Book of Obadiah - Vs. 1-5 (07/10/2022)

Park Meadows Church

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00:15

You know, we're, we're joking about Brother Otis setting the standard back there and stuff like that.

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But one, one thing that's weird about Sunday school in our church is like you would think Sunday school, you know, it sounds casual, certainly a lot of people treat it pretty casually,

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I would imagine, but at the same time, it is weird. It's oddly, it carries an odd amount of gravity in this church,

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I suppose, because of the Brother Otis's, followed by the Brother Bill's and things like that.

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And so it is kind of a, an odd thing to, to just, you know, do this, it's weird.

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You can if you want. I certainly don't mind. I'm always at the very back. So I can't judge anybody for not coming up closer.

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That's for sure. Yeah. Sure. Oh, yeah.

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I agree. We'll see what happens.

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All right, let's see here. Gosh, I was going to say one other thing about that a second ago.

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Oh, I was just going to say, yeah, it's just it's weird doing this. A lot of people like especially our online folks, but even maybe some of you guys who've been with us for a while at this point, like this was the very table that Brother Otis taught from.

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It was a little little flimsy metal table. It's just really funny. Not much has changed.

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Not much has changed in my entire life. All righty, guys. Well, we're actually going to be in the book of Obadiah of all places.

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So go find that one. Good luck. Before that, before that,

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I'm going to introduce it just a little bit. I'm in here for a specific reason, and you'll probably figure out why sooner rather than later, even before I necessarily get to the conclusion here.

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But we're going to be in Obadiah. We're actually going to start, I believe, the first passage we're going to be in, if you want to.

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You could also turn there. We're actually going to be in Genesis chapter 25 first.

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But ultimately, Obadiah is where we're going to going to be hanging out. So when it comes to Obadiah, so I'll cut to the chase a little bit and just say that, like, you know,

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I kind of told you guys this back in January, the last time I was doing a lesson up here. And that is, you know, starting last year and then this year as well.

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Ashton talked me into doing Bible in here, which is something that I never was interested in doing up until she talked me into it, and I've already told you guys all this.

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But, you know, I'm always like, you're going to do it too fast. You're missing context. You know, you're just rushing through it.

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Think of all the stuff you miss. So I never even thought twice about doing it until she talked me into doing it with her and some of her family and ended up loving it, because, yes, you do go through it very fast.

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But it's getting the super broad context of all of these big passages as you go through it, where you start being you start you're able to weave in all of the more micro messages, if you will, that we get here, both from Brother Bill for so many years from dad, where they're going like not only verse by verse, but like word for word.

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And so when you combine that with the broad, like just reading through the big passages, you get a lot of cool stuff out of it.

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Well, stumbled across Obadiah recently. I decided to kind of skip around this year and I went to a lot of the minor prophets because those are

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I I don't know. I have no memory of ever reading Obadiah before last year. I may have, but I don't remember if I did.

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So I read it last year and then I read it a second time this year and some things stuck out to me. So that's why we're here.

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I'm going to give you guys a little bit of intro to the book, I suppose, before we really get into it. Obadiah, you know, it's one of those things where you're reading it, you start digging into it a little bit, and apparently there's all this controversy and debate as to when it was written and who wrote it.

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And I'm talking about like among theologians, not not the kind of debate that dad was talking about recently, where they're like the secularists or like if it was even written, that sort of thing, or if David even lived or whatever it was,

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I forgot what it was. But among theologians, they don't know exactly who wrote it. Apparently, there were 12 men named

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Obadiah throughout the Old Testament. You're all the same name. Now, the name meant the same thing.

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It was worshiper of Yahweh. So that was what his name meant. And we're a little bit unsure about as to when it was written as well.

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Like in other words, and this is kind of where the controversy comes from. The book itself doesn't give the timeline.

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And so obviously theologians are like trying to, you know, find all the parallel passages and see if they can somehow deduce as to when this one is written.

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So, you know, one of the theories is around 848 B .C. Another one is around 730

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B .C. Another one's around 585. It really doesn't matter that much. I just thought it was kind of funny when

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I started digging this. I'm like, it's funny where a lot of theologians, even though they're the ones we admire the most, find, you know, these areas to kind of debate and stuff like that.

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It really doesn't matter that much. But it is interesting. We don't really know for sure what the timeline is as to when

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Obadiah wrote this specific prophecy. Now, one of the reasons this little book stuck out to me so much recently was because, as you guys will see, there are so many parallels between its first couple of sections.

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We're going to be doing the first section today and kind of the attitudes of so many of our fellow citizens out there today, about approximately half of them.

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And you guys will see that as we read through it. But, you know, obviously, we've seen a lot of crazy stuff over the last year and a half, couple of years, really, my entire life, really.

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But especially in the last year and a half and in this year, just the last six months, there's been some crazy stuff.

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So when I'm reading through this and I start to see some of these parallels, it's like it's it makes it makes it so clear as to why

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Paul told us that all of the Old Testament was there for our examples. Sometimes I have trouble finding what those examples could possibly be in some of these more obscure passages.

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But I feel like the further down in the line we get, the clearer it becomes. Let's see here.

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OK, just make sure everything's working. Anyhoo, so that's what struck me at first with some of those parallels there.

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Now, it also struck me because as we'll get to a few weeks down the road, whenever the next time I do this is, is there's a far prophecy at the end of Obadiah as well regarding the second coming.

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And that's really interesting to me as well. The fact that there is that in the same book. And you got

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I don't know, I put a pin in that for now because I'm going to come back to why I find that pretty neat and interesting as well.

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But one of the more specific kind of intriguing things of this book to me is the it starts off and it's this continuation of this epic struggle between a couple of brothers,

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Jacob and Esau, and what that relationship pictures to this day. Now, as we'll find out, that relationship is a absolutely perfect physical example.

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Coincidence, I think, not of the relationship between us and, you know, whether it be our modern day physical enemies or even our spiritual enemies, you know.

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And so, again, this pops out right right off the bat.

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And it's just a great picture between us, God's people, the heathen, which would be

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Satan's seed that Jesus talks about in his parables, a couple of his parables. And this struggle literally goes back as far as it possibly could.

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So if you guys want to turn to Genesis 25 for a minute, we're going to start there. We're in Obadiah, but we're going to bounce around just a little bit.

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But Genesis 25, starting in verse 22, the struggle began literally in their mother's womb.

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And again, this is just getting a little bit of context as to how we ended up with what we're about to read in Obadiah.

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So starting in Genesis 25, 22 here, it says, And the children struggled together within her. And she said,

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If it be so, why am I thus? And she went to inquire of the Lord.

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And the Lord said unto her, Two nations are in thy womb. And of course, this is this is

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Rebecca we're talking about. Two nations are in thy womb. And two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels.

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And the one people shall be stronger than the other people. And the elder shall serve the younger. And when her days to be delivered were fulfilled, behold, there were twins in her womb.

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And the first came out red all over like a hairy garment. And they called his name Esau. And after that came his brother out and his hand took hold on Esau's heel.

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And his name was called Jacob. And Isaac was three score years old when she bared them. So the key here, let's see,

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I believe it's in verse 23. No, it's in verse 22, just right off the bat.

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And the children struggled within her. So, again, we're getting this we're getting this struggle between these two people starting at the earliest possible time.

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And that continued all the way up through to where we're going to be in Obadiah. So Genesis in this passage, but it continues throughout most of Genesis and really most of the

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Old Testament out. But Genesis specifically outlines really explicitly the enmity that existed between the two brothers, ultimately their progeny as well.

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So like as their kids, you know, generation upon generation, the struggle ultimately got worse and worse.

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There was some kind of more bizarre reconciliation, I guess, between the brothers at a couple of points.

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But it was really it was, you know, a little iffy throughout their whole lives.

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And then as their kids and the next following generations grew up, it got a little crazier. And so Edom, which, of course, is the you know, the nation that came from Esau.

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Edom is pretty much synonymous with Esau. Edom became a very powerful nation really early on in their existence.

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And just some passages, we're not going to necessarily read these, but Genesis chapter 36 covers it, covers it in Exodus chapter 15,

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Numbers chapter 20. And again, it's a very common theme throughout the Old Testament. Edom was very strong and it was constantly a thorn in the side of God's people.

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Now, if you're reading through the Minor Prophets, which, again, I did recently just because I'm interested. I mean, again, those were those are some specific passages that I just never gave a lot of attention to.

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And so I wanted to dive into them a little bit. But if you're reading through the Minor Prophets, what you'll do is you'll catch a lot of the overarching themes pretty early on and throughout.

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And so if you're looking at Hosea, you know, one of the big themes there is it's examining the love of God for his people.

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And in Amos, it starts examining God's righteousness. And then Joel moves on and really dives into the day of Jehovah.

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And I don't know if you remember this or not, but Dave actually did a Sunday school lesson on Joel sometime last year,

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I believe. And we covered that quite a bit. And and then Obadiah moves on and it starts prophesying about the doom of Edom.

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Now, it sounds specific, like, OK, you know, we have this whole little book dedicated to just this one nation.

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But again, if you consider the big picture and the fact that what this nation represented really.

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God's enemy, the enemy of God's children is a collective and is this perfect picture of our spiritual enemy is a collective is the heathen today, then it makes sense that Edom got so much attention throughout the

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Old Testament and was even referenced in the New Testament as well. And so Obadiah, it prophesies about Edom's doom.

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But within that, you see these other themes, including God's righteousness and the justice that his righteousness demands.

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Of course, his judgment toward the heathen, as we will get to, especially the heathen that are making a point to oppress his people.

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And then it finishes with God's grace toward his people. And it shows us a crystal clear picture of the results of pride and arrogance.

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And we're we're pretty much all aware of the results of pride anyway. Proverbs 16, 18.

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You know, this is one everybody knows, but pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.

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What we're going to see in this particular book is that specific truth, that parable or proverb rather on a national scale.

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So now we'll move on to Obadiah and we'll start with verse one here. And I'm going to try to accomplish a couple of things.

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Obviously, we're going to be going verse by verse through Obadiah here. So I want to get, you know, the themes within it, the things that we can glean from that book.

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But also what drew me to this book in the first place were some of those parallels. I'm going to attempt.

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To cover both of those as we go through, we'll see if I accomplish that or not. But verse one starts the vision of Obadiah.

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Now, first of all, this right here, this little phrase is what gives Obadiah the credit again, we don't know who exactly this was.

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There were multiple men named Obadiah in the Old Testament. But this specific Obadiah, regardless who he was, regardless of when it was written, he was given this was his accreditation right here before he lays out the prophecy given to him by the

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Lord. So the word vision here, the vision of Obadiah, it's the Hebrew word Hazan, meaning prophecy or divine communication.

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So we know that Obadiah was in direct communication with the Lord, both mentally, spiritually, but also audibly as well.

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I mean, he's he's seeing. A vision that the Lord is showing him through supernatural means, hearing the

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Lord talk through some of this as well, and and so, you know, he's about to see something pretty crazy as we're going to see unfold as we go through as we go forward here.

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So verse verse one continues. He says, Thus sayeth the Lord God concerning Edom. So right there, we're introduced to our antagonist, kind of why we started with with Genesis to kind of get that broad context.

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Here's our antagonist yet again. Very common theme throughout the Old Testament. And it's one that we're familiar with because of that.

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I mean, by the time we're getting this prophecy here in Obadiah, we're very familiar with Edom, with the again, oppression that they made a point to invoke on God's people here.

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So for centuries prior to this specific little book being written, we're given dozens of examples of Edom's antagonism toward Israel.

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Again, you can write these down if you want. I'm not going to read these specific passages, but Psalm 137 breaks down Edom's antagonism toward Israel.

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Joel chapter three in several verses there, Amos chapter one. And in this book, in Obadiah, we're shown the exact ingredients that essentially not only contributed to their wickedness, to their opposition to God, and of course, as people indirectly or maybe directly, actually.

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And of course, what the Lord did about it, as we find later. Now, one passage I do want to read is because it really sets the tone here in terms of figure or in terms of seeing this play out like this great struggle between the nations, but also

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Edom's pride. I mean, they you got to know they were aware of their history between their patriarch

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Esau versus the Israelites patriarch Jacob, and they were probably just aware of all of that as the

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Israelites were of their fathers, Jacob, Isaac and so forth. And so like when they got an opportunity to kind of flex a little bit, if you will, they would take it in numbers.

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Chapter 20, if you guys want to go there, flip over there. I think we're only reading a couple of verses.

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But again, it's just pretty interesting. So you have this desperate moment in Israel's history. I mean, they are still wandering around the wilderness.

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Still haven't made it to the promised land, but they're close at this point. And I believe they can even see the promised land.

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And they're trying to find safe passage to actually get there. They needed passage into the promised land to get there.

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They needed to go through the land of Edom. Now, not only were they not permitted by the

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Edomites, but they the Edomites made a point to show again kind of their strong hand in showing that they are not going to let them through.

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It's funny. I said go to numbers, but I didn't actually put it in my notes here. Let me just flip over there and read it really quick, because it is pretty interesting.

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Let's see here. Numbers 20, what

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I say, verse 20. OK, that little passage just says, OK, so the

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Israelites march up and Moses had sent like some ambassadors over to try to sweet talk them into letting them pass.

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And the Edomites respond by saying, and they said, Thou shalt not go through. And then so that's what they said.

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And then it gives us a little more detail as to their feelings. And it says an Edom came out against him with much people and with a strong hand.

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Thus, Edom refused to give Israel passage through his border. Wherefore, Israel turned away from him.

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And so there you go. They had their opportunity to kind of give it, you know, give it to the

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Israelites to flex a little bit and be like, you need a favor from us. No way. They took every opportunity they could of that.

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But the antagonism went way beyond just little quarrels like that. I mean, as we see later, like there's physical battles and stuff that take place between these people.

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So verse one continues. Let's see here. Here we go.

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Verse one continues here. It says, We have heard a rumor from the Lord and an ambassador is sent among the heathen.

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Arise ye and let us rise up against her in battle. Now, this is a really interesting little phrase here. I overlooked it several times before coming back to it.

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This phrase, an ambassador is sent among the heathen, is so like I looked over it.

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But as soon as I spent a second actually thinking about what that meant and then looking into it a little bit more, it's one of the most fascinating concepts to me.

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And it happens in several points in the Old Testament. But what's happening here is the Lord is sending an agent.

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And we're not, in this particular passage, we're not aware of like who this agent is.

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We're not given a whole lot of detail. But this isn't the first time that we're given an example where the Lord sends an agent to accomplish his will.

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So it's like him accomplishing what he wants to accomplish, not directly, but through an agent of some kind, an ambassador to initiate his plans for a specific person, or in this case, a whole nation.

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So I want to give you guys another example, one of the most intriguing examples in my mind of him doing this.

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So you can go here, 2 Chronicles 18, if you want to go there, I'm going to read it.

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But if you want to flip over there, feel free. So it's 2 Chronicles 18, starting in verse 19.

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And we're just going to read a few verses here. It says, And the Lord said, Who shall entice Ahab, king of Israel, that he may go up and fall at Ramoth -Gilead?

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So we have this wicked king of Israel that the Lord needs to remove.

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But he's not going to remove him directly, even though he has done that in other cases. And he certainly could do it.

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But here we're giving a very explicit picture of this dialogue that's happening, I'm assuming in heaven, because this is the

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Lord talking to other spirits around him. And he asks, Who is going to go make this king fall?

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And one spake saying after this manner, and another saying after that manner.

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And then verse 20 says, Then there came out a spirit and stood before the Lord and said, I will entice him.

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And the Lord said unto him, Wherewith? And again, like, this is also interesting to me, like, it's not only interesting to me that the

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Lord already will assign certain things and delegate. You got to learn a lot of things from that. The one person in the universe that doesn't need to delegate anything, he still does.

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So that's interesting in and of itself. Then it's interesting that just the way he's approaching this.

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So he's asking who among me here is going to go make this king fall. Then this spirit walks up, we're going to learn a little bit more about the spirit just a second and says,

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I will entice him. And the Lord asks him, How are you going to do it? As if he doesn't know. It's just so weird, not weird in like a bad way.

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It's like, it's just interesting to me, the way that the Lord is going about this, the dialogue he's initiating.

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And of course, he intended for this to be in the scripture for us to learn from. So that's ultimately,

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I guess, why it's happening. So he says, How are you going to do it? And then verse 21 says, and he said,

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I will go out and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. Now, this, to me, is what gives it away as to what kind of spirit we're dealing with here.

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I don't think it's an angel. It's certainly not God himself, because he specifically said, the way I'm going to entice him is putting a lying spirit in the mouth of his prophets.

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I don't think an angel is going to entice a person to lie or to influence a person to lie.

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I don't think the Lord would do that. And yet here's a spirit telling the Lord himself, I will go do it.

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I think this is most likely an evil spirit that is part of this kind of bizarre congregation that the

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Lord is talking to and trying to get information on how are you guys going to go accomplish my will for me?

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He says, I'll put a lying spirit in the mouth of his prophets. And the Lord said,

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Thou shalt entice him, and thou shalt prevail. So, yep, your plan's going to work. Go out and do even so.

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And then verse 22 says, Now, therefore, behold, the Lord hath put. Now, this is super interesting. Okay. So he just delegated to this spirit that we can assume is most likely an evil spirit that he gave this duty to go accomplish.

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And he said, he asked him for his plan. He said, your plan will work. You will prevail. Go do it. And then verse 22 says,

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Behold, the Lord hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of these prophets. Now, we know it is indirectly because he's obviously using this agent to do so.

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But point being is, this is the Lord's will that's taking place here. Like, the only reason the spirit's getting to go do this is because the

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Lord is making him do it. So it's the Lord that put a lying spirit in the mouth of these prophets indirectly through this agent.

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And the Lord hath spoken evil against thee. Talking about this evil, wicked king. And so I'm going to end there.

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But the story continues. Ahab falls in battle. And the only reason he went to battle is because his prophets lied to him that he needed to go to battle.

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Super crazy story. But that is another example of the Lord using an ambassador, or in this case, a spirit, to go accomplish some of his will.

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So here we are in verse 1. And it says, an ambassador is sent among the heathen.

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And this was the Lord's method of uniting the nations by proxy. It's ultimately his will.

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But they're doing it for him against the Edomites to destroy and humiliate them. Now, the humiliation factor as we go forward is going to be key here.

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Because what we'll see is the Edomites, we're about to see in just a second, they have a severe pride problem.

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And the Lord is going to end up making a point to not only humble that pride problem, but to ultimately just snuff it out.

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Like, these people will be no more. Like, I have had it up to here with their pride.

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I've let them live their lives for centuries, but no more is essentially what's going to happen. So again, he makes a point to not only destroy them, but to humiliate them first.

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So we'll move on to verse 2 here in Obadiah. It says, behold, I have made thee small among the heathen. Thou art greatly despised.

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Now, again, you already start to see how the Lord is making a point to contrast their pride and what made them prideful in the first place.

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You have a nation here that prided itself in its strength economically, strategically, they were in a very unique geographical location.

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And they had like the upper hand just about any physical battle that they would have taken part in. And not only that, but they were surrounded by allies on every border.

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So they were like in the most safe possible position from the human viewpoint that a nation could be in.

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And they felt impenetrable because of all these things. So it's of interest, at least to me here, that the Lord makes a point to make this nation small among the rest of the heathen around them.

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And the Hebrew word, I don't know how to pronounce it, katan, I believe, for, let's see here, which word was this?

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Yeah, I'll make, yeah, the word small, the Hebrew word katan here, it literally means young, small, insignificant, unimportant.

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So you have a nation that feels like they're the most important, possibly the greatest around, certainly flaunting all of that.

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And yet the Lord is going to make them the most unimportant of all the nations. In fact, they won't even be a nation at all when it's all said and done.

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Verse three says, the pride of thine heart hath deceived thee, thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock whose habitation is high.

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Now, by verse three here, we've already kind of arrived at the crux of this whole book and the crux of the downfall of Edom in the first place.

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It was their pride. Their pride was practically unparalleled. And the reason why I think that you can draw even more out of just how prideful they were is because this specific nation is mentioned in the context of God's judgment on a specific nation.

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This nation is mentioned more than any other in the entire Old Testament. So obviously, they were doing things that went, they were polar opposite of what the

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Lord would want any person, whether it was his specific people in the Old Testament Israelites or not, they were doing the opposite.

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And so I think that it was unparalleled because, I mean, they're mentioned more than any other in the context of his judgment and why they were being judged in the first place.

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Now, it was that unbearable pride that is first teased in verse three here that caused her fall and to intentionally contrast it.

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Again, the Lord destroys them and humiliates them. He brings a humiliation factor into it. It's not quite like Sodom and Gomorrah, where it was just fire from heaven immediately, as we'll see, and they're just immediately gone, as we'll see, the way in which he destroyed them was in a very particularly humiliating fashion.

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Verse three continues. It says, I'm going to just read the whole verse again. Verse three, the pride of thine heart hath deceived thee, now that dwellest in the clefts of the rock whose habitation is high, that saith in his heart, who shall bring me down to the ground?

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That's a pretty dangerous place to be in. Can you, I mean, can you even imagine, especially knowing the story?

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I mean, we already know the end of the story, but then when you read that and you think, come on, like, it's the perfect setup.

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Literally the perfect storm, and it's going to be the perfect storm. Again, from a strategic standpoint,

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I mentioned a minute ago, the Edomites felt a sense of being invincible geographically, economically.

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Their allies are surrounding their borders. Now, parallel, okay, so I want to start kind of drawing out the parallel that I saw when

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I read this in the first place, and that made me even want to go here. So parallel, the Edomite sense of being invincible.

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Now, their sense of invincibility was from an economic standpoint, from a geographic standpoint, kind of militarily, but parallel that with today's heathen around us, just,

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I'm talking, it could be people in this very city, but you can extrapolate it out, the county, the state, the country, the world, all of the heathen around us, the ones we see directly, but the ones we also see parading around, doing whatever in shows or on TV, in the news, the stuff, you know, cover all that.

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So think about the pride that the Edomites had in all of those reasons, but the heathen today have more of that feeling of invincibility, if you will, from kind of a societal standpoint.

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Maybe they're not even thinking about like military, from a military viewpoint, or even economic, although that's certainly a part of it, even if whether they're thinking about it or not.

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But think about how big of a deal all of the societal trends that take place are to these people.

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And what we're seeing, and I mean, this has been happening long before I was even alive, but it has manifested itself in really weird ways in the last few years.

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They have gotten such a stronghold on the societal dynamics of the way everything works these days, and what has to be accepted, what has to be promoted by all of the institutions out there, certainly by all of the entertainment industries.

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They probably feel a sense of invincibility, because they know that at any point, if any of their enemies, so to speak, those like us,

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God's people come out and start to question the moral foundation of everything that they're trying to invoke on all the rest of us, they can come out, start screaming, and they have, again, institutions, and the entertainment industries, and probably something to think about to back them all up.

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It's a sense of invincibility, right? And so here we start to see the parallel kind of unfold, where it's like, okay, like this is why

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Obadiah can be so useful to us in the 21st century, this tiny little minor prophet talking about some ancient nation that doesn't even exist anymore.

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Well, the nation may not be there anymore, but the spirit within that nation that caused all this is certainly still here, certainly still running around, and his tactics don't tend to change too much.

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So think of their pride that they purposefully put on full display. Now, let me ask you this really quick.

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In verse three, it says, What is pride? Think about it from our perspective for a second.

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What do you guys think pride is? Well, I mean, as much as I love that answer and would agree that that's probably a more proper definition, that's not how our society looks at it.

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If y 'all were just thinking of it from a purely secular viewpoint in the context that that word is used today, how would you define pride?

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Say that one more time. Possibly, I mean, that it's something dignifying, that it has this positive connotation all of a sudden from a secular viewpoint.

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High self -esteem. And then what you were saying, John, to me, comes back to a more humanistic pride within multiple denominations.

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So it's like a churchy pride, but it's not a biblical pride. Is that what you were getting at?

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It was like that my way is the way? Oh, gotcha.

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Oh, yeah, for sure. Well, that is a good point. I wasn't even thinking about that. But what John is saying is, so yeah, what

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Melissa pointed out, kind of what I was getting at, which is the modern secular definition of pride, it's something to be, it's something to, it's a dignifying virtue.

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It's something that it's a feeling you get when you are quote, unquote, proud of your accomplishments, all these things.

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What John is saying is, a more modern day negative view of pride is when the secularists out there look at us in the church, and they tell us that everything that we preach, everything that our whole moral foundation, all of our moral values, everything is built on our inner pride.

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And therefore, it's meaningless. So that's a great point as well. So there can certainly still be this negative connotation invoked by the heathen out there on us.

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Well, this is interesting to me, because I wrote this in late last night, because I was like, wait a second.

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So this whole lesson, a big part of this lesson is the pride of Edom. But I doubt the biblical definition of pride is the same as our definition of pride.

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And just like dad always talks about the word hope, how the old English definition of hope flip -flopped, it went from having a positive connotation, that joyful expectation, to something, and his favorite example is, well,

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I hope the cowboys win, but they probably won't, right? So it's kind of like that, but in reverse.

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It used to have a negative connotation, now it has a positive connotation. The Oxford Dictionary definition of pride is, and this is almost verbatim, what

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Melissa was saying a second ago, a feeling of deep pleasure or satisfaction derived from one's own achievements, or from qualities or possessions that are widely admired.

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So it's all about, well, hold on a second. I don't wanna get too far ahead of myself here.

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A secondary meaning or definition is the consciousness of one's own dignity. So again, it's like this dignifying virtue all of a sudden.

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Now, at first glance, I'm like, well, there you go. There's the positive spin that our modern day definition has on what used to be a attribute that was frowned upon, and that the

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Lord has never spoken highly of in any context. But the more I thought about it,

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I was thinking, you know what, it's actually really not. If you really dig deep, even the modern definition of it isn't a great thing.

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The feeling of deep pleasure or satisfaction derived from one's own achievements, it's as selfish and narcissistic as you can get, even in the positive connotation of the thing, of the word.

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Do you wanna say that again? Yes, when you put own in it, as John said, when you put yourself in it, how is that a great thing?

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But that tells you, though, the focus that, again, our modern societal, where their priorities are at.

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It's the benefit of oneself, how far oneself can go kind of thing.

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Now, here's the biblical definition of it, or I should say, here's the Hebrew word for the word pride in verse three.

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It's the word zidon, and it means insolence, presumptuousness, arrogance.

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That's how the Bible, at least in this specific passage that we're in, defines pride. So, put a pin in that, because those two definitions are gonna come into play as we keep going forward here.

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All right, let's see here. Verse four in Obadiah. Man, I have a long way to go and very little time.

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Verse four says, though thou exalt thyself as the eagle, and though thou set thy nest among the stars, thence will

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I bring thee down, saith the Lord. I wanted to read that again and put a little more emphasis on it. Though thou exalt thyself as the eagle, and though thou set thy nest among the stars, thence will

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I bring thee down, saith the Lord. And this is coming right after they asked what they thought was probably a rhetorical question of who will bring us down.

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They sure hoped, or they would have wished it was rhetorical by the end of all this, but the Lord, he's gonna answer it.

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Now, the first part of this verse is a reference to, again, their physical strategic positioning. The Lord says, thou exalt thyself as an eagle, thou nestest upon the stars.

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I had to read a little bit of commentary for this verse because I was like, all right, what does that mean exactly? At least based on the commentaries

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I was reading, which I think were pretty solid. They believe this is literally a reference to their physical positioning high up in the mountain of Seir.

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And we know that that's where they were, that they were in this specific mountain of Seir because Deuteronomy actually tells us,

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I'm just gonna read it really quick. Deuteronomy 2, verse 12 says, the Horems also dwelt in Seir before time, but the children of Esau succeeded them.

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And they had destroyed them from, they had destroyed them from before them and dwelt in their stead as Israel did in the land of possession, which the

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Lord gave them. So it's almost like the Edomites walked into their own equivalent of, their equivalent of the

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Israelites promised land, if that makes sense. So they displaced the Horems and are now living in Mount Seir, which was again, like an ideal physical advantage.

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And then if you skip down to verse 22 in that same passage of Deuteronomy, as he did to the children of Esau, which dwelt in Seir, when he destroyed the

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Horems from before them and they succeeded them and dwelt in their stead even into this day.

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So that's how we know where exactly the Edomites were at this specific time. As you can imagine, this physical positioning, again, even the

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Lord points it out in verse four, thou set thy nest among the stars, you exalt yourself like an eagle.

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So it's a very significant place to be. That contributed even more to their prideful egos, as you guys can imagine.

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And yet, despite their apparent safety from their physical enemies, the Lord takes up the battle in his own hands.

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He vows to bring them down himself, as we saw in verse four, which was a direct response,

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I got ahead of myself earlier to their seemingly rhetorical question in verse three, that saith in his heart, who shall bring me down to the ground?

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Well, it wasn't so rhetorical after all, the Lord answered it and he said, I will do it, I volunteer. Now in Jeremiah chapter 49, verse 22, it's interesting because, so the

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Lord is saying, you exalt yourself as an eagle. Oddly enough, there are passages, and this isn't the only one, but this is one of the ones that I found and thought was really cool.

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He says, you exalt yourself as an eagle. Yet we have examples where the Lord uses the eagle as his allegory or picture of how he is going to destroy someone else.

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So it's like, you exalt yourself like an eagle, I'll destroy you like an eagle. And in Jeremiah chapter 49, verse 20, it says, therefore, hear the counsel of the

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Lord that he hath taken against Edom. So he's talking about the same people here. This is,

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I think a parallel passage, but again, there's some controversy. There's some data as to when Obadiah was written.

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So we don't know if it was like simultaneously, if they were contemporaries or whatever, it doesn't really matter.

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He's talking about the same people. He says, he hath taken the counsel of the

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Lord, taken against Edom and his purposes that he hath purposed against the inhabitants of Teman.

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And we'll talk about that later as well. That's the capital of Edom. Surely the least of the flock shall draw them out.

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Surely he shall make their habitations desolate with them. The earth is moved at the noise of their fall.

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Again, this is going to be epic. This is going to be epic destruction. At the cry of the noise thereof was heard in the

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Red Sea. I'm not quite sure how far the Red Sea is from where their location is, but I'm sure it's far.

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They're probably, this is probably drawing a specific picture here. And then in verse 22, it says, behold, he shall come talking about the

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Lord. He just said, you exalt yourself like an eagle. And then in Jeremiah here, it says, behold, he shall come up and fly as the eagle and spread his wings over Basra.

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And at that day shall the heart of the mighty men of Edom be as the heart of a woman and her pangs.

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So they exalt their self like an eagle. So what the Lord's going to do is he's going to come and he's going to spread his wings and attack them as the eagle.

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And they're going to go from feeling high and mighty to feeling like a woman in labor, not even knowing how she's going to survive the next few hours, minutes, however long.

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That's how the toughest men of Edom are going to feel when the Lord attacks them in the way that they currently feel like they are.

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They exalt themselves as an eagle. Well, the Lord is actually the eagle in this case. And we also know that the spirit, okay, so again, they exalt themselves as an eagle as we see in verse four in Obadiah there.

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We know that that specific spirit that's behind that level of pride, it's not anything new, right?

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Just like I said a second ago, why does Obadiah mean anything to us now? This nation doesn't even exist anymore.

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Well, it's because the spirit that stirred up the people of Edom and made them prideful in the first place, that's still an enemy that we're facing to this day.

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In fact, it's a battle that the Lord has been fighting for longer than we even really know.

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And the reason we know that is because of the passage we're about to read. So turn over to Isaiah for a second.

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Isaiah chapter 14. This is, again, as intriguing as that second Chronicles passage was earlier, this one is as intriguing as it gets.

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And it's one we've read often. Brother Bill would reference this passage pretty often in multiple contexts throughout all of his studies.

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This is one we would go back to. But compare, again, that's

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Isaiah chapter 14, starting verse 12. Compare the spirit of pride that we have found already, the

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Lord addresses in chapter four, with this passage. Thou exalt thyself as the eagle, that spirit of pride.

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Isaiah 14 .12 starts, How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning?

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How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations? For thou hast said in thy heart,

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I will ascend into heaven. I will exalt my throne above the stars of God.

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I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation in the sides of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds.

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I will be like the most high. Yet thou shall be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.

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They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee and consider thee saying, is this the man that made the earth to tremble all of those centuries?

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I added that part. That did shake kingdoms, that made the world as a wilderness and destroyed the cities thereof that opened not the house of his prisoners.

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All the kings of the nations, even all of them lie in glory, every one in his own house. But thou art cast out of thy grave like an abominable branch.

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And as the raiment of those that are slain thrust through with a sword, they go down to the stones of the pit as a carcass trodden under feet.

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Thou shall not be joined with them in burial because thou has destroyed thy land and you have slain thy people.

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The seat of evildoers shall never be renowned." Now, what I wish I had done now that I just read through that passage is

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I wish I had stopped around verse 14. Save the second part for later.

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Because the first three verses there, 12 through 14 are pretty intense. That is an intense level of pride, but it's coming from the father of pride itself.

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So, I mean, that makes sense. You have said, I will ascend into heaven.

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I will exalt my throne above the stars. I will sit upon the mount of the congregation. I will do this.

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I will do that. What is the modern definition of pride? A feeling of deep pleasure or satisfaction derived from one's own achievements.

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The devil, Lucifer, is looking out into the future and he sees himself in this vain glory.

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Well, it would be vain because he didn't look at it that way. And he's thrown a whole bunch of himself into the equation.

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I will be this. I will be that. I will exalt my throne. I will be like the most high. Again, I kind of wish

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I had saved the second part of that passage for later when the Lord comes in and starts judging Edom because that's a great parallel as well.

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But we already know by finishing the passage how the Lord handles that kind of pride.

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You will be cast into hell, into the pit. The rest is history. So, again, this is a battle, this battle with pride that the

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Lord has been fighting for longer than we even know because we don't know when Lucifer said those things.

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We don't know specifically when that battle in heaven took place. So this has been a battle that precedes all of humanity, maybe even the earth itself.

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I don't know that. That's the kind of question I'd love Brother Bill to still be here for. So we could ask him like how that works, but pretty crazy stuff.

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So let's see here. We've got about five minutes. We'll see how much farther we can go.

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So Obadiah, back to Obadiah here, starting verse five. It says, if thieves came to thee, if robbers by night, how art thou cut off?

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Now, this is a really, this is, again, the kind of stuff I overlook all the time. And this is one of the great things about doing Sunday school.

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Just like Brother Jim that came and taught that lesson the first Sunday after Brother Bill passed.

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Super neat guy. He mentioned, you know, in his Sunday school lesson that the great thing about being the teachers, you learn way more, the teacher, put teacher in quotes.

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This is me sharing. I'm not teaching anything. But he said the great thing about being in this position is you learn way more than when you're the one out there.

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And so, you know, while I'm preparing for this, I'm looking at phrases that I might overlook otherwise. Obadiah literally stops.

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If thieves come to thee, if robbers by night, and then he stops. We have this little parenthetical, how art thou cut off?

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He's seeing this vision. Remember, he is literally seeing this vision that the Lord is allowing him to see of how badly they are about to get beat down by the

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Lord himself. And Obadiah is just like, wow, how art thou cut off? And then he continues.

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Would they not have stolen till they had enough? If the great gatherers came to thee, would they not have left some grapes?

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Again, kind of a bizarre passage. But if you look at the historical context of what he's talking about, it makes sense.

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We're given some details here of just how badly they're about to be destroyed. But it's through these kind of these strange allegories that were strange to me because I didn't really know like great gatherers, thieves by night.

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What's he getting at here? So these are some details through allegories of Edom's impending doom here.

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And first, he gives us an example of robbers coming by night and taking, as he says, till they,

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I'm sorry, hold on. Robbers by night, would they not?

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OK, yeah, yeah. Taken until they had enough. That's what he said in verse five. Now, what that is implying is implying that they are taking only as much as they want or only as much as they can get before it's too late.

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They got to get in and get out. Right. So they're going in. They're prioritizing maybe a couple of high valued items.

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They're grabbing those and they're leaving. It's not everything, though. It's only what they can take or only what they want.

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Then the next allegory shifts and he's talking about field workers gathering grapes who leave a few grapes behind for the poor to take.

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So apparently the grape gatherers in the vineyard way back when would gather all of the best grapes. But some, of course, would fall off the vine and they wouldn't even bother those.

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They'd leave them. And then when they would leave the vineyard, the poor would come and they would take what was left on the ground.

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And the grape gatherers knew it. And it was kind of it was it was part of the process, really. And so the poor would come.

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They would take the grapes that were left over. And that's used, again, to further contrast the destruction of the Edomites, which in this case, there wouldn't be anything left.

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So what Obadiah is saying is even the thieves only take what they need. Even the grape gatherers leave some for the poor.

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But for you, there's not going to be anything left. It's going to be like total desolation, total destruction.

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Of course, one of the ways that the Lord brings this specific destruction upon Edom is through other nations, as we're going to find.

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And we actually got a hint of that in verse one. He sent that ambassador. Remember that agent to stir up the nations is what eventually is going to happen.

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He brings the destruction upon Edom through other nations, which would eventually come to the Edomites land. They would plunder everything and every single part of the entire nation was either taken or destroyed.

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Absolutely nothing would be left. So I tell you what, guys, I'm going to stop it there. We'll stop at verse five.

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I was hoping to get all the way through verse nine, but I still have eight pages left. So I don't think we're going to get there.

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So I will go ahead and end it there. And maybe in a couple of weeks,

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I'll be able to finish this off for you guys. But we'll go ahead and pray and then we will wait for our main service to start here in just a bit.

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Dearly Father, Lord, thank you so much for this wonderful day that you blessed us with. Thank you for giving me this very unique opportunity to bring the lesson to my church family that I love so much and just to share some things that I have found very neat and useful for me that have been meaningful to me in the past few months.

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And Lord, I just ask that you be with Brother John as he brings our main service today and does so for the next three

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Sundays. It's such a wonderful thing for all of us to get to have them with us for the next few weeks. And we just ask that we enjoy this residency of Brother John and that his messages really speak to us as we know they will.

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And Lord, I ask that regardless of the reasons behind why this specific content was picked,

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I ask that it just be edifying to everyone that heard it and all of our friends out there listening online as well.

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Keep everyone safe. Be with us as we go through the rest of the services today and be with Mom and Dad as they are traveling and be with Katie and Dave as they are also traveling.