Obadiah: A Minor Prophet with a Major Message

Eagle.

And though thou set thy nest among the stars, thence will I bring thee down, saith the Lord.

Thence will I bring thee down.

Now it's Obadiah prophesying concerning Edom.

And he's saying to them, God is going to bring you down.

God is going to bring you down.

Look at verse 10.

For thy violence against thy brother Jacob, shame shall cover thee and thou shalt be cut off forever.

That really describes the message of Obadiah.

He's saying, because of what you did, because of your actions against your brother, which is the Jew, you are going to be cut off.

You're going to be, as verse 4 said, you'll be brought down.

The nation will be brought down.

All right, so let's pray.

Heavenly Father, again we ask you to be with us tonight.

And Lord, just to bless your word as it's being spoken.

And Lord, may we see again the importance of the nation of Israel and Lord, the importance of our support of them in Jesus name.

Amen.

The theme of the book of Obadiah is again the doom of Eden.

It's the shortest book in the Old Testament.

Again, Obadiah the prophet is prophesying to Edom.

To Edom.

Obadiah.

It was a very common name.

It's used at least 12 times in the Old Testament.

And scholars do not know if one of those Obadiahs is the Obadiah who wrote the book.

It doesn't tell us.

Nowhere in the book does it tell you of his father's name or where he's from.

It doesn't give us that information.

But his name does mean servant or worshiper of the Lord.

Servant or worshiper of the Lord.

And we certainly see that by his prophecy.

The day of the writing also is not certain.

There are really two main beliefs as to when it's written.

And that would be in 853, around that era BC before Christ.

You know, that's what it used to mean.

And anyway I won't go into that one.

That is when Edom rebelled against Jerusalem.

And so there is some indication that might be when this book was written.

But the most likely time it was written would be during the Babylonian captivity from 606 to 586 BC.

That is the most likely there because there's various reasons and it's very boring.

So I'm not going to tell you what those various reasons are because go get you a commentary.

Look it up.

It's about three or four pages of what scholars think, but it doesn't really matter when it was Written in this case, now, Daniel, it does matter when it was written, because if you believe it's the second century, you're a liberal and you shouldn't be allowed to teach the Bible anymore.

If it's the 6th century, you're right, because it matters a whole lot.

But in this case, it doesn't matter.

Both would work as far as the prophetical nature of the book.

In other words, either one of them, it would still be prophesying because the event hasn't taken place yet and it's still out there in the future.

All right?

And so.

But if it interests you, you can go look up that boring stuff and read it like I did.

I've already bored you just by this stuff because you don't.

Some of you don't care.

But it is kind of interesting.

You want to kind of be able to put it in the slot where it goes.

Definitely.

Scholars as well as I believe, because of things that this particular book speaks about and talks about, it probably did happen during the Babylonian captivity.

So now we look at Daniel, right?

So Daniel was carried away in 606 BC, he was carried away into captivity.

And what we're saying is this was probably written around that same time, maybe a little bit before, because it alludes to the southern kingdom being carried away into captivity.

All right, what was Obadiah's message?

Well, Obadiah's message again was God's coming judgment on Edom for the way they treated Israel.

Edom's destruction because of the way they treated their brother, the nation of Israel.

And this was fulfilled.

It was fulfilled by the Babylonians who came in and defeated them.

And then the remnant that had dispersed, there was another set of people that came after them that also beset them.

But the final destruction of the people of Edom really was by the Maccabeans because the Edomites had kind of moved up into southern Israel after they were defeated by the Babylonians and defeated by that.

And right now, the name of the next people are not coming to me.

And so they had moved up into the southern part of Israel and the Maccabeans just wiped out the rest of them.

And so the prophecy absolutely was fulfilled.

So much so I love this stat.

Look, I said stat because I can't say the other word.

I can't say the word statistic.

I try, but it just doesn't.

The stats are amazing.

How many Jews you think there are in the world?

Google it.

I looked at some old information.

I said, well, I wonder what it is now.

And I looked it up.

15.8 million.

Approximately 15.8 million Jews.

The Jews have stayed such a distinct people, and God has blessed them immensely, even though, again, they've been set aside for a time.

It's amazing.

God's chosen people.

Have you ever met an Edomite?

Google that one.

I did.

I just thought, man, I wonder what they would say.

Nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

Why?

Because the prophecy was fulfilled that there are no Edomites.

They're gone.

And the Edomites that were of any sort, who were truly Edomites, were melded into and became a part of the Jewish nation as such, way, way, way back again, just wiped off the face of the Earth.

The Edomites were descendants of Esau.

So most of you who are been around the Bible and have read your Bible and know what's going on, that'll immediately tell you who they are, right?

And so you think about again.

God called Abraham in Genesis 12 out of the Ur of Chaldees.

He promised him a great blessing, that all the soil he walked upon would be his, that his future generations, his descendants, would number as the stars of heaven, as the sand of the seashore.

But God chose Abraham.

And Abraham began a journey from the Ur of the Chaldees.

He began a journey to a city, to a place he'd never seen, to a country he'd never been to because God told him to.

And he began to walk, maybe ride a camel.

I don't know.

And Abraham had a boy.

His name's Isaac.

We don't have time to go through and talk about all of them.

And Isaac had two sons, Jacob and Esau.

God had told Isaac, listen to this one.

Now remember this.

And again, I don't have time to go back and review it all, but God had told Isaac and his wife that Jacob would rule over Esau.

Isaac should have taken that for what God had promised and made that change on his own.

There should have been leadership in that home to say, enough, that, okay, Jacob's going to be the one who receives the promise.

Esau.

And there should have been some.

I don't know how you would.

He would have done it.

But instead they ignored it.

And so God providentially, it happened because God providentially intervened.

Now, some of that was Jacob, which means.

Remember what Jacob means.

Trickster, supplanter.

So Jacob was a conniver, and he stole his Esau, his brother's birthright.

Remember that?

So go back and read Genesis, chapter 25, read it up through chapter 36 or so, and read the story once again.

Not only did he steal his older brother's birthright, which meant he now gets all the inheritance, he gets all the things that the firstborn would get, but he also stole the blessing.

As Isaac said, he was about to die.

He lived like another, I don't know, 20 years or so.

It's crazy.

But Esau and then Jacob tricked him by putting, you know, hairy fur on and went into his dad and his dad gave him Esau's blessing.

So again, Jacob stole Esau's blessing from his dad and then he fled.

Jacob fled.

What's remarkable is when they finally return after 20 years, it's very evident that Esau had, at least as it comes to the story, had forgiven Jacob.

Because Jacob, when he goes to meet him, he sends out presents for Esau and he puts his loved ones behind him to try to protect them.

He thought, my older brother is going to wipe me out.

But he didn't.

They both greeted each other with kiss.

So it's kind of as we get to the book of Obadiah and you learn about Edom, by the way, you learn about Edom also in Genesis.

There's many others.

We'll get to that.

The moral of the story is Esau's descendants were not a fan the Israelites.

In fact, there was a constant struggle between the two.

Constant.

And that's why you find that the edomites are mentioned 120 times in the Old Testament.

And yet today they're wiped off the face of the earth.

As Esau and Jacob split up, Esau settled just below the Dead Sea.

So he's south of Israel.

He's below the Dead Sea.

Edom, of course, that province of there.

What's interesting about that is that is the area where you find Petra.

How many of y' all seen, you would testify to, say you've seen Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Okay, us who from the 80s and 90s.

Yeah, Indiana Jones and Last Crusade.

That, that little canyon he rides the horse down through.

That is the stretch between the entrance and there that you ride down through to get to that treasury, which is Petra, right?

Which is part of Petra, the treasury that, that temple that's etched into the rock.

Rock face, by the way, that that film does not do it justice.

That thing is four stories tall.

Four stories tall.

And I don't remember how, how wide.

I think it's.

It's 80 or 90ft wide.

But there's even a bigger temple etched into the rock there.

That's 10 stories high.

And it's an amazing, amazing area when you come down through there, there are places as you try to get to Petra where that little canyon, you can touch both sides with your arms.

That's how narrow it is in a couple of places.

You got to remember, how do you get water to that?

That's a desert area.

So what, what you don't see, and you need to go look this up.

It's so cool that the actual canyon, Petra, the canyon is a mile long and almost a mile wide.

And there are hundreds, a little over a thousand different remnants of buildings and, you know, carved into the side of those walls.

There are graves, of course, carved on the side of the walls of the canyon.

But you could see how hard it would be for any kind of army.

I mean, some of you would understand if you've only got this little canyon you can go through to get to your enemy, good luck.

And so they were very proud, and that's what Obadiah says here.

They were very proud of where they were.

The clefts of the rocks that they were in that they had etched all these buildings into, carved all these buildings into.

They lived in the side of the canyon, they lived in the rocks.

How do you defeat a people who live there?

And it's an amazing, amazing thing.

The beautiful, beautiful area again in that day, they had water system that brought water from a spring outside the canyon, outside of Petra, into the canyon.

The very elaborate water system, had very elaborate gardens.

Inside that area, Petra, it was a paradise.

They had turned it into a paradise.

All that water that came from above was all gravity fed.

And it's an amazing, amazing place.

Beautiful, beautiful place.

All different sorts of red colors.

And just an amazing thing.

How much do I want to tell you?

One of the things as I was studying and reading about the Edomites again, descendants of Esau, they settled again below the Dead Sea in the area around Petra.

And there's other areas, of course, it was a larger area.

In other words, the Edomites were not just in Petra.

There was an Edomite kingdom because the Bible says there were eight kings.

Edom.

Eight kings in Edom.

Well, that's way before Israel ever had a king.

We're talking about the 12th, 13th century.

They could not find anything historically on the Edomites.

They couldn't.

They thought, the Bible's lying, there is no such thing as the Edomites.

There's nowhere to be found, no people to be found.

And so again, as England began to branch out and explore other places, there was a man they sent to the palace, you know, the Israel area, where he learned and became.

He learned and he hung out for three years, learned the language, learned everything so that he.

And they even said he would.

He looked like an Arab.

He looked just like the Muslims.

He went to church with them, with the.

He went to their.

Anyway, he became basically a Muslim, kind of infiltrated, if you would.

As he did that, he began to make his way south.

As he made his way south along the River Jordan and then down to the Dead Sea.

As he made his way past the Dead Sea, his guide said, hey, there is a.

There is an abandoned city, an ancient city over here.

And he ended up taking him to the.

To Petra.

It was lost for a thousand years.

Nobody from Europe, you know, nobody from that area didn't know it existed.

And all of a sudden, there you go, the province, the land of Edom, back on the map by one explorer.

The Bible's true, absolutely true.

And then it wasn't until.

They still said, well, yeah, it wasn't the land of Edom.

It was just Edom, wasn't.

It was the land of Edom, yes.

And the Edomites lived there, but they were just Bedouins.

You know, they just kind of hung out.

They were.

They weren't.

There wasn't really an organized, you know, real country.

There's certainly no kings.

And they began to excavate the copper mines.

And guess what they found?

They found a smelt, a smelter, you know, where they melted down the copper and they found an elaborate, elaborate city with a fortress.

And again, just a huge.

And then it was the Edomites.

So the Edomites had taken the copper.

They were making little ignates.

I've been saying that a little bit wrong, but they would make molds and they would pour the.

After they smelted it, they would pour the copper into the little ingots.

There you go.

Thank you.

Ingots.

And they would sell the ingots, right?

They would sell the copper all around the world, the then known world.

It was an elaborate business, certainly controlled by the Edomites.

And there they found out the Edomites had kings.

And there they found out before that they said, well, the Edomites weren't around you know, past the 8th century.

Oh, guess what?

They found that just like The Bible says, 13th century, right, exactly what the Bible says.

That's.

I mean, that's just a few days ago.

It's amazing how more stuff comes to light.

The Bible continues.

You know, again, we don't have to defend the Bible.

The Bible defend itself.

You just got to let it out of its cage, right?

And it will every time.

And it has, over these many years, everything that's ever been found is.

Has just gone on to prove that the Bible.

True.

So that's the Edomites, descendants of Esau.

And if you'll look on the back page of the handout, you'll see it says, who and what is Edom?

And on there, I've given you some of the stuff.

I've already given you off just now.

120 times in the Old Testament, they were going to be judged for their pride and of the destruction of Israel, of Jerusalem, Edomite, the Edom.

The word, the name Edom means red.

And it's in reference to Esau's reddish look at birth.

Remember, he was reddish and hairy all over.

The Bible says, all right, Edomites, Israelites, lived in almost perpetual conflict.

I said that while ago.

Another paragraph down there, it says the kingdom had developed a government led by kings long before the monarchy of Israel.

And you can go through and read that.

And I'm going to stop because I've pretty well given you all of this.

All right, so you can go back through.

That'll give you the information I just gave you.

And you can read through that about the Edomites.

So now we'll talk about the prophets.

So we see again, the Obadiah is a minor prophet.

Look at the chart on the front now.

So go to the front, the minor prophet overview.

And let's look at that for a few minutes.

If you look at that chart, if you kind of go over to your right, it says minor prophets delivering major messages.

So just because it's a minor prophet does not mean that the message is any less than the major prophets.

It just means they're less in length.

So minor is length, but not in depth, breadth or height.

You see that there on the right top?

The right at the top.

All right, the next little line says, from the fading of the kingdom until it fall through the flow of the returning remnant.

So again, what you have is again, under King David, the kingdoms were united.

You had the federation of the kingdoms under a King David.

Right?

Because when King David first came to power, it was just two of the tribes.

And then later, about seven years later, it became all the tribes.

And then David was king over all 12 tribes.

And under Solomon, you had them all federated.

All the tribes were together, the 12 tribes of Israel.

But then after Solomon dies, it splits into two kingdoms.

The northern kingdom, which is referred to as Israel.

The southern kingdom, which many times is referred to Judah.

Judah.

So you have the fading of the kingdoms as they're.

As they're going into captivity.

All right, so after they've split, then the northern kingdom is carried away into captivity by the Assyrians.

The southern kingdom is carried into captivity by the Babylonians in 606 BC.

Then King Cyrus, 70 years later, makes a decree, and the remnant begins to flow back into Israel.

Everybody kind of get the.

I've handed out that chart before with all the Fs on it, but the flow back into Jerusalem.

So that's why he's saying, if you look there.

So the prophet wrote about sin and warned of judgment.

So all the prophets do this.

Every prophet does it.

Every prophet, when they're prophesying, especially the minor prophets, it's very evident.

They prophesy against sin.

They preach against the sin of Israel or the sin of Edom or the sin of Nineveh or whatever it is.

And they preach and they prophesy against them.

Then they prophesy of judgment for that sin.

Because of what you did, God is going to judge you.

God is going to do this, this, this and this.

And man, I mean, it's.

Yeah, it's pretty rough.

Like he says he's going to wipe them off the face of the earth for their sin.

And then.

But all the prophets, including Obadiah, then they step in and speak about the mercy of God and the restoration and the coming Messiah.

So you see them talk about, hey, you're sinning.

Hey, God's going to judge you.

But God is a merciful God and a God of second chances, and he's coming back and he's a wonderful, gracious God.

And he is.

Amen.

I'm glad he's the God of second chances.

Amen.

God will restore anyone.

And of course, touching on the coming Messiah.

So as you read the prophets, when you're reading through your Bible, which you should be doing, be reminded of that again, what sin is going on, the judgment for that sin, but then the promise of mercy.

I'm glad.

God always gives us hope.

He always gives us hope.

I'm thankful.

I know today that he is going to return I'm looking forward to the blessed hope and it could be today.

If you look down again at the chart, the next little line down says pre exilic and post exilic.

So pre exilic means before the exile.

Alright, so before they were carried into Babylon, exilic means during the 70 years of exile.

So Daniel and Ezekiel prophesying to the Babylonians and the Jews in exile.

Then post exilic, after they return to Jerusalem, you have Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi.

What I love about this little chart is it gives you not only the time frame in which they were prophesying, but but who they prophesied to.

So look there below there Obadiah is prophesying to Edom, Joel is prophesying to Judah, Jonah to Nineveh, Amos to northern kingdom, Hosea to the northern kingdom, Micah to the southern kingdom, Nahum to Nineveh, Zephaniah to the southern kingdom, Habakkuk to the southern kingdom.

Everybody kind of see that.

So these prophets were going to, you know, primarily to these nations when they were prophesying.

And then the post exilic ones is Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, of course they're there with the.

They're there in Jerusalem prophesying to the returning remnant of the children of Israel who returned.

First time was under Zerubbabel in the book of Ezra.

And then the middle of the book of Ezra you have Ezra return as well with a group of people.

And then in Nehemiah you have Nehemiah return with a group of people to Jerusalem.

And it's Zerubbabel and Ezra who eventually we see the temple rebuilt.

And then under Nehemiah you see the walls of Jerusalem rebuilt.

How many of y' all followed all that?

It's a good little chart, really is good.

We don't have time to do the chronological one on the inside, but go to the inside.

There are two charts on the inside.

One of them is the chronological order of the Old Testament.

This is an amazing chart, this chart.

When I went to Norris, I was 18 and I had been raised in an independent fundamental red letter edition.

King James preaching pre millennial, pre trib.

I mean everything.

And I had never been taught this.

And this chronological order of the Bible will help you if you kind of just look through there and see not only the dates in which these were written, the time frame, like, well, how long, how many years does numbers cover?

Well, it covers 39 years.

How many years does Joshua cover?

25 years.

Where's Leviticus fit in?

Well, Leviticus fits in the book of Exodus.

God gave Moses the plans for the tabernacles.

That's where it fits in.

Where does Deuteronomy fit in?

Well, we've been studying that a little bit because of Joshua.

It fits in right before or right at the end of numbers as they go before they go in to the promised land.

Deuteronomy is remember how many y' all remember is Moses sermons to the children of Israel before they go into the promised land.

And Joshua, Judges, the book of Ruth fits in the time of Judges and on and on and on.

But at the top it again gives you the prophets and when they were prophesying.

So at the top you can go through, you can see the numbers in which and the times in which they were prophesying.

It's just a great chart.

I will move on because we have just a few minutes.

The other chart I gave you, just because we're in the book of Daniel on Sunday night, it's an amazing chart.

We're going to use this chart on a Sunday night at some point and it's tremendous.

You can take it home and look at it.

Alright, now everybody put that stuff up.

You ready?

Put it in your Bible.

Good, good.

Thank you.

Take it home, look at it.

If you have any questions, let me know.

The prophets, we're prophetically living in the last days.

And I believe we're living in the last of the last days as we go through the book of Obadiah.

There's several lessons we can learn from this wonderful book.

The primary of that of course, is going to be about the relationship we should have with the nation of Israel and also to understand and know God's love for the Jews.

He called them the apple of Zai Edom was judged for their treatment of Israel.

Think about that for a moment.

How does that apply today?

Well, it's very evident, isn't it?

I mean, when Hamas went into Israel and did what they did, and you had people on two sides of that, people who wouldn't condemn that, people who said, well, they deserved it.

If that would have been Americans who were killed and then many taken as hostages, what would the outcry have been?

By the way, there's still, I think 50, almost 50 hostages in my opinion, and it's on the Internet and everything, they should wipe them out.

You don't take somebody's citizens, just go, I don't get it.

It's hard for me to process how someone, especially a lot of the Hollywood crowd, a Lot of that group.

Even today there was a particular actor.

It's crazy, isn't it?

Genesis, chapter 12.

God's promised Abraham, I will bless them that bless thee and curse them that curseth thee.

And the book of Obadiah is just an example of that.

Edomites constantly conflict with them in Israel.

As the Israelites were coming out of Egypt and coming to the promised land, they asked the king of Edom, can we come across your province?

He said, no.

I mean, it was a constant conflict there.

And today we see the same thing.

We continue to see anti Semitic people around the world.

And this has been true since God chose Abraham.

And I said it right, God chose Abraham.

By the way, he's God, he can do anything he wants.

But why did he choose Abraham?

I believe I could give you a few things of why, but I can just tell you the sovereignty of God.

He's in control.

And we'll talk about that as we go through this study.

It's important, though, we understand that we, the United States, must stay vigilant in our support of Israel.

By the way, Israel's not perfect.

I'm not saying that we, that we condone everything they do.

And I don't believe that God's asking that at all.

But he is saying, you better support my people, and as a nation, we better continue to support Israel.

Or what happened to Edom will be our lot as well.

Again, I look forward to combating the replacement theology that has been very popular, has become very popular in the last few years or last, really last 20 years.

And that is those who believe that the church replaced Israel and those that don't see the Jews as still being God's chosen people.

I'm telling you, be very wary of that because, boy, Genesis 12:3.

I don't want to be in the way of what God has said when it comes to that curse.

God is not done with his people.

Israel, the Jew is still God's chosen people.

And surely they've been set aside as the churches as God has called out his, you know, again, the saved to bear the good news around the world.

But one day the rapture will take place and the Jews will once again be at the very heart of what God's plan and purpose is for the world.

By the way, it'll be a Jew that sits on the throne.

Jesus is a Jew.

And if King David is the one sitting on the throne in Jerusalem, that'll be interesting.

A Jew.

May we continue to love and support the nation of Israel.

I'm thankful we have a president who does again.

And I very rarely get political, do I?

Think around here we do a decent job of not being political all the time, but it's important every once in a while to say that other crowd, if they'd have been in, what a mess we would have been in.

No backbone, by the way.

Didn't even, I think he had to be told his name every morning when he got up.

Hey, your name is Joe Biden.

You're the President of the United States.

It's crazy, isn't it?

It's crazy the world we live in.

Say, preacher, you shouldn't do that from the pulpit.

Well, yeah, I should.

God is good.

And remembering that God is on the throne, God will never forget his own.

He is the King of kings and Lord of lords.

And God rules in the affairs of man.

And he's coming again.

And at the end of the book of Obadiah, just like all the other prophets, he speaks about that coming kingdom, the one that will never end, the one who will sit on the throne forever and ever and ever and ever.

It's going to be an amazing, amazing, amazing time.

Let's all stand.

We'll have a verse invitation.

Wherever he leads, I'll go.

I hope that was helpful tonight.

And then there are prayers.