Obadiah is upset that the Edomites were happy when Babylon invaded Judah. No, they were more than happy. They joined in! They entered the gates of Jerusalem and gleefully carried off plunder!
3.
This really bothered Obadiah and the people of Judah, since the people of Edom were their cousins. Their common ancestors were Isaac and Rebecca, whose marriage had produced twins, Esau and Jacob. In those days, the firstborn son got most of the estate and the other sons got the leftovers. Esau was the firstborn and normally would have inherited the family blessing and property, but Jacob stole it all by tricking their old blind father, Isaac, into giving it to him.
Jacob didn’t have to do this. Yahweh had already promised that Jacob would inherit his covenant blessings, originally made to Abraham. So none of Jacob’s trickery and shenanigans were necessary. But he and his mother, Rebecca, decided to force the issue by disguising Jacob as Esau and thus getting blind old Isaac to give the younger twin the blessing. And sure enough, that’s what Isaac did, even though it’s pretty clear from Genesis that Isaac had his misgivings.
When Esau found out what happened, he threatened to kill Jacob, who, of course, ran away to Haran in Syria, where he lived for many years. There he married his cousin Rachel (and a few other women), got rich, had lots of his own sons, and then moved back home, still terrified of Esau. But by the time they met up again, Esau wasn’t angry at Jacob anymore. He’d also gotten rich and raised his own big family.
The two brothers made up, but the two families never really got along after that. Esau and his descendants settled south and east of the Dead Sea in an area called Edom or Midian. Jacob and his descendants settled in Canaan, which later became the two nations of Israel and Judah. The blessing stayed with Jacob’s side of the family; that was God’s plan all along. It was through Jacob that the promise of a descendant who would bless the whole world would come, Jesus the Savior. Meanwhile, the animosity between Jacob’s and Esau’s families never went away. It reaches its climax in Obadiah as the prophet predicts and promises the death and destruction of the Edomites.
This rivalry reminds me of the old Smothers Brothers routine where Tommy Smothers says to Dick, “Mom always liked you best!” In the case of Jacob and Esau, also known by this time as Judah and Edom, it’s true. Even though Jacob had stolen Esau’s birthright, God had already planned to give it to him. In the New Testament, St. Paul mentions this when he quotes God as saying, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated” (Rom 9:13).
2.
So that’s the background to Obadiah. His short prophecy was written about 600 BC, after one of the early invasions by the Babylonians. At first, these invasions were restrained. Judah wasn’t totally destroyed. Most of the people got to stay. But Jerusalem was thoroughly plundered and some of its best and brightest people were taken away to Babylon, people like Daniel and Ezekiel. It was probably during one of these early invasions that Edom assisted the enemy and actually rejoiced at the opportunity.
That didn’t sit well with Obadiah. No nation gets away with insulting, humiliating, and ravaging the covenant people of Yahweh. No one gets away with mocking the children of the promise and then thinking they’ll never have to pay for it, even if they are your cousins. So, under the inspiration of Yahweh, Obadiah predicts the total destruction of Edom and its warriors. Others will push them out and take over their land. And it happened. Just a few years later, the same Babylonians the Edomites had joined in helping sack Jerusalem invaded Edom and completely destroyed the nation, driving the survivors west to the southern border of Judah by the Dead Sea.
In the empty land that remained, Nabataean Arabs moved in and built their own civilization. What remains of their culture can be seen today in Petra, an incredible ancient city carved out of red rock. It shows up in the old Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade movie.
And what about the Edomite survivors? The Romans called them the Idumaeans. Their most famous descendant is Herod the Great, along with his relatives Herod Philip, Herod Antipas, and Herod Agrippa, who ruled the Holy Land in the time of Christ. You remember Grandpa Herod, right? He’s the evil king who slaughtered the baby boys in Bethlehem, hoping to kill baby Jesus. It’s almost as though the Romans and the Herod family were “sticking it in the eye” of the Jews by setting up Edomites over Judea to rule as its kings.
1.
But that was thousands of years ago. God’s will for us today is not to have blood feuds and rivalries between families and tribes and nations. Obadiah was written during a time when the kingdom of God was a matter of inheritance and politics. It was a kingdom made visible in the biological descendants Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; in kings descended from David; and in an actual country with Jerusalem as the capital, crowned with a stone temple.
But now the kingdom of God is different. It is made up of everyone who believes in Jesus Christ and is baptized into him. It crosses all political boundaries and includes people from every family, tribe, nation, and language. It is seen in every Christian church that confesses the Holy Trinity and Jesus Christ as Lord, especially wherever the Word of God is truthfully proclaimed and the sacraments are rightly administered.
The chief mark of this spiritual kingdom is not separation, hatred, and resentment but love. Says Jesus, our Lord and King, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (Jn 13:35). This love and unity Jesus speaks of is made possible by his cross. On the cross, Jesus died for all our sins, including the grudges we bear toward others. In Christ, our guilt is gone. In Christ, by faith, Christians are all one family.
Since that’s true, Christians take seriously Jesus’ prayer spoken just before he was arrested and crucified. In the Garden of Gethsemane, he prayed for us, saying, “I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me” (Jn 17:23).
I don’t think that means we’ll all be in the same denomination or congregation. Not yet. But it does call Christians to work together in whatever ways we can for the furtherance of the Gospel. And when we disagree, it calls us to ask the Holy Spirit to bring us to a true and common understanding of God’s Word so we can present a united and strong voice for Christ and the Gospel to the world.
Pray for This As You Read the Book of Obadiah.
We do pray: God, send us your Holy Spirit to create within us unity of faith and love for all your children. In Jesus’ name. Amen.