The Minor Prophets Series / Obadiah

[Music] so we're now going to look at the last of the minor prophets for this section and that is the prophet of obadiah and obadiah in hebrew is the servant of yah of yahweh and we don't know much about this guy at all but let's pray for a second father help us as we open up this word to have our hearts and eyes open to see what you want for us to understand about the lessons of obadiah because they're very present and modern for us in yeshua's name okay so the book of obadiah this is from some graphic artist who did an incredible job of taking so many of the words from the text and putting in a kind of a poster that i'm sure you can actually get hold of on the internet if you would like babylon okay we're talking probably about 585 bc assyria is no more the 10 tribes are no more in israel there exiled to assyria to the centered north part of iraq you already have babylon coming in in 605 bc that's when we had the book of zephaniah and then finally in 587 586 bc nebuchadnezzar the second one and the second comes and destroys the temple takes the two tribes at your left which would be judah and simeon or shimon and takes them to babylon by the rivers the khabar river and by the rivers of babylon it says we sat and we wept so this is what's fresh it's so fresh that it just happened yesterday for obadiah but he's not focusing on babylon so much here other prophets do talk about that but he's focusing on edom or esau the brother of jacob but not the covenant seed sometimes people ask me and i've heard somebody say you know the main enemy in the bible of the jewish people is egypt it's actually not true the main enemy in the bible is edom against the jewish people the most discussions of any nation where there's judgment against them in the bible far and away is the issue of edom over here i could give you a list of all these different things we'll talk about that in a few minutes i want us to begin with the be the first verse of the book the prophetic vision of obadiah this is what yahweh god says concerning edom so that's the subject it's not addressed to the jewish people per se it's addressed to edom now edom is not friendly the opposite of friendly so this is a kind of like not only crossing from southern judah to northern israel this is sending a a letter a prophecy to israel's nearly its strongest enemy and we'll see why so the first thing it says is we have heard a report god says here in verse one from yahweh an envoy has been sent among the nations saying arise and let's go up against her against edom for battle so the first thing is there's a message that gets transmitted by god that some nations are about to attack edom when this is about to happen it could be maybe 150 years later nabinitis maybe of babylon it doesn't say here but it says there's going to be a conspiracy against edom now the why the when the wherefore some of it will be shown here in the book but we're going to look at that it says behold i will make you small among the nations you are greatly despised now there's an interesting book by a newspaper man who spent many years in the middle east his name was david price jones with a hawaii price jones and he wrote a book called the closed circle which was a discussion of sociology within the arab slash islamic world and he said his thesis in the book was if you don't understand these principles you're never really going to make sense of what motivates the arab-speaking countries arabic speaking countries he talked about the issue of shame and honor that was the first point that if you are shamed by another group this is like very bad and you have to pay them back so that they will experience shame that was the first point in his book and that's the same thing we have right over here basically he says i'm going to shame you among the nations you're going to be considered small and insignificant and you're going to be greatly despised so god is making a statement which in the middle east today people take shoes and they throw shoes at you if they want to say you're greatly despised so at one point i believe when president bush the american president the younger bush visited iraq somebody tried to throw shoes at him to say you know you're beneath my dignity or like beneath my feet so this dynamic still exists in that culture and it certainly exists here verse 3 it says the arrogance of your heart has deceived you you who live in the clefts of the rock in the loftiness of your dwelling place so one of the things that edom lived in and it was part of the prophecy given um by isaac he said i've given jacob all the good things there's really not too much left for you but you're going to live far away in desert places in wilderness and this is the area of adam or southern jordan and this is an area where there was a town here called selah which does not mean stop and think about it like in psalms it's spelt differently that's with a hay at the end this is with an iron at the end and sela means rock but big rock and so here is the fortress this area here of sela which was one of the edomite fortresses the were from isaac arabs are not okay arabs are people who are descended from shem some of them some of them speak arabic but they're not descended from shem there's a whole teaching on that i have a book actually which is called jews arabs in the middle east a messianic perspective you can get that at our website which is uh david's tent dot o r g and there's a whole study on that that may be helpful for some of you but when it talks about you're living in the cellar and they actually use the word here in in obadiah about the seller you're living up in the rock you're in the loftiness of these mountains looking down on the dead sea and you say in your heart who will bring me down to earth same confession like tyre in ezekiel 28 and babylon that we looked at in habakkuk so there's a pride we have we're impregnable our defenses are so good no one can ever take us down and he says here basically even if you're [Music] build high like the eagle though you set your nest among the stars from there i will bring you down says yahweh so you can see it's not easy to attack these places first of all it's desert no one wants to go there second of all it's so high up to get there was something really really hard so this is the cella fortress of the going back to right around the time even a couple hundred years before the book of obadiah this is archaeological work in that area he says even if you're an eagle flying high and you build high up i'm going to bring you down to earth this is an eagle which was carved into the wall later by non-edomites but in petra the famous rose city of petra which is not an edomite city it's a nabataean city they're a different they're an arab kind of bedouin if you like type of group but they were not so he's basically saying in verse 6 and verse 8 the people who are going to come at you they're going to ransack you how esau will be ransacked and his hidden treasures will be searched out by the way i'm not referring to chapters in this book because it's only one chapter so it's obadiah 1 that's all there is there is no two and then you've got 21 verses here that we're going to be looking at at this point how isa will be ransacked that's the same thing as edom same name esau we're not sure what the word means eden means he had reddish tinge to his complexion her hair and ear is another name scir which means he's a hairy guy so he had reddish hair that's what we know about this guy originally he will be ransacked his hidden treasures searched out and it says will not i on that day destroy the wise men from edom if you remember in job when he has these problems he's somewhere out in that desert there jordanian saudi arabian desert and he has all these wise men come and talk with him so every tribe whether it be the jewish people or the they had their wise men people who had been around had some experience and people listen to their wisdom and he said basically the wisdom the strategicians of your people i'm going to destroy i'm going to take them down and that's what i'm going to do so here are idols from the edomite times you can see these would be kind of household idols that people carried around this is probably some kind of harpy or demonic spirit one of their idols that's part of edom and so what basically is going to happen here and we're going to talk about in a few minutes is what the problem is with edom okay they're going to be pulled down they're going to be ransacked and it says actually in verse 7 and uh where does it come from it says well all the men who are allied with you they will send you forth to the border and the men at peace with you will deceive you and overpower you they who eat your bread will set an ambush for you so he's saying there's going to be war between tribes in the desert right to the right where that reddish area is in that uh map of the edomite area at this point and he says other tribes are going to basically out of jealousy hatred ambition murder they're going to come and they're going to destroy your power when we don't know but it says it was going to happen and then he says in verse 9 then your mighty men will be dismayed o teman teman means the south's related to the word for yemen which means the south also in order that everyone may be cut off from the mountain of esau by slaughter so he's basically prophesying and saying something really bad is going to happen to you you're going to be destroyed everybody who heard this book they had the context we don't necessarily have it so we need to understand why god is giving this prophetic vision to obadiah we were looking at the book habakkuk where he says why do the evil prosper this book says the evil are not going to prosper very clear answer coming out maybe 20 years after habakkuk wrote his book but to understand this book we need to understand the context of edom itself so that's what we're going to start to look at in just a few minutes here okay basically what happened is when [Music] of the babylonians came and kind of really attacked the around 500 they began and also because of what happened in this map which we'll talk about some of them began to move toward the other side of the land from the deserts of today jordan into what we would call the negev desert of israel and began to move up somewhat toward jerusalem area very important thing here and it's interesting at that time around 500 bc that's when nabatean inscriptions began to start being found in that whole area in the red in the edomite area up to that point so there's a lot going on here and we're going to have to start understanding where it comes from okay so let's go back to the very beginning and that is when god promises that isaac will have two sons and one of them will have the covenant blessing which is jacob and edom didn't two children struggling within the womb of rebecca and when they're born the first one gets the symbol on him and that's he but the promise prophetically is supposed to go to jacob jacob and isa grow up they have different tendencies they're brothers different tendencies he saw us into sports illustrated action push-ups hunting you know rifles and jacob kind of stays at home hangs around and gets kind of exposed to the prophetic calling on the family and he very much wants the promise one day isa comes back from hunting he's really hungry he says i need to eat some food and jacob is actually cooking he seemed to be a good cook and he was cooking some red lentils right here in beersheba right where we're living actually just about uh a two minute drive from our house and uh he says i want to eat some of that red stuff now there's a pun here because esau is red his name edom means red says i want some of that red stuff jacob says i'll give it to you but swear to me that i get your first born status and esau says i don't care about my firstborn status i'm dying of hunger jacob says swear to me edom swears gets his red stuff eats goes off and forgets about it what happens is now jacob has the promise not only through prophetic word but through esau relinquishing it to him through an oath so this town beersheba the well of the oath becomes not only the oath to abraham but the oath that transmits through isaac to jacob and not to esau isa wants to kill jacob isaac isn't pleased about it and then there's this promise that esau is going to head east go over from the area where it says judah and down to where the red is and and that area there so that's what happens and it says actually isa wanted to kill his brother and he says when my dad dies i'm going to kill my brother so it sounds like a pretty dysfunctional family but it's a biblical dysfunctional family and that's the part of the history over here now it talks about um what's going to happen here in terms of uh edom and i want to just look with you at a couple of passages okay if we can one is isaiah 63. and this is one of the passages which ties in edom to the actual return of messiah yeshua isaiah 63 verses 1-6 who is this is coming from edom with garments of glowing colors from botsra which was mentioned before uh in in micah i believe this one who is majestic in his apparel marching in the greatness of his strength and then the lord answers and says it is i who speaks in righteousness mighty to save and the question asks again from him why is your apparel red again red okay edom red you're coming from red territory and you're covered in red why is your government garment like the one who treads the wine press in those days you'd get into the wine press and you'd be totally covered with red from the grapes totally stained you don't want to put on your new jeans so he says i've trotten the wine trough alone from the peoples there was no man with me i trowed them in my anger and trampled them in my wrath and their lifeblood is sprinkled on my garments so now the red takes on the prophetic meaning of god comes to judge this people here for the day of vengeance was in my heart and my year of redemption has come we could take a long time on that one here i looked and there was no one to help me and i was astonished that there was no one to uphold then my own arm brought salvation to me and my wrath upheld me and i trod down the peoples in my anger and made them drunk in my wrath i poured out their lifeblood on the earth well it's not something you want to read to a kid as a bedtime story for sure before he goes to bed it's quite a heavy passage it says basically that the lord's return is connected in some sense to what goes on with edom and there are many other passages in joel 3 19 but we're going to look at two little ones here in ezekiel i just need to find ezekiel in my bible it keeps moving around sometimes and i only have one hand right now the other hand is holding something so in ezekiel 25 there's a prophecy about about edom and it's pretty strong so let's look at that together ezekiel 25 i think it's verse 12 through 14 thus says yahweh god because edom has acted against the house of judah by taking vengeance and has incurred grievous guilt and has avenged themselves upon them therefore this is what yahweh god says i will also stretch out my hand against edom and cut off man and beast from it and i will lay it waste from teman even to they don they will fall by the sword and i will lay vengeance my vengeance uneden by the hand of my people israel very heavy thing he's saying judgment on edom will come through the jewish people therefore they will act in edom according to my anger and according to my wrath thus they will know my vengeance again a pretty strong passage prophesying that edom and israel are going to have not a good relationship in history and then to finish we could do a lot more we could just do a study on edom because again some of the strongest judgment is listed there um if you have time you can look at ezekiel 35 where it's directed to edom and it says in verse 5 because you've had an everlasting enmity and have delivered the sons of israel to the power of the sword at the time of their calamity therefore as i live declares yahweh god i will give you over to bloodshed and bloodshed will pursue you and that will make mount sierra a waste and a that will make you an everlasting desolation a lot of heavy stuff there but in ezekiel 36 this is the last one here that i want to read we're going to look at five verses here and you o son of man prophesied to the mountains of israel and say o mountains of israel hear the word of yahweh this is what yahweh god says because the enemy has spoken against you aha and the everlasting heights have become our possession so we sing edom has spoken evil against israel and is considered by god to be the enemy very politically incorrect okay and they said the everlasting heights of israel have become our possession that would be the mountains of samaria the west bank the golan therefore prophesy and say this is what yahweh god says for good cause they have made you desolate and crushed you on every side that you should become a possession to the rest of the nations and you've been taken up in the talk the gossip and the whispering of the peoples therefore mountains of israel hear the word of yahweh god this is what yahweh god says to the mountains the hills the ravines the valleys the desolate wastes and the forsaken cities which have become a prey and a derision to the rest of the nations which are about you this is what yahweh god says and here's where he gets right down to it surely in the fire of my jealousy i have spoken against the rest of the nations and against all of edom who appropriated my land for themselves as a possession with wholehearted joy and with a scorn of soul to drive it the jewish people out as a prey so these are pretty strong words and again all you need to do is uh open up your concordance and find the word edom and and follow it through there's a huge amount here it's very significant at the end of days so obadiah has strong end of days significance for us as well so we're gonna uh move on a little bit and we're gonna see what happened well when the babylonians came down to attack jerusalem the sharks were circling and one of those sharks was edom and they said to the babylonians let's work together we'll come up from the south you'll come from the north we'll divide the spoil we'll take gold and silver like you will we'll enslave jewish people and sell them remember we ran into idioms selling jewish slaves from gaza and from tyre we ran into that in the book of amos so what happened is around 600 but more like 590 to 587 edom began to move from botswan petra those areas across into the negev desert and they began to move up and attack and kill and murder the jewish people and they gave their name to that area part of the promised land it was called the edomite territory but in greek you would say idumaya and so those edumeans from which herod and his family came are actually part of this ancient enemy of israel and again they came and attacked jerusalem it says in the bible you can see where edumeah ended up being beersheba right where we are now tel malchetta masada and getty hebron all the way up to nearly to jerusalem there's a place called bait sewer but a lot of what we call today the southern west bank became under the control of the adameans king herod had a connection with marissa he built his fortress at herodium he built a monument in hebron this is all where the edumeans were living in those days so it really affected jewish history when the maccabees from the hanukkah fame started throwing out the enemies of israel they had a huge amount of battles with the idomians in this area and what they basically said is you're going to stay here this is our ancestral land you stay here you have to convert to following judaism even though you're from edom which is our biblical enemy and so a lot of these people converted to following judaism it was very rare in jewish history including the herodian family so herod the original one the antipas herod antipas was a convert to judaism forced convert he was not believing in it it was you want to stick around here you got to do what we tell you to do it also happened to the turians in the golan heights so we've seen that the biblically are considered mortal enemies of israel and this area is idumiya where the idumeans or the sons of esau came up crossing just south of the dead sea and into the area of hebron and of course in hebron king herod could look back to abraham because the have common abrahamic heritage right because abraham isaac and jacob also goes abraham isaac and esau so herod felt warmly toward abraham he's not a descendant of other semitic people but he was connected through edom to abraham so he built this structure this is the machpelah or the double cave mausoleum to over the area where abraham uh was buried also the patriarchs and matriarchs uh i served there when i was in the idf as my own some of my sons served there as well and defended that area those stones go back to [Music] about 30 bc and this is kind of what the temple mount the original wall around the temple mount in jerusalem looked like and that's a fascinating story here we don't have time to go into that too much but this is part of the edomite history so when the came in to fight against judah they attacked they attacked arad they massacred the fortress you can see some of the letters that were written uh from people in iraq saying you know the are encroaching on us and we we don't see the lights of lakhish or azekah anymore it looks like we're about to get massacred um that's an edomite uh kind of like a idol that would have been carried so the came with the babylonians into jerusalem and that's where our story picks up it says here in verse 10 for because of the violence to your brother jacob you will be covered with shame once again the issue of shame you will be cut off forever on the day that you stood aloof on the day that strangers carried off his wealth that means judah's wealth in jerusalem and foreigners entered his gate and cast lots for jerusalem this would be for dividing possessions or slaves you too were as one of them so don't gloat over your brother's day the day of his misfortune do not rejoice over the sons of judah in the day of their destruction yes do not boast in the day of their distress so it's a really kind of a heavy description of the destruction that happened to jerusalem and the were working with the babylonians to destroy the jewish people here is some this is a scythian arrowhead burnt marks from that invasion of jerusalem found in jerusalem his remains that archaeologists found of actually houses burnt to the ground in what's being talked about here in obadiah very heavy things here's a little girl made of ivory like a doll perhaps for a little child that was found in that area here and so it continues on and it says don't enter in verse 13 the gate of my people in the day of their distress you do not gloat over their calamity in the day of their disaster don't loot their wealth in the day of their disaster don't stand at the fork in the road to cut down their fugitives and don't imprison their survivors in the day of their distress so he's basically saying i'm angry with you because you not only cursed your blood relatives but you murdered them you tortured them you sold them into slavery and this is a protected people genesis 12 says if you descended from abraham isaac and jacob any cursing done to the jewish people comes back on you double and so it says here for the day of yahweh is drawing near on all nations and has you have done it will be done to you your dealings will return on your own head so the message of this book is don't mess with the jewish people even if they're not totally obedient to god they're protected by the abrahamic covenant and anyone who does these things will be judged very very strongly by the uh the god of israel so this principle by the way applies today it applies to all the nations and some of the things that are hard for us to understand maybe is what happens like when the nations want to divide the land of israel and israel itself says that's all right with us too we're in a very very low period spiritually as a nation even though we may call it peace treaties and stuff god sees it very very very differently so let's see what we can find here in this book here just as you drank on my holy mountain god says so all the nations will drink continually so he's saying you went to the temple mount you murdered jews there you you took them into slavery you burnt houses you did all the things that an invading army is going to do and then basically you had a party on the temple mount you set up tables you brought out wine and you just said what a great day it is and because you did that something is going to be happening to you which is going to be really really really hard so i just want to stop for a second and consider that what it means historically to us to think of the fact that these people were involved in doing that they then settled in the west bank they took it as their own as it says in ezekiel 36 they claimed it as their own with malice of heart the rest is history the people who live in that area you can find them in the news today they're well known and this is what part of the whole discussion of land and peace deals with it's connected directly to the edomite route here so from a historical and biblical point of view it's worth thinking about this and praying about this because there's a lot of study that can be done on this issue which may be helpful to us okay so let's look now here toward verse 17 and 18 but on mount zion there will be those who escape and it will be holy and the host of jacob will possess those who are trying to possess them so here comes a reversal of destiny and this book basically is saying that there's going to be a reversal of destiny where edom will not be on the upper hand and um to understand this we really need to go back for a second to uh isaac's blessing if you'd like over edom and he says in genesis 27 isaac his father said to him in verse 39 behold away from the fertility of the earth shall be your dwelling and away from the dew of heaven from above by your sword you shall live and your brother you will serve but it shall come about when you become restless that you shall break his yoke from your neck if you look at second kings 8 20-22 you'll see when that happened and the breaking off of the power of jacob over edom however obadiah is about to tell us something that amos already told us and that is that once again god will assert his authority over edom both in the west bank and on the east bank as well and that's what the next few verses are about very not pc here but extremely prophetically correct according to the scriptures okay it says in verse 18 then the house of jacob will be a fire and the house of joseph a flame so we're going to turn into flaming warriors it says but the house of esau will become as stubble and they will set them on fire and consume them so that there will be no survivor of the house of esau for yahweh has declared this very strong words he's saying basically that there's going to be problems there's going to be military problems and there's going to be victory for the god of israel in this situation again i don't know if you believe the prophetic word about when it gets so personal but it's very important so we can talk about believers loving each other and it's important and rachel and i are involved in that among believers but at the same time there's a destiny that's written here but what's going to happen to these areas and part of the blessing for studying this is it can prepare you for what to do when these things start to happen so i really encourage you to be praying and interceding before the lord about these things verse 19 through 21 the last three verses here then those of the negev will possess the mountain of esau what does it say here the yachshu a negev those who live in the negev will claim as an inheritance the mountain of esau so this is saying two things the jewish people are going to retake not only the mountains of what we call the mountains of esa and nadumia but also on the right okay so that's going to be some kind of military situation playing itself out according to what obadiah said and it says here as well those who from the shephelah that's the humble area the area when you get out of ben gurion airport and head toward jerusalem the area near modi near la troon in all that area near the gas station where we stop at to load up on gas all that area will possess the philistine plane so that's interesting the area of the philistine plain would be gaza it would be the area around the whole gaza strip it says israel is going to retake that again contrast that with isaiah 11 11 and 12 where it talks about a specific 11 maybe 11-13 where it talks about a certain battle that's going to take place there on this issue as well and it says they will also possess the territory of ephraim we call that the west bank today the territory of samaria that's also the west bank and benjamin will possess gilead that's the golan heights is this politically incorrect or what what god is saying here is there's going to be some really big battles and changes made because of edom's cursing of israel so for god this is not just a principle that we should be nice to jews it's a principle saying if we're not there's going to be geopolitical ramifications is this not a relevant book for our day as we pray it certainly is so then it continues here and it says the exiles of this host of the sons of israel who are among the canaanites now the canaanites means up lebanon's coast okay as far as salfat now today we use the word salfat to refer to france but even though beirut has a french influence we're not referring to france over here we're referring to the lebanese coast and it says jews who are settling in salfat will return and possess the cities of the negev so jews who are exiled by babylon to lebanon will be coming back whether it's in the short term or whether it's in the long term so if you look today in israel to see are there any jews still in lebanon no they've all come back there's no more jews left in lebanon and it says they're coming back and they're going to settle in the cities of the negev that's actually where rachel and i and our family has lived for many years now here's a picture of salfat in lebanon it's a real place and it says the jews who used to live there are coming back and then it continues and it says and the exiles of jerusalem who were sent to svarad svarad today is used for spain but svarad is referring to a place called sardis you will know it from the book of revelation the church in sardis sapartu was the acadian or assyrian name for that town and there is a huge synagogue right over here this is the synagogue in sardis there are jews living there in 500 a.d you can go there of course it's it's in turkey right now but you can certainly visit there and there are pictures of this synagogue there that's looking at it from the back side toward the entrance as well and well actually not from from the back entering into the synagogue toward where the torah scrolls would be kept the jews were living here and he's saying basically here that the jews who are living in turkey and in lebanon are going to come back to the negev they're going to defeat the as well and it says and deliverers will ascend mount zion to judge the mountain of esau and the kingdom will be the lords this is amos 9 verse 11 the restoration of the government of david david's tabernacle david's tent talks about the restoration of the davidic kingdom over the entire world including the entire arab world including edom and that's really what this um book is talking about he's saying that the lion of judah gets the last laugh he gets the last roar and the roars of the lions of assyria are going to disappear the roars of the lion of babylon are going to disappear and then god will roar over the nations and he says you know if a lion roars it means something and amos says the lord has roared who can but prophesy so our encounter brief encounter with the minor prophets tells us that god has his hand on what's going on we have to walk by faith but we also have to walk with discernment wisdom and knowledge so i really encourage you to dig into these minor prophets and and make them part of your life so you fellowship with these guys and and use their wisdom as we move forward toward the coming of the lord in the establishment of his kingdom on earth amen you

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Length: 43min 56sec (2636 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 07 2021