Doom At Mount Pride - [Obadiah 1-9]

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It's always a privilege to bring God's word. And one thing we can take great assurance when you're preaching the word is, when you preach the word and word alone, you can hide behind it.
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It doesn't matter if you are sick, if you are whatever it is that you're going through, because the word of God is powerful and strong and capable of ministering to each of his chosen people.
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Today's message, before I just get into it, we sang the song standing on the promises of God. We have so many precious promises in Christ for believers, but today's message is going to be talking about people who stand on something a little different.
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Today's message is a little more fiery, filled with a little more sulfur that we are not so commonly used to hearing.
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So I see a few new faces. I do not know whether you know the Lord, what brings you here.
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I would encourage you to patiently hold through this message. The first half of the message is going to be hot.
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And the second half, you will come back and we will stand on the promises and look how we can take great comfort in the
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God who is both a God of justice and a God of love. But before we get into our text,
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I have a little something and I want to begin with a statement. The ring must be destroyed in Mount Doom.
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I didn't see too many smiles, which is okay, because it comes from a passage in a very familiar fictional story where a little character is supposed to take this little ring of power up this
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Mount of Doom and then destroy it. It's just a story. It's very funny, very sad, all the things that stories contain.
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And when he gets right up to the top of the mountain, I won't spoil the ending for those of you who haven't read the story, he has a little difficulty parting with this thing which has become rather precious to him.
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Okay, now I see that the people are confessing what they do know. Today, we are going to be taking a similar hike up a similar kind of mountain.
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It is a mountain range where we are going to go up four different peaks and as we go through each of these peaks, we are going to look at one particular type of sin destroyed, a sin that has such a grip on each of us that it seems almost like we can never get rid of it on this side of eternity and that would be the sin of pride.
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Today's message is called Doom at Mount Pride and my purpose this evening is that the
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Lord would grip you with such a revulsion for the sin of pride that when you walk out from here, you will commit to walk humbly before the
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Lord in all of your ways. The four peaks, very briefly,
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I'll just give you an outline and then we'll jump right in. The first peak is going to see how this nation of Edom was humbled because of its pride.
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And then as you look at this life of Edom and what God is doing through and to them,
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I want you to examine yourself. What is the pride that you have in your backpack as you are hiking along life today?
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You will find yourself in three of the peaks that remain. One will be either that you are so tied to everything that is in the world that you need to come up there and sever all your ties and forge a new tie with your
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Savior. The second peak is going to be for those of you who do know the Lord and yet have these barnacles, these tentacles of pride still coming alongside and dragging you down.
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And we're going to go to a different peak where the Lord will do business with his people. And then finally, we have a fourth peak, which
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I will leave unnamed, and we will get to the end of our message. So our message today is going to come from the book of Obadiah.
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You can turn to it. Obadiah is one of the minor prophets. And we're going to look at verses 1 through 9 of the book of Obadiah as we look at this particular aspect of pride.
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As you're turning there, the word Obadiah means a servant of God. There are many
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Obadiahs in the Old Testament, about 12 or 15, but it appears that the author of this book is probably not any of those men, primarily because of the timing of when we think the book is and the characters that are in the
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Old Testament. The book Obadiah is actually written about the nation of Edom, and the message is actually for the people of Israel.
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So let's give a little quick summary of what Edom and Israel are, because that will give you the context of what this prophet
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Obadiah is preaching to the Edomites. Edom and Israel, two nations that lived side by side for several centuries.
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They are both descendants of two brothers. Edom is the descendant of Esau.
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If any of you have trouble finding the book, I would recommend going to the contents, because this book has just one chapter.
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It's very hard to find it if you don't know where it is. It's next to Amos. So let's get back to our history.
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So the person we know very well in the Old Testament would be Father Abraham. Abraham was the man that God placed his favor upon, pulled him out of all the different nations that were there, and said,
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I'm going to make a nation through you. Abraham had a son, or a son of promise.
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His name was Isaac. And Isaac had two sons, and they were
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Jacob and Esau. Jacob was the name for a deceiver, the second one of the twins, and Esau was the hairy one.
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That's the names, what they meant. Jacob had his name changed a little down in history.
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He was called Israel, to be a prince with God, and Esau had another name.
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It's not a name that was very exalting. It was called
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Edom. The word Edom means red. The Bible says that when
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Esau was born, he was not just hairy, but he was also a reddish child. But the reason he got this name
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Edom was because he sold his birthright to his brother
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Jacob for a pot of red stew. And the name that stuck with this descendants of Esau will remember that strife that they have with their fellow brother nation,
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Israel. So you have the nation of Israel, which is the godly ones, and you have the nation of Edom, the descendants of Esau, who have been constantly in conflict with the
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Israelites. And now we are coming down several centuries since Jacob and Esau lived, that the nations have now grown and they are living, as I said, side by side.
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And there is a little problem that is happening in the life of the Edomites, and the prophet
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Obadiah is now talking to them as the Lord gives him attenance. The theme of the book of Obadiah is that God will be exalted.
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This is a time in Israel's history where, if you will read further in the book, which we will not get to, you will see that the nation of Israel is humbled.
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And the nation of Edom is being exalted. Not just Edom, but all other nations around Israel are glorifying themselves in the humiliation of Israel.
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But here Obadiah comes and says, I am here to glorify the Lord. And this is the
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Lord telling what he is going to do and how he is going to be exalted among the nations.
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He is going to punish the proud Edomites and he is going to lift up his humbled nation of Israel.
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So to just give us the book ends, let's read verses 1 and 21 to see how the book starts and how it ends.
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It begins with the vision of Obadiah. Thus says the
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Lord God concerning Edom, we have heard a report from the Lord and a messenger has been sent among the nations.
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Rise up, let us rise against her for battle. And if you go all the way to verse 21 in the end of the book, saviors shall go up to Mount Zion to rule
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Mount Isa and the kingdom shall be the Lord's. We'll have a few introductory thoughts before we get into the book in more detail.
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Um, you, I have this gift of vision by which
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I can see all of you who are seated here. And the Lord has thankfully given all of you the same gift so you can see me as well.
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But the prophet Obadiah has a rather unique vision of the Lord. He can see things that the
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Lord intends to bring about in the future and things that are happening in the back rooms, hundreds of miles away in some secret cities that God wants the nation of Israel to know.
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Because at this time everything seems hopeless, but God says, I'm going to tell you Obadiah, what you ought to know and what you ought to proclaim.
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Because when your physical eyes seem to declare that everything is lost, the
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Lord is working and he is working something unbelievable that will come to pass in its time.
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And that's the vision that God gives Obadiah. Now most of the events in this book, we will go only up to verse nine, even post verse nine, most of these events are past for us, but they tell us something about God's precepts, about his will and the way the mind of God works.
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We heard this morning about the wisdom of God and we're going to see how God sees his people and what
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God expects of us. Right in verse one, there are two terms used of God.
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One is the Lord God concerning Edom and the second one is a report from the
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Lord, capital L -O -R -D. The two terms for God are one, Adonai, which means master, the first one, and the second one is
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Yahweh, the covenant keeping God. And the way in which God relates to these two nations are going to be distinct in the way these titles are used.
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God is Adonai or master of every single human being that ever lived, is living now and ever will live.
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He is the master. As the creator, every single person is accountable to him. And one day, every single creature will need to stand before this master and give an account for his life.
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But the Lord is Yahweh, a covenant keeping God to those upon whom he has placed his special favor, those upon whom he has put his love.
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And the way in which he deals with people are different depending on where you stand in relation to this
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God who is your creator. And we will see as we go up these peaks how you relate to this
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God and how you ought to relate to him, whether as Adonai or as Yahweh.
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And one final comment as we get in, what we see in verse 1 is
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God's sovereign decree. God is not looking down the corridors of time.
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That was one of my false theology that I came into this church, which the Lord gracefully purged out of my thinking as Pastor Mike and the elders here were preaching the word faithfully.
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I am so thankful for what God does through his word, washing us and purifying us.
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And here we see God's sovereignty in that what God intends, he will execute.
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In fact, the nations who are executing this don't have a clue what they are doing. They do not know that they are working out the plan of God, that God has decreed from everlasting and here at this point in time, revealing to his prophet
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Obadiah to declare to his people because they need this message of comfort. And what is happening is a secret conspiracy.
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There is a conspiracy brewing behind Edom and Edom is totally unaware of it.
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And although Edom was standing up high and mighty in this point in time,
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God's justice is going to overflow and bring forth equity in his time.
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As we look at this book of Obadiah, what I want to do is I want to bring God's searchlight, if you will. God's word is called a lamp to our feet and here it is going to act like a spotlight.
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And as it works in your heart, I would like you to examine it and see if this great, what the
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Bible calls the great wickedness of pride would have any root in your life at all. And if it does, that it would, uh, the spirit of God would enable you to root that out.
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So let's get into the first of our three, uh, four mountain peaks. The first one is Edom's doom at Mount Pride, Edom's doom at Mount Pride.
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We're going to look at verses two, three, and four, Obadiah verse two, behold,
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I will make you small among the nations. You shall be utterly despised.
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At this point in time in history, Edom is standing right up on top of a wave.
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It is cresting and having a great time. And God says, I will make you small.
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No introduction, no, um, preceding statement explaining what is going on.
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God acts. God is the one who lifts up nations. God is the one who brings it down. And here he has decreed that the nation of Edom is coming down and nobody can keep it.
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Um, from coming down was three and four, the pride of your heart.
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Here we get the reason has deceived you. You who live in the cliffs of the rock in your lofty dwelling, who say in your heart, who will bring me down to the ground?
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Though you soar aloft like the Eagle, though your nest is set among the stars from there,
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I will bring you down, declares the Lord. Let's, let's use a simple definition of pride.
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Pride is one of a very serious sin. Um, but one of the ways in which we can think about pride is to glory or have confidence in anything other than God.
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It is to glory or to conflict, have confidence in anything other than God. For the most part, it is primarily a trust in one's own self.
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And secondly, it is trust in the things of persons that are allied to oneself.
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So I'd rather trust in me and the people and the things that are associated to myself rather than in God.
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Remember, I told you we're going to be either standing on the promises of God or you're going to be standing on anything else.
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Anything else will be pride if you do not trust in God. And what kind of pride did these
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Edomites have? In verse three, we saw that these people dwelt on heights of safety.
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This was both literal as well as figurative. These people were living in the mountain crags.
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These were not a large nation like the Assyrians or the Babylonians. They were much smaller, but they were like these guerrilla warfare people.
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They would just stand up there in the mountains watching the nations down and when they could just swoop down, attack, and then get back into their rocky places.
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They were up there in the mountains where they thought they were completely safe. What were some of the reasons that they thought they were safe?
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The Obadiah 3 says, you who live in the cliffs of the rock. A cliff in a rock is a rock that is split and you have narrow passes through these rocks.
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Even today, after this nation is devastated in like the city of Petra, I haven't gone there.
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Are we going there in the Israel trip? No. Apparently, you can walk through these narrow passes where in certain places, all you have is a horse that can walk barely scraping its flank between these two passes.
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At most places, these are so narrow that no army could come and take over this land.
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It is said, some of the historians say, they just needed 12 people to hold off an entire army.
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That was the way in which this whole city was set up. Up in the mountains with all these passes, they could just, because people had to pass through one by one or in a small column, nobody could actually come and overpower the
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Edomites. So they dwelt in the cliffs of the rocks and they said, nobody can come and take us down.
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They dwelt in the lofty dwellings where they could probably see Jerusalem on the mountain, but all the nations in the plains, they could be looking down and say, you know, we are kind of higher up compared to the rest of the nations.
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We are kind of up there. Our lofty dwellings, everybody else has to physically look up to us.
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And even in terms of your internal ego, you know, I'm kind of up there.
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You know, everybody else is kind of down there. They had this lofty exaltation of who they were.
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They were a city in the mountains. They would soar like eagles. You can just picture for yourself, you know, the winds going up and then they were ruling the skies.
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They were watching that from up. They could come down and swoop and attack and get back. And they were literally kings of the air looking from top down.
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And it says here they were you who your nest is set among the stars.
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For little ones, that doesn't mean that they invented the space shuttle and colonized Mars. It just seemed like they were up there in the heavens.
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You look up at the mountains and it feels almost like they were in the stars. They were way up high.
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And that was the way that the rest of the people would relate to these people. And so that was the sense of their pride.
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What was it that these people had confidence in? One of the things was physically where they were located and the prideful attitude that came out of it that they were inaccessible, they were impregnable, and they could hold their own against anybody who came there.
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And therefore they say, who can bring me down? They were so confident in who they were that they just made this boast of pride.
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One thing they had forgotten was how they got there. In Deuteronomy 2 .5, it says that God was the one who actually put them there.
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Let me read that for you. This is God talking to the Israelites as they were coming back out of Egypt.
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And he tells them in Deuteronomy 2 .5, Do not contend with them, the Edomites, for I, God, will not give you, the
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Israelites, any of their lands. No, not so much as for the sole of the foot to tread on, because I have given
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Mount Seir to Esau as a possession. This was God who had placed the Edomites in their nation and they had forgotten this
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God, and instead they were boasting in their own self -confidence that no one can bring them down.
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One other thing pride does, it is extremely deceptive. When you come to the point of saying,
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I don't need anybody to hold me up. I am fully capable of doing all things on my own.
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And when you forget the God who is sovereign and ruler of the entire world, you do not realize how vulnerable you are.
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The Edomites in their boast had forgotten that pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.
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And the God against whom they had raised their boast says to them in verse 4, I will bring you down.
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The Edomites had habitation was in Mount Pride and God had spoken their doom and it will come to pass.
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The rest of the book is about how Edom is humbled before all other nations.
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Edom's doom at Mount Pride. Now you may be saying, well, the
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Edomites several centuries ago, a millennia ago.
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Yeah, I can see that. I'm a 21st century modernist. I don't believe in things like that.
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I don't speak things like that. I'm more sophisticated. I don't say who will bring me down. What are some ways that you, if there's any here, could share the same hot attitude with the
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Edomites? There are certain things that they had as a principle governing their lives that today is rampant in the world.
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When you live your life using those same principles, the Bible says it is like building your house upon this sand.
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In Matthew 7, we said when Jesus says all these things, you hear them and then you say, well, I'm not going to do anything about it.
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It is like extremely shaky house that you have and the storm is going to come and that storm will level your house down.
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And that's the kind of life you would be living if you share the same principles that these Edomites did.
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Now, I know most of you here coming in an evening service, love the Lord. You're here to worship
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God. And most of you probably know the Lord because you have had your pride destroyed already.
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We will look at that later. But there may be, if there's even one of you here who does not know the Lord, I want you to pay extreme attention to what is going on here because this is no laughing matter.
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Before the Lord judges, the life goes on as you think is under your control.
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But in a moment's notice, this can turn around and as it did for the Edomites. Let me bring out a couple of those traits that characterize the
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Edomites that is still happening in the world today. Call it the lifestyle of the proud and foolish
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Edomites. We started by saying that pride is trusting anything other than God.
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Let's pick a few of these things that the Edomites thought could save them. Well, before we get to Edomites, let's talk about 21st century.
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What do you think is the number one thing people trust today to save them or take care of them?
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Money. Most people think I have enough money. I'm all set.
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Most people would go to the root of money saying, I have a job. I have a life skill. I have something that earns money for me.
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And I am all set. I am on this career path on corporate
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America. I can see myself going every couple of years, jumping between companies.
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And my income has had this graph which is going to keep going till I don't know what to do with my money.
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And I need to build bigger storehouses for the things that I do not need.
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People trust their jobs. Most of us used to trust our jobs.
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And in the last five years or so, if one thing pagan world has realized is jobs do not last.
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Those who thought that they were indispensable in their companies. I hold the secret of my company and nobody can fire me or lay me off have been found that there is no such thing as an indispensable job.
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Jobs take wings. And fly for those who put their trust fully and completely in jobs will realize that does not hold you.
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So what about those who say, well, you know, forget the jobs. I have already earned enough money for myself, for my children, for my grandchildren.
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And I don't even need to work anymore. Why do I need to worry? The Bible says money takes wings and flies to in the last 10 years.
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Maybe 10 years ago, if you talk to somebody about investment, they would have said, oh, you know, portfolios, this and that.
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Now you talk to somebody about investment. They'd be what did they say that it was that you had today?
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What was it yesterday? It vanishes into thin air.
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People have lost their entire retirement savings in. In a few months because of the way money goes.
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For those who say this is what I will trust in, it proves evanescent.
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It evaporates before you can even say anything. But if that was all there was to it, that was the only reason you shouldn't trust in them.
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That will be OK. Hear what God says to those who put their trust in money of all things.
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In verse five, God says to Edom, if thieves came to you. Like the corporate world, if plunderers came by night, how you have been destroyed.
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But would they not steal only enough for themselves? If great gatherers came to you, would they not leave gleanings?
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But in verse six, how Esau has been pillaged and his treasures sought out.
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You know, when humans come and attack you, they will do it just to gain something for themselves.
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If somebody is taking your money and trying to do this Ponzi scheme, he's looking to just make some money for himself.
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But when God sends his destruction, it is not like those thieves and the plunderers who just come steal.
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You know, they have a bag they can fill and take and go. This is not just filling the coffers of the thieves.
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But when God sends his people, it's in the end of verse six, the treasures of Esau are sought out.
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Wherever you hit it, there is an intentional destruction of everything that you put your faith in.
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Those of you who have done apple picking in Berlin, you know how hard it is to find all the apples on one tree.
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You you can just go around the apple tree many times and you would still miss a couple. But when when
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God sends his destroyers to the nation of Esau, they will be totally and completely wiped out.
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This will be wiping out to the ground, not just to the profit of those who have come to take things, but rather to leave you with nothing at all to stand upon.
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So that's money. Now, you may say, well, the nation of Edom was a wealthy nation because they were on a trade route.
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They would get trade people passing through them. So they would get money when these people pass through their toll region.
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They would there would be a lot of trade as multiple nations came in and did business there. So they were a wealthy nation and they had their pride.
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And as as could be you, if you are trusting in that, realize this, that money will take wings and go.
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What about the next source of pride? So let's say forget money.
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Let's put our trust in people. I'd rather trust in my relations, the people that I know and I love.
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Maybe my nation that is strong enough to keep me strong. Maybe my family. I come from a large, you know,
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Indian or Italian family. We are all close together. We don't let each other down. Maybe I have a friend who is so close from childhood.
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He will take care of my children if I were to die. He, you know, I have people who are close to me, who are allied to me, and they will take care of things when things when the chips fall down.
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God says in verse seven, if you are all your allies have driven you to your border, those at peace with you have deceived you.
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They have prevailed against you. Those who eat your bread have set a trap beneath you. You have no understanding.
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Whom Edom thought were friends were secretly conspiring against them.
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Those who ate his bread were now up in arms against the Edomites.
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They are the ones who are setting a trap, and Edom has no clue that those whom he was trusting was against him.
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The problem is this. The best allies that you might have still have a deceptive heart, and they will change just as much as the money and the other things that fly away.
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But even if they didn't, the collective strength of the entire family and nations and friends cannot hold up against the destruction that God would bring against you.
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Let's move on. What else? Money, friends, intellect. We heard this morning about wisdom, the worldly wisdom that the world seeks.
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We live in a land where we say, you know, we have Darwin and Einstein, and we've learned all the things from centuries ago, and now
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I know things. If my nation is wiped, I can rebuild it. I have the wisdom collectively from all these years.
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But hear what God says to Edom, and they boasted that way. In verse eight, will I not in that day, declares the
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Lord, destroy the wise men out of Edom and understanding out of Mount Esau.
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If you are wondering about the Edomites, they come in different sections in the Old Testament.
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One of the passages is in Job 42, 7. Eliphaz the Temanite was from Edom.
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He was known for his knowledge. He applied it in error towards Job. But these people from Teman were known for their wisdom.
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They had met different cultures. They had assimilated knowledge from different people, and they were known for dealing with life.
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They thought they had the world figured out, but they were not smart enough to escape, because when
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God brings destruction, we read in verse eight, wisdom will flee.
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The wise men that they thought would take care of them will have it no more. All right, forget wisdom.
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Let's now rely on just pure physical strength. I have armies.
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I have the grit. I'm like Hulk. When the going gets tough, you know, the tough just get going.
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You know, I'm going to just stand and bear this brunt, whatever it is that God is going to bring. I'm going to resist this.
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And if it gets too much, I'm just going to hunker down. I'm going to wait, wait for the storm to blow over.
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And when it is all over, I have that inner strength in me that will just wait this storm out, and then
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I'll come back up and I'll deal with life. That won't work, God tells the
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Edomites in verse nine. He says, your mighty men shall be dismayed.
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That's like the kind of terror that only God can bring. Oh, demons, so that every man from Mount Esau will be cut off by slaughter.
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When God brings his destruction, he's going to wipe out the entire nation. There is no strength, no force that can stand up against God.
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And if there's anyone here who trusts in any of these things, or maybe you don't feel that way, you might say, well,
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I'm more like a modern investor. I put 25 % in money, 50 % in my relations, 25 % in my strength, and another 15 % in intellect.
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That's exactly what the Edomites were. They had all these different assets that they thought would hold them up.
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It wasn't just that they were up in the mountain top. They thought all these things will hold them up, but not a single one of them could take care of them.
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Because right here on top of Mount Pride, there is a fierce wind of God's wrath and fury.
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And at that point, when God is blowing over all that you hold dear, when you are weighed and found wanting like chaff, it will be blown away.
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There is nothing that can stand up before the fury of God on Mount Pride. What will hold?
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What will hold? And the only thing that can hold is the work of Jesus Christ.
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We will talk about that a little bit later. Let's actually talk about that. What does it mean that Christ will hold you up when nothing else can?
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Everyone here who is a believer once lived that way, lived by trusting in all these things.
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I did. I trusted in my wisdom. I trusted in my foolishness, thinking that it would hold me up.
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But one day when God opens your eyes and shows the emptiness of all of these things, you recognize not just that these things, you are standing in a dangerous place because pride is not just something isolated and on your own.
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What you say when you say, I have pride, is I do not need you, God. I defy you to do anything to me.
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You may not verbalize it, but that is essentially what your heart is saying. And such a foolish boast is bound to be destroyed.
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And God sends his son in our place and he says, you are incapable of riding out the storm.
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And you are even incapable of trusting in me as you ought to. And I am here going to send my son on your behalf.
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When you don't even look for me, he is going to die on a mount, on a hill where you would have one day died.
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And he is now going to show you the one thing that truly lasts. He is going to show you that there is a
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God who is holy. There is a God who is a God of love. And this
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God, you must bow to. You stood up with your head held up high. You need to come down on your face before this
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God, before you can have the protection for your soul. And that protection comes in the person of Jesus Christ.
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Let's pick up the speed a little bit here. We've seen Edom's doom. We have seen the doom of unbelievers.
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And if there's any one of you here who does not know the Lord, I would urge you to fall on your face before the
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Lord, because only he can save you from your ultimate destruction. And talk to anyone here after the service about what it means to know the
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Lord. Let's now go to the third hill, the third mountain, which is a different kind of mountain.
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We are going to switch ranges. So far, we've been on a range of unbelievers. We're now going to cross over a certain valley, which happens when you trusted in the
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Lord as your savior, and you're now walking on a different mountain. You're on a different range altogether. This is a range for believers.
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And yet, there is a peak here that believers ought to watch out for. And that is the third peak.
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It is the believers' humiliation at Mount Pride. Is that even true of believers?
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Do believers have to deal with pride? You know that we live by faith in Jesus Christ.
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We have trusted him. In Pilgrim's Progress, Christian is said to have walked up this hill with this burden on his back.
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And when he came up to this cross, a little below, there is a sepulcher. Let me just read the rest. As Christian came up to the cross, his burden loosed from his shoulders and fell off his back and began to tumble, and so continued to do so till it came to the mouth of the sepulcher, where it fell in, and I saw it no more.
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Your sin, your guilt, and your inability to love God have all gone away the moment you trusted in Christ.
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And yet, and yet, we have to deal with the flesh.
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And your battle with this evil of pride is not done until you enter the celestial kingdom, when you have a glorified body.
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How do you deal with this pride here on earth? Let me just give you a quick illustration to just remind us how this manifests itself.
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Put yourself in Abraham's position. Abraham was called of God.
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God makes a one -sided covenant with him. Abraham did not need to do anything on his side to affirm the covenant.
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God picked him up, called him, and promised to him the promises of God that are sure and certain.
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He grows old. There is no heir. God says, I will give you a son. He's 100 years old.
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He gets Isaac. Isaac is 12 years old. God tells Abraham, you need to sacrifice him.
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Show me where your trust is. Is it in your son, or is it in me? Abraham goes up the mountain.
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He takes Isaac, puts him there. Now, let's just change the story a bit. Let's say
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Abraham comes between God and Isaac and says, no, Lord, I can't do that. Those of you who are parents can probably empathize with it, but you can see how foolish it is.
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Could Abraham tell God, no, this is mine, like my little daughter likes to say, mine, mine, mine.
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I bore him. I was 100 years old, and I bore him. This is the fruit of my loin.
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This is mine. Could he say that?
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How foolish it would be for him to say that. As a believer, to have been given everything by God, it is hard for him.
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I mean, all of us know when we see Abraham up on the mountain, you ask yourself, if the
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Lord were to ask me, I need his grace to do what Abraham did. That takes a lot of faith, and God graced
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Abraham that faith. But sadly, many of us are like that hypothetical situation coming between God and our possessions, whatever it might be.
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And there comes an element of pride where we want to hold those things that God has graciously given to us.
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And when that happens, God deals with us on this mountain. Let's look at how that happens.
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Let's take those different elements that we looked at the second mountain, whether it is money or relations or intellect or strength.
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Let's talk about money. And most of us who are saved would verbally acknowledge that we do not trust in money.
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But money is extremely deceptive. What it does is if you don't guard yourself against the love of money, this love of money will come and draw a wedge around you.
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It will cut you off from the things of the Lord. And before you know it, your love for the money has grown when the love of the
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Lord has come down. The Bible says you cannot serve two masters. You cannot serve both money and God. And when you said yes to the
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Lord, you bowed down, you worshiped, you cried your heart out. And if you don't continue to fervently look and seek to follow the
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Lord, and you just start to live your life the way the rest of the world lives, the money will come in in its insidious ways.
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And my job today through the word is to have you examined by the spirit if it has done so in your life.
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Has money come? What are some ways in which you can gut check yourself for this sin?
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When you meet somebody who's new, is the first thing you talk about your job?
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Or if you go online, the first thing you look at your stock? Or is, name it.
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I will let the spirit tell you if there is any way in which you are sinning in this way. What about relations?
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Is your trust more in the people around you rather than in the Lord who gave you those people?
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If you get on Facebook, are you constantly looking at everybody else's situation and they're doing well, they're doing well,
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I'm covered. I'm joking, I don't use Facebook that much, but it can be a different source of sin.
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But is your trust in your people, your friends, rather than in God?
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A good way to think about it is, let's say the Lord just took them away. You're walking, going back home and you are the only one who survived something.
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Is that the attitude you have day in and day out? These are good gifts from the Lord, but they are not the source of whom
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I trust in. What about intellect and wisdom? Do you have great pride in the gifts that God has given you, whether it is of knowledge or of wisdom?
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We need to seek and desire to grow in these things. But if they become the source of your strength, one way you can discern pride is the level of humility you have with those who are above you, whether it is your boss.
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I know better than my boss. I don't wanna really listen to him. I'm gonna just constantly keep chafing against him.
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Or my husband, I know more about the Bible than him and I'm gonna rely on my mind rather than on the
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Lord. Or even in the church, I think I know more doctrinally than this person or that person and I'm gonna just let it show.
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If that is where your heart is, the Lord will have some business to do with you. And then these are not just all the forms of pride that we have in Obadiah.
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I was even preparing this message. I was talking to Sunita something at night and she said, hey, that's pride.
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And I said, oh yeah, that is pride. And she went to sleep and the next hour I was just wrestling with my mind.
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And here I am preparing a message on pride. It wasn't one of the prides listed here but it was surely pride.
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It comes in always even when you're preparing a message on pride. Pride is deceitful and it will come when you least see it.
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But there is one specific form of pride that is especially dangerous for believers. And that is something that unbelievers cannot have.
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That is spiritual pride. It is horrible enough when you see an unbeliever boasting about his car or about his clothes or something that is just ostentatious and foolish but it's something totally obnoxious to see a
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Christian walking with his nose up in the air saying, I am spiritual. That is horrible and ought not to be.
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And we as believers ought to be very, very careful because when that happens, God promises one thing.
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He is not gonna deal with you the same way that he deals with the unbelievers on Mount Pride because there the destruction is complete.
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There is gonna be no hope of restoration and God does not destroy those for whom he has already paid for completely in full, but yet he will deal with you through what he says as chastisement.
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God will purge worldliness out of us until we are made more and more into the image of Christ.
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We don't have time to look into it, but you can go back and look at Hebrews 12, 1 through 13, how
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God corrects us now for the purpose of holiness and does not pass us by.
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You can expect chastisement here in the present in order that one day he will present you perfect before God.
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And as we heard, you are already perfect in Christ positionally, but in practice, you are to be made more and more like him.
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Let's look at the last peak, which we will go through quickly.
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And that is the believer's humility. I call it,
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I'm sorry, it's called the believer's glory at Mount Humility. There is something different that happens in this mountain range.
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You know, when in the world, people take glory in the things of the world, whether it is money or friends or relations, whatever it is, those are things to be boastful about.
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Here are things that I have and I say, I'm glad and I'm going to exalt myself in this.
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But when you are saved, when you realize that you've fallen down a valley, you have given up everything, your ties are now broken.
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The ring is now destroyed in the fire. You have nothing of your own, but it is only
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Christ in whom you are trusting. When you are on this mountain range, the world has become upside down.
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Those things in which you would feel ashamed of talking about, I don't have money.
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You are now boasting in because you don't trust in those things, but rather in God.
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God has a different purpose in you. It is not about getting more money or a better job or looking good in front of people, but rather to be more like Christ.
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And that involves something that is antithetical to what was happening on this mountain range.
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So giving up a worldly job is not bothersome. I know of people here who gave up jobs that were lucrative in order to do ministry, people who gave up homes in order to be here, the
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Ebenrods. There are people who have given up the things that the world considers important in order to do what they think is more valuable, what the world sees as a valley is now a mountain.
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You now have a mountain of humility rather than see that as a valley to be running away from.
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The previous mountain was a mount of humiliation where God brings chastisement, but the mount of humility is different because the first one comes as a rod of correction to the believer, whereas the second one comes because you are now walking this upward path to glory, which is truly upward.
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Although in the eyes of the world, it may seem like you are going down. Let me just finish with a story of what happened in the life of Edom and Israel.
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And that'll give you some encouragement wherever you are in your walk today, whichever of these peaks you are in.
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As I mentioned, as we started, that Edom and Israel were in war, in loggerheads.
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Right from the womb, they were struggling and all through history, they were constantly fighting.
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And there was one particular event where Moses brings his people, the
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Lord's people out of Egypt into the promised land and they have to cross Edom. They come and ask permission and Edom says, no.
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And Moses asks, why not? You hold the king's highway.
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You will pay the tolls. We are your brothers. We have easy pass, but we'll still pay the tolls.
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No, I won't. Whatever I have to, whatever we drink, we'll pay for it.
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I'm bringing my army out. And that's when God tells, turn back. You don't fight your brothers. And they walk back.
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That was the kind of enmity. And if you wanna know who Herod was, a Nidamean who tries to destroy
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Jesus Christ, the Lord of the world, he comes from the nation of Edom.
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There is a deep seated enmity. And if you wanna know what particular event caused this, it's most likely from 2
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Chronicles 21, where the nation of Israel is punished for their sin. They had sinned and God punishes them.
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But the pride of the Edomites who have been constantly looking down on them are gloating over them. And they're gonna come, if you read the rest of the book of Obadiah, they're gonna come and like scavengers take away the things that are left behind.
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And they're gonna just glory in the humiliation of their brother Israel. And what
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I wanna finish with this, put yourself in the position of the Israelites. You've been plundered maybe for some of your own sin.
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The Lord has brought chastisement. Here are the people that are just looking over you and gloating over you and saying, ha, ha, ha, the
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Lord you trusted is not able to save you. And when you are on your face in the ground, don't even wanna look up, what would you trust in?
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The answer would be just flip everything that we have that the Edomites trusted in instead.
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The pride of your heart has deceived you, the Edomites are told. The true spiritual
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Israelite or the believer in Christ today, trust in only one thing, and that is the
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Lord who is unchanging. Your circumstances may change, but the Lord changes never.
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The Edomites are soon gonna have their allies drive them out to the borders. But for you, there is but one ally who is always with you.
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He is, we read in 1 John 2, he is interceding for you before the father continually.
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And you also have the paraclete who is ever with you in your deepest moments. You are never, ever, ever alone, no matter how severe the trial might seem.
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The Edomites are gonna have their wise men destroyed, but you have the wisdom of God incarnate and the wisdom of God in the spirit as your counsel.
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The Edomites are gonna have their mighty men dismayed, but God is your strength when you have trusted in him.
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When you stand on Mount Humility, you have nothing to be afraid of. That is the place to be.
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And when you walk down from there, remember, our strength is not in the way of the world, but rather in that of the
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Lord. For you children, if you've been listening, there's a big difference between the two.
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The first kind of confidence comes like a hot air. You take a balloon, fill it up with the hot air.
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It's gonna rise for a little bit. Soon it'll cool and come down. But this kind of confidence that you have in the
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Lord is like a balloon that's filled with helium, with water, and that's never gonna come down, at least as far as we can see.
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There is a confidence that is unshakable in Christ, and that is our inheritance as believers in the
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Lord today. And let us never forget that, because as we live in the world, Mount Humility may seem more often like a valley than a mountain, but that is the only place you and I should be as believers.
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Let us pray. Dear God, our
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Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. And Lord, we thank you for this recorded history of your dealing with the nation of Edom.
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And Lord, we, every single one of us here deserve no better. And yet by your grace, you have given us everything in Jesus Christ, in saving us and enabling us to walk after him.
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I pray for these dear people as we go from here. If there's anyone who does not know you, Lord, we pray that you would open their hearts, that they will trust in you and you alone.
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And I pray for every single believer here that you would guard our hearts and minds, show us where we are sinfully proud, and give us your spirit of humility to follow you as our
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Lord and our master, and to count ourselves as nothing, and you as our everything.