The Day Of The Lord - God’s Elect Vindicated

Well, this afternoon, God willing, we will finish Obadiah, which we started last week, this short 21 -verse book in the

Old Testament, the shortest of the Old Testament, one of the shortest in all of the Bible. In Obadiah 15 -21, those seven verses are text, we see this day that is racing forward.

A day is coming when we shall see salvation for which we have yearned.

A day racing forward when everything in creation is going to be resolved, the church is going to be restored, and Christ's rule will be over everything.

And at that time, when that great day of all days comes, we will be safe and secure before God, wrapped and enveloped in the loving arms of Christ Jesus our

Savior. There's a day that is racing forward, and the day that we have, the day of the Lord in Obadiah 15, is but a precursor of that great day.

The day prophesied in Obadiah 15 is a day that happened long ago, and as so often in redemptive history, that was but a foretaste, a down payment, if you will, of the greatest day, the day of all days, the day that ends all days, when

Jesus returns. The day of the Lord is the Lord's day because the Lord ordained it, because it's the

Lord who brings it about, because on that day, the Lord will accomplish his will. And it's also the day when the hope of God's people will be vindicated.

For us, when our faith in Christ will be vindicated, when we will be shown to have been right, was

God who was right, because the church stands for that right that God gave us.

And on that great day of the Lord, when Jesus returns, we, like the

Jews back in Obadiah's day, will be vindicated. So please stand as I read about that great day in Obadiah 15 to 21.

Obadiah 15. For the day of the Lord is near upon all nations.

As you have done, it shall be done to you. Your deed shall return on your own head. For as you have drunk on my mountain, so all the nations shall drink continually.

They shall drink and swallow, and shall be as though they had never been. But in Mount Zion there shall be those who escape, and it shall be holy.

And the house of Jacob shall possess their own possessions. The house of Jacob shall be afire, and the house of Joseph aflame, and the house of Esau stubble.

They shall burn them and consume them, and there shall be no survivor for the house of Esau, for the Lord has spoken.

Those of the Negev shall possess Mount Esau, and those of Shepala shall possess the land of the

Philistines. They shall possess the land of Ephraim and the land of Samaria, and Benjamin shall possess

Gilead. The exiles of this host of the people of Israel shall possess the land of the Canaanites, as far as Zarephath.

And the exiles of Jerusalem, who are in Sepharad, shall possess the cities of the Negev. But, saviors shall go up to Mount Zion to rule

Mount Esau, and the kingdom shall be the Lord's. God bless the reading of this word, please be seated.

Heavenly Father, once again we are assembled before you to hear through the mouth of a fallen man your perfect and holy word.

I pray that you by your Spirit would make good from the efforts that I have in proclaiming this word, that Jesus Christ would be lifted up and glorified, that we would all be edified and drawn closer to his image by this word, this living and active word that you have given us.

We pray these things in Jesus' name. So this day is racing forward.

So we have in verse 15, for the day of the Lord is near, says Obadiah to the

Jews in exile in Babylon. The day of the Lord is near, a day when

God is going to return upon Edom what Edom had conferred upon Judah.

You recall that they added all they could to Judah's misery when Babylon, who was sent to take down the walls of Jerusalem, they were sent there by God, his will and decree, and when they broke down Jerusalem's wall and took the survivors' exile into the land of Babylon.

And as this happened, the Edomites, their neighbors to the southeast, the

Edomites stood on the wayside. And what did they do? Psalm 137 says they hurled insults at them as they were marched off into captivity, having seen their wall around the city broken down, their temple ransacked.

And here's the Edomites saying kind of a na -na -na -na -na, if we put it in schoolyard terms, that's

Psalm 137. Back in Obadiah 11, which we covered last week, it says that they stood aloof, looking down their noses as Judah was led away captive, gloating over the exile.

And it's the same kind of gloating and looking and peering and being superior as Ham did when he looked upon Noah back in Genesis 8.

Verses 12 and 13 says that they went in, the Babylon, the Edomites went in after Babylon was through and they took what was left.

So like that swarm of locusts and the eating locusts and the chewing locusts, everything that they could, they took after Babylon was done.

And then verse 14 says they gave survivors who might've escaped back to their captors.

They stood at the escape route. When they got there, they turned them back and sent them back to the Babylonians.

This is the Edomites and how they treated Judah. And what Obadiah says to them is this day is racing forward.

This day is coming. This day of the Lord is coming when what they did will be returned back to them.

The day when the Lord will resolve and it's racing to its moment. It's imminent.

You see, it's unstoppable. The day of the Lord is near. It's coming. And the Lord on that day is going to force sinners to face their sin.

Obadiah says it's near. Now the word for near in Hebrew can have a lot of different meanings, different shades, depending on how it's used.

It can mean proximity. It could be close by, like you're sitting near someone right now. I see a father near his son, a husband near his wife or children.

You're near, close by in proximity. It can mean near in relation. That's when the psalmist says,

I will draw near to God. And it can mean near in close relation.

You recall the book of Ruth when Naomi says that Boaz is our near relative. So close in physical relationship, well, it could also mean near in time.

As we have here in Obadiah, an event that is just around the corner. It's coming. So Edom, you recall,

Edom is considered Judah's brother, Israel's brother. And that goes all the way back to Jacob, their father.

We had, I'm sorry, Isaac, their father, where Jacob and Esau were his sons.

And in constant enmity with each other. But it was Jacob who was the father of the 12 tribes of Israel.

And it was Esau who was the father of Edom, but they were brothers. So God considered those nations to be brothers.

And that's why they're called brothers in the scripture throughout all of it. So the idea here with this nearness is something like this.

The punishment is near for what you did to those near to you. Now, Edom's their brother, but a near relative.

The punishment is near for what you did to those near. Now, the

Lord is not slow in keeping his promises. Judah is comforted by the fact that Edom will suffer for their excesses.

Here's Judah in Babylon, and the prophet is telling them this message about Edom, not to Edom, but about Edom.

And he's saying, they will suffer for what they've done. God is going to do something about it.

And it's going to happen on that day. Now, it's Judah who felt the stinging insults.

They saw the escape routes blocked. They felt their shame magnified by their brothers, the Edomites. And you know who else did?

The Lord. The Lord saw it all as well. Well, this takes us very quickly forward into that great day that I've been alluding to also.

This day that Obadiah 15 can only slightly picture for us. The day when Jesus returns. That's what

I call the great day. The day of all days. The day to end all days. When Jesus returns, his vengeance is going to be as thorough as was his cross.

As you have done, so it will be done to you. Your deed shall return on your own head. Now, think about this for a moment with me.

I mean, just as no sin of yours or mine or anybody has faith in Christ, no sin of those who have faith in Christ was left unresolved on the cross of Christ.

So no sin goes unpunished. Now, all sin must meet its just recompense.

A few weeks ago, we talked about that from Judah, excuse me, from Jeremiah 25. That cup of God's fury, we're going to have it referred to here again in Obadiah.

The same cup. Sin has to be resolved. Something has to happen to it. It doesn't just go away.

It's like a palpable thing almost. It has to be resolved. And just as no sin was left unresolved on the cross for God's people, so no sin at all goes unpunished.

All sin meets its just recompense. And hear this well. Either by Jesus on the cross or by you, if you're like an unrepentant

Edomite, you in hell will pay for that sin. Or Jesus paid for the sin once for all on the cross.

Those are the only two ways a sin gets resolved. You resolve it forever because you can't ultimately resolve it.

Or Jesus, who can take care of your sin and answer for it.

He did so on the cross. He was very consistent with what it says in Proverbs.

Whoever mocks the poor insults his maker. And he who is glad at calamity will not go unpunished.

You see, this day is coming. In verse 15, this day that is near. This is a day that resolves everything.

So the day is rushing forward. The day is something that will rush to resolve. And that's verse 16 to 18.

I want to ask before I reread those verses. Are you one who keeps a list of wrongs that were done to you?

And if you do, I ask you, is it because you fear that if I don't keep track, the great me, if me, if I don't keep track that no one will?

Is that your fear? If I let go of my hurt feelings, they will never be healed.

You see, we have this need for the hurts to be resolved. Just like Judah did when

Edom hurt them so badly when they were conquered by the Babylonians. We have the same need for our hurts to be resolved somehow, for something to happen to them, for justice to be done.

And for me to see it. It's me who's keeping the list of wrongs, and it's me who needs to see them paid for by you, against whom

I keep this list. There's a lot of problems with this, aren't there? 1

Corinthians 13, 5 says that love, and what is the chief characteristic of the Christian? By your love, they shall know you are my disciple, said the

Lord Jesus Christ. Love keeps no record of wrongs. That litany of wrongs that you keep, it just eats away at you.

You know what they are. Perhaps you journal them the way people journal Bible verses or prayer requests and things like that.

Do you keep a journal of them? A diary? Write them down? Or you just rehearse them in your mind over and over?

You hang on to them. We wrap our arms around them. We squeeze them tight. We keep them in. It becomes more and more dense, and yet we have to squeeze them in and shove them down.

But we remember them. That litany of wrongs eating away at us. They reside in the heart.

They entrench the way the armies on the Western Front entrenched themselves so they couldn't be dislodged, no matter what.

Now, besides the harm that this vault of resentment can do to your spirit, it can also eat away at your body.

There's physical things that can happen to you. We go through many Proverbs to talk about how bitterness leads to physical problems.

Well, on the day of the Lord, just as when this day comes against the

Edomites, when the day of the Lord comes and Jesus returns, He is going to resolve everything.

We need to believe this. And as we believe this, this gives us the ability to let go of these hurts, to stop rehearsing them over and over, to expunge them from ourselves.

You keep that list? Some of us do. Many of us do.

Your list, I pray, your list is shorter and less accurate than God's.

Just as God saw what the Edomites did to His people, Judah, as they marched off into captivity, He knows what's happened to you.

We spoke about this last week as well. You see, the harm that you hope those who wronged you will one day know is really harm that you're doing to yourself this day.

As you're hoping for that day, this day, you're the one who's suffering. And part of it is a lack of faith in God who will resolve it, in God who will return on their own heads.

And as the Proverbs says, though, even though God will enact justice in the end, we need to pray for them to have faith.

We need to pray for them to not have returned on their own heads what they have done to you, or to me, or to anyone else.

We need to ask them to have faith that God returned it on Jesus's head and He paid for it.

And so you won't, or they won't, have to. And whatever list we keep, it's got to be shorter because we don't know everything as God does, and it's got to be less accurate because we're not just as God is just.

No, the harm we're doing is as much to ourselves as to anyone else. Trust Christ that He, when

He comes, will resolve the issue. He will resolve everything. Verse 16, in Obadiah, it says,

For as you have drunk on my mountain, so all nations shall drink continually. They shall drink and swallow, and shall be as though they have never been.

But in Mount Zion there shall be those who escape, and it shall be holy, and the house of Jacob shall possess their own possessions.

The house of Jacob shall be afire, and the house of Joseph aflame, and the house of Esau stubble.

They shall burn them and consume them, and there shall be no survivor for the house of Esau, for the Lord has spoken.

Now, what happened here? The Edomites went into the temple after the Babylonians ransacked it and left with their exiles, and all the goods that they could take.

And the Edomites went in there, and they partied like it's 1999. They treated it like a disco house or something like that.

They went into a sanctified place, and they corrupted it. And when they partied at the ruined temple, they sort of represented in this metaphorical, almost as federal way, all nations.

Because it says, If you have drunk on my mountain, says the Lord to Edom, or actually to Judah about Edom, as they have drunk on my mountain, so all nations shall drink continually.

So Edom was a metaphor or a federal representation of all nations.

They did as Babylon did. They did as the Philistines would have done had they been there. They did as any

Canaanite would have done had they been there. They did like you or I, except for the saving grace of Christ, would have done.

For such for some of you, says the Apostle Paul. Took it as a party opportunity.

And there brought uncleanness into what had been the place where God's name had resided, rather than gasping in awesome fear to see what

God had done to his own people. Well, God says that they will have a cup from which they will drink continually.

The idea is forever. That cup of his fury, which we talked about a few weeks ago from Jeremiah 25, this cup that is full of God's wrath.

And what is in there that caused the wrath is your sin and my sin and Thedemite's sin. And it goes in drop by drop.

And first it's a drop and then it's a pint and then it's a cup and then it's a quart. You get the idea. And this cup is full and they will drink of it continually.

It's like Sisyphus' stone that when you get it close to the top and you think it's going to be empty, it's full again.

Just like the stone rolled back down the hill and he had to go up again. So this is the end of those who have sinned against the

Judah or the Israelites. And this, if they do not repent, it's the end of those people against whom you keep this record of wrongs, if indeed you're one who keeps that record.

This is their end. To drink continually from a cup then will never be empty because they cannot resolve their sin.

They cannot account for their sin. They cannot go to God with a sacrifice that is perfect enough to atone for their sin.

Can you do that with your record of wrongs? No, we need to stop keeping it.

We need to know that not only does God know this, but God does not take pleasure in the death of the wicked. He does not take pleasure in punishing them.

And we need to pray for their repentance before Christ. And then for Christ Jesus, according to his word, by the power of his spirit to bring to their mind what they had done.

And they come to you and ask for forgiveness. And is that not more glorious to Christ's name than this record of wrong, this litany that we keep?

Part of what Obadiah is telling Judah here is let go of all that resentment and all that hurt because God is going to take care of it.

You're in a different place now and God's going to bring you back. So the resentment and the memory of this thing has to go.

Some Jews understood that it was God's justice for which they had suffered and they submitted to their conquerors as Jeremiah kept telling them for some 20 something years.

So by faith, they escaped the slaughter. And he goes on to say that the temple or Mount Zion is going to be holy again.

Like the great revivals of Hezekiah and Josiah, where the temple was cleansed and worship was restored.

God's house will be cleansed. It will be renewed, returned to its holy stature. And the exiles will return and they're going to be like Mount Zion, said

Obadiah. They will be holy and sanctified and set apart by God, to God and for God.

As you and me or anyone who is in Christ have escaped this wicked generation, they escaped to Babylon, which was not a great place to be, but they followed

God's command and they went there. So have we escaped this wicked generation as the apostle

Paul says, as Jesus says to the people, escape this generation. We've escaped the clutches of the devil.

And we've done this through the cleansing of Jesus's blood. So as Obadiah says to the people of Judah, that they're going to come back to a holy

Mount Zion. So we come to a holy temple. What is that holy temple? It is us together gathered as the people of God.

For you, says the apostle Paul, are the temple of the living God, cleansed by Jesus's blood, each of us individually and together.

This temple cleansed as was pictured in John chapter two. And I think all the synoptic gospels have when

Jesus went and cleansed the temple and chased out the money changers. Just a picture of the cleansing. He would perform on the cross for his people.

Verse 18 says that Jacob will be a flame, but Esau or Edom stubble. They had tried to make

Judah small. They tried to take over their lands and their properties while the small remnants still face their exile.

They tried to make their borders so small so there'd be little to return to. And what does the Lord say?

This will be returned on your head. You are going to become a thing of no substance. You're going to be stubble, Jacob the flame.

You don't have a chance against them because it's God who's behind them. Jacob will be the consuming fire.

You're going to be like the chaff that's sent off to the wind. Do you know this day is coming?

We who are building up these resentments that the world has foisted upon us, the insults that we endure on comedy shows and from the talking heads on television, on the radio, in the office.

Do you know that the day is coming when God will resolve these things his way? On that great day, on that greatest day, we will see, the elect will see

God's justice and we will see what we were spared from. You know, when Jesus has the sheep on his right and the goats on the left and he brings the sheep into his presence and the goats are sent into hell.

You know, one of the things that's going to happen there is we see as those goats go away, we're going to see there before the grace of God go who?

Me, except by God's grace. I'm one of those goats. And he says, depart from me, you personally, you who practice lawlessness.

And why do we get on the right side? By grace, you've been saved through faith.

And this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not of work so that no one should boast.

No, not boasting, but jaws dropped amazement that God would save the likes of me.

And I'm a sheep and there's a goat. But really, we look the same. And except for the grace of God, there go

I. There before the grace of God poured out on me in Christ Jesus.

Now I ask you. You who keep that record of wrongs, you who won't let it go.

You who remember that love does not keep that record doesn't mean you don't keep that record against those who you love.

It says love, which is what a Christian is, does not keep that record. And the

Jews in Babylon are told you don't keep a record either because God's got it in hand.

When Jesus returns, his vengeance will be as thorough as was his cross. Just as no sin of yours was not resolved on the cross.

So no sin against him and sin against him or sin against his people is a sin against him.

But just as no sin of yours was not resolved on the cross. So no sin will be left unpunished in his vengeance.

When God sends his son back to us, that day, that great day will restore the church.

Verses 19 and 20. Those of the

Negev shall repose possess Mount Esau and those of Shepala shall possess the land of the Philistines.

They shall possess the land of Ephraim and the land of Samaria and Benjamin shall possess Gilead. The exiles of this host of the people of Israel shall possess the land of the

Canaanites as far as Zarephath and the exiles of Jerusalem who are in Sepharad shall possess the cities of the

Negev. It's full restoration. God left no border unmentioned here.

When he brings the people back, having punished them for their sins, they've received double for all their sins.

Isaiah 40, verse one. He brings them back to full restoration. So when

God forgives, he doesn't forgive you a little bit. When he says, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

It doesn't say there he's faithful and righteous to forgive you just enough to keep a hook in you.

That's not what he says. He forgives completely. Jesus said on the cross is finished. It was finished completely.

When Israel comes back from their exile, their borders are theirs again. He restores his people, but a foretaste, a tiny sample of what we will have when

Jesus comes back. You know, my wife and I, in our vacations in Oregon, we used to like go to this little creamery in Bandon, Oregon.

It's closed now. But they have these cheese samples on the toothpicks. You ever had those?

Now you can go around the line a lot of times, not like Tillamook where they kind of watch you and you only go through once. You get them.

You get this teeny little sample. And what does it make you want to do? What made me want to do? Sometimes my wife's great distress.

I wanted to buy the whole block because I got that little sample, that little taste. Man, that's good.

Well, the day of the Lord in Obadiah is like that. That foretaste of that greatest of all days when

Jesus comes back and restores his people. And we have that holiness and we're in his presence and sin is gone.

We talk about being saved from the penalty of sin and that's the cross where he paid for our sins, but then saved from the presence of sin.

You know, Judah came back after 70 years of exile, but they didn't have full nationhood yet. They were under Persian rule when they came back.

There was a brief period of independence, about 400 years between Malachi's last word and John the Baptist's first word.

And then came what? Then came Rome. Well, when Jesus returns, there's not going to be any

Persia or any Rome. When Jesus returns, he has complete and full dominion.

Just as Pastor Conley preached this morning about Jesus's dominion, his sovereignty, and what we're going to see when he comes back.

That complete dominion. When Jesus makes new heaven and new earth, and then we too will have possessions over the earth.

We will be able to possess the earth. Sin will be no more. And if now we're saved from this power, then his presence because there will be no sin in the world.

And we will once again have possession like Adam once did, but we'll have no sin. Adam was able to sin.

I believe we won't be able to because Christ will be with us and he will have recreated everything.

And he'll do this by the same means that he now holds everything together. And that's the power of his word.

And when he returns, he's going to rule over everything. The day, as it were, rules over everything. Verse 21, saviors shall go up to Mount Zion to rule

Mount Esau and the kingdom shall be the Lord's. You know, saviors came in and went in the forms of judges and kings all through Israel's history.

But we're interested only in the one true, perfect and eternal savior of whom those saviors, those small ass saviors were but a picture, maybe a mirage of sorts.

That's Jesus Christ. He is the one who will rule forever from the heavenly Mount Zion. And when he comes in the kingdom, he wanted the cross as his.

Then we, his elect children, will be able to dwell in complete freedom and peace and unity.

You see, everything's resolved on that day of all days that puts an end to all days. When Jesus speaks to the sheep on his right, he will say, truly,

I say to you, as you did to one of the least of these, my brothers, you did it to me. Your deed shall return upon your own head from Obadiah.

And they're welcomed into his presence. And we talked about this for the others here. Depart from me, you cursed.

And they say, why? What did we do wrong? Truly, I say, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.

You see how personally Jesus takes this. The deeds done or not done had until Jesus returns still do have a special emphasis.

Christ's blood family, his brothers and sisters in the church, you who love him, you who seek to do as well in a word is the church.

See, Eden withheld that cup of water. So by a passive omission, they added to their brothers suffering.

They actively added the humiliating jeers when they lorded it over those on whom

Yahweh had placed his stamp and seal of ownership. The ones in verse 13 of Obadiah, he calls my people.

Well, he took it personally. The cattle on a thousand hills are his, but the elect are his too.

But in this special way, because his son purchased us on the cross. So remember what

Jesus said to Saul, the Pharisee? Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?

Me, not them. Me as though Jesus felt the lashes. It's me as though it was his parents who were thrown into prisons.

It's me. Why do you persecute me as though it was his his brothers and sisters who were killed?

And brethren, the church being the body of Christ, he did feel it personally. He does feel it personally.

Because when the word became flesh, Jesus who put on that flesh entered fully into our experience, into your experience and my experience, yet without sin.

He possesses us. And because he possesses us, he takes personally the sins against us.

And because he's going to return and take care of those sins and return on their own heads what they had done to you, lest they repent and come to Christ Jesus and they become your brother or sister, which is hallelujah to Jesus.

Should that happen, he's going to resolve in a way that you and I never could with perfect justice and perfect memory.

And should they not repent, these ones against whom you keep this list, should they not repent? I think the list of their sins would be so much longer and deeper and darker than anything we can imagine.

But God knows. That's the message of Obadiah that God took it personally and that God knows.

And it's the people upon who he's put his name that he cares about. And this is written to.

So you're going to hear this again at the end of the service, but I want to read it now because there's some words at the end of the Aaronic blessing that we often don't usually speak.

You hear this and you're going to hear it again when we close. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you, be gracious to you.

The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and grant you peace. But then this is what we don't usually say. And I'm going to say it now and I'm going to say it again when we close this afternoon.

So they shall put my name on the people of Israel and I'll bless them. So they put my name on those whom I possess and whose harms those things that happen to them.

I take personally says the God of the universe. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promises.

Judah was comforted knowing that God counted every sin against them. He remembered he knew so they were able to let go of the bitterness that their brother

Edom had caused. And so, too, because of Jesus and his blood and his cleansing, so, too, are we able by knowing and trusting that Christ will resolve, that Christ will restore and that Christ will rule over everything.