Obadiah? Why start
the year off by looking at this small, obscure book in the Old Testament? A
book which just seems to back up that idea of a vengeful wrath filled God.
Good question… First of all yes Obadiah is small, or at
least short. In fact, and this is always worth remembering for those Bible
trivia nights, it’s the shortest book in the Old Testament. Twenty one verses.
Yes it does seem to be obscure… It’s the most minor of what
are known as the Minor Prophets. Often we can skip through these twelve books at
the back of the Hebrew scriptures, with the hard to say names, maybe cherry
pick some favourite pieces Jonah for the kids, notice that the words written on
the martin Luther King Jr memorial come from Amos… Malachi’s verses on ‘tithing’
are always good to reinforce the idea of tithing and giving that some churches
push. One of the reason’s we are looking at Obadiah, just like we did with
Haggai last year is that in my ministry I have set myself the discipline of
working through the minor prophets, to see what they have to say to us.
And OK Yes Obadiah is obscure…We don’t know who wrote it.
There are twelve Obadiah’s mentioned in the Old Testament, it might not even be a name as usually people are
identified by parentage or the place they come from. It could be that Obadiah
is simply a title; it means servant or worshipper of the Lord. In the ancient near east it was the custom
because of low levels of literacy for a message to be dictated to someone and
then read to its recipient by a person. The weight of the message did not come
from the messenger but the one who sent it. Obadiah the book says four times in
those twenty one verses that these are the words of the LORD. The servant
speaking them does not want to get in the way of us hearing them. Many
commentators have pointed to the fact that this is a challenge for us today, in
our media soaked celebrity fixated society, where the focus can often be on the
messenger in an unhealthy way rather than the message. The person giving it,
rather than the scriptures themselves.
While, yes, its message focuses on the destruction of Edom, at
its heart this is a message of encouragement and hope for Israel after the
destruction of Jerusalem and exile into Babylon. In the famous ‘By the rivers of Babylon’
psalm 137 one of the things that is a sore point with the exiles is that Edom
had got away with breaking their relationship with Israel and had been involved
in the suffering of the people. Obadiah reminds the people that God is not
blind to such things and is the sovereign God of all nations. The things that Edom trusts in will not stand
the test of time. That God is a God of justice, and will put all things right.
That history is not all about nations and empires, politics and powers,
military might, and geographic advantages but God’s sovereignty and grace. All
nations will be judged on what they base themselves on and how they act, and
God’s people can rest assured that their times are in God’s hands. Edom may feel safe in their mountain
fortresses but Israel is safe in God’s hands, even if at the moment they were
dejected and in exile.
One commentator said that while Obadiah maybe a small book
it has a very challenging message for us today. A message about what we as
nations, organisations, individuals and churches build our security and
identity round and how that is worked out in how we treat others and act. Verse
15 that the day of the Lord being near
for all peoples where what we have done will be turned back on our heads, is
the pivotal verse in this whole book. We
are going to look at that this week, but also the fact that we can trust the
mercy and grace of the sovereign God, which we will look at next week.
Ok… we need to put this passage in its historical context. Edom was a small country geographically in the
high mountain plateau to the south of the dead sea. To get to it you had to go
through canyons or mountain passes which were easily defended. Israel while
having a high mountain range was vulnerable because leading up to that was a
coastal plain. Unlike Israel which sat across the main trade routes between
Asia, Asia Minor and Egypt, Edom was off the beaten track. They saw these things as making them safe in
the ebb and flow of empires. They were known for their agriculture so they were
quite self-sufficient.
AS you can see from the use of different titles in Obadiah
for both Israel and Edom, there was a historical connection with the People of
Israel. Edom, which means red and refer’s to the red soil of the plateau as a
people were the descendants of Esau. The story in Genesis is that Esau and
Jacob were twins and Esau gave up his birth right to Jacob, for a bowl of red
lentil porridge. Jacob had to flee his brothers wrath, and later they were
reconciled. However there had been a love hate relationship between the two
peoples ever since. The king of Edom refused passage for Moses as the people of
Israel came out of Egypt. At various times Edom was part of Israel’s empire,
other times they were autonomous, often at loggerheads.
When the Babylonian empire came to power both Edom and Judah
were told in the book of Jeremiah not to
resist; to submit to their rule as a way
of discipline. However Judah rebelled and Jerusalem was destroyed by king
Nebuchadnezzar in 586bc. Obadiah asserts that Edom was involved in the
suffering of the people caught up in that. They did not come to Jerusalem’s aid,
they stood off and were disinterested in
the suffering of others, In fact they seem to gloat and rejoice about it, then
they participated in the plunder of Judah, they profited from the suffering of
their ‘brother’, finally says Obadiah they refused refuge to those fleeing the
destruction. Turning them back at the border, all this because they thought
themselves safe in the fortresses and alliances they had built. Doesn’t that challenge nations in the world
today as well: Profiting from the suffering of others, not dealing justly and
mercifully with refugees, even a disinterest in the suffering of others because
well we are alright.
But says Obadiah, the things that Edom prides themselves on
will not save them from destruction, they will be treated the same way as they
treated their brothers across the way.
Pride comes before a fall as proverbs 16 18 says. Edom by the way was
destroyed as a nation by the Babylonian king Nabonidius in 553bc and while it
is mentioned as a region after that it is never again a country and its cities
and agriculture disappear from history, the Arabs come up from the desert and
occupy it. One of reasons that Obadiah was included into the Jewish Cannon is
the fact that what was prophesied came to pass.
Ok so you didn’t come here for a history lesson this
morning. What does all this have to with us, today? Our world, our lives, our
faith and our church?
There is a challenge isn’t there about what we pride
ourselves in as nations or even churches and how solid a foundation that gives
us to act justly in the world around us. Edom based its national identity and
pride on its geographic advantage. On the fact that it could build mountain
fortresses. In fact Obadiah uses their own words against them, you think you
are like eagles that can sour above it all and nest well above all the turmoil.
You can go to the region of Edom today and see the wonderful ruins amidst the
rocks. They prided themselves on their agriculture, the while region was dotted
by vineyards. They prided themselves on having wise men, who knew what to do.
One of the friends who comes to share his wisdom with Job was Eliphaz the
Temanite, Teman is the capital of Edom. They took pride in having a standing
army of well-trained warriors. In all this one commentator suggests that from
their lofty view they forgot to look upwards, they forgot to factor God into
the equation. And in the world today we can build national identity and pride
in the same sort of things and just maybe with the same effect that we can
forget about justice and mercy, in favour of comfort and security. We can
forget about proper actions in the clamour for prosperity. We can forget about
God and God’s justice and God’s righteousness and God’s care for the less
fortunate, the oppressed and the poor as we focus just on material goods and
standard of living.
There is a challenge to church as well. We are moving
through a period of immense change, what Leonard Sweet calls a Cultural
Tsunami, which has moved the church from the close to the centre of our western
society to close to the edge. People
call it moving from a Christendom model, where everybody and their dog went to
church to a post Christian or secular model or to use a more positive hope
filled word a missional phase , where most people can’t remember which church
their grandparents were staying away from and many people in our society have
not heard or encountered the gospel. A
lot of what we do and what we invest our time and money into is based on that
Christendom model … that being church is about the buildings, traditions and
rituals and what we do in here, on Sunday. And I’ve grown up in that
environment; I’m actually quite comfortable in it. But I think it’s allowed us to act in certain
ways as well. To be insular and loose something of our Christian distinctiveness.
I’m not sure that what we have built on that foundation will survive.
But I am hopeful about the future of the church, because
just like in the book of Obadiah, the hope for God’s people is in the mercy and
justice and sovereignty of God. You see Judah was like Edom as well they trusted in their alliances and in the
strength of their walls and that God would keep what was historically there
going. But that got stripped away and the people of God had to learn what it
meant to worship God and be that people in a whole new way.
As I’ve been reading through Obadiah I can’t help but find
that it’s been reading me and I find myself asking what have I built my life
and security and faith on. Can I be honest and say that I haven’t actually
liked a lot of the answers that I have. And’s interesting I keep coming back to
the words of Jesus at the end of the sermon on the mount… “ that the foundation
that will stand the test is that we listen to Jesus words and put them into
practise.’ I can’t help but be reminded of the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer that
I have shared with you quite often before and a worth hearing again at the
beginning of this year… And I believe bring the same encouragement that Obadiah
does, in letting us know that the sovereign God is with and for his people and
will restore them to himself.
“The restoration of the church will surely come from a new kind of community, which will have
nothing in common with the old but a life of uncompromising adherence to the
Sermon on the Mount in imitation of Christ. I believe the time has come to
rally people together for this.”
