The story is told of the pro athlete who boarded a plane to his next competition. When the flight attendant walked the aisle for the last check before take off she asked that he put on his seatbelt. The athlete said in a slow, gravelly voice, "Superman don't need no seatbelt!" Without missing a beat, the flight attendant packed a punch with this quick reply: "Superman don't need no airplane, so how about fastening up!"

Sometimes we think we’re good. Really good. We can do more, go further, and live without the safeguards that other mere mortals need. Maybe it’ll happen to others, but not to me. Which, perhaps, explains why so many pro hockey players still don’t wear eye protection; and why some people still drink and drive.

Not me.

Which often is no sooner out of one’s mouth than trouble begins to brew.
What’s the old saying?
        Pride cometh before the fall.

Join me this evening as we consider the next in our series of messages from the 12 Old Testament Minor Prophets. This week - Obadiah.

As we did last time, let’s recite the list of these prophets together. Perhaps by the end, we’ll know them all:
 

Obadiah - His name means "the servant of Jahweh." We don’t know anything about the man. He simply steps up to do his task as God’s prophet, and then fades into the background again. Let us hear God speak through him.

The basic message of the prophet is very straight forward. The nation of Edom is condemned for their pride-driven attitude towards Israel. God will destroy them, and rescue His chosen people.

The historical setting for this prophecy finds Israel under attack and eventually captured by the Babylonians. Those left are a mere handful of peasants. Edom is the country next door. They stood by and watched. They gloated. And they rubbed salt in Israel’s wounds.

It’s all part of endless animosity between these two nations. Their forefathers are Jacob and Esau. Genesis 25 tells us that they struggled in their mother’s womb. Jacob gets the better of Esau and cheats the birthright out of him (Genesis 27). While they eventually are reconciled (Gen 32-33) their descendants remain at permanent odds. In the Exodus from Egypt, Edom refuses to allow Israel to pass through her territory (Numbers 20). They are conquered by King David (2 Sam 8), but revolt during the reign of Jehoram (12 Kings 8).

The Edomites had set up their nation south of the Dead Sea, building their cities in the cliffs. They were all but impregnable. In that impregnable smugness they watched Babylon destroy their long time enemies. And they dashed across the border to pick at the remnants.

Obadiah speaks the word of God that this smug pride of Edom has not gone unnoticed. The Lord has seen, and He will act. Edom will be destroyed.
        Which they were.
        In the generations after Obadiah they were conquered – first by the Babylonians, who turned south after they conquered Judea. Then by Arab tribes known as the Nabateans. In the 2^nd century BC Judas Macabeus slew 20,000 of them. John Hyrcanus of the Maccabees, around 100BC forced the remainder to be circumcised. They became nominal Jewish proselytes and were known as Idumeans. By 100AD there is no further record of Edom as a race or a nation. They were lost to history.

When God speaks, His Word comes true.

Why, though, beyond being a historical example of the truth of God’s judgement, would such a message find its way into the Bible? What purpose would the Holy Spirit have for placing it there?

There are a couple of levels of truth to be discovered.

The first arising out of verse 3:
        "The pride of your heart has deceived you......"

Proverbs 6:16 says "There are six things which the Lord hates, seven which are an abomination to him."
        Know what tops the list?
                Pride......
                        All the other items on the list are children of pride.

Ancient Christian tradition labels the root sin in the garden of Eden as..... Pride.
Seeing the world revolve around yourself. Evaluating everything in terms of its importance of unimportance to self. That is pride.
        That is what drew Adam and Eve away from total, unquestioning obedience to the Lord and into a sinful quest to become little gods themselves.
        It is the total opposite of the life of Jesus Christ, who lived every step and every moment in total, conscious dependence on and service to His Father.

Pride - it can show itself in a thousand different ways in our lives.
Obadiah reveals a few of the common varieties as they mutate in the people of Edom.

The first variety of Pride that the prophet exposes is found in v.3-4.
It is self-sufficiency. Here is the man who says, "Nobody can touch me. Who is going to upset me? My plans are all laid out. I am able to carry through what I set out to do."

It is the one who plans schooling and work and retirement without ever saying Deo Volente..... If the Lord wills.
        It is the one of whom James speaks, "Now listen you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.’ Why you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. Wghatis your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, ‘If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that." (Jas 4:13-15)

The homes we own, the cars we drive, the jobs we have, the vacations we take, the stocks & bonds we buy, the families we raise, the sports abilities we exercise.......
        Look what I did...........

Pride.

Making a nation of cities carved from the walls of cliffs is an awesome thing.
Let the silence of the desert that is there now speak to you.
Sending people to the Moon, connecting the world through fibre optics and binary coding, conquering disease.......
        Amazing stuff.
                But..........

Can we hear Obadiah?

Pride -

Self-sufficiency is present. So is violence (v.10). When a spouse dominates the marriage with threats, bruises or blood they do it to keep control; to keep all revolving around themselves, pride is at work.
When someone stands up in a community and makes loud, intimidating – verbally violent – statements so that they will get their way, pride is at work. When someone in the classroom manipulates the group, pride is at work.
        And God is angered.

As He is by the mutation of pride known as Indifference. See verse 11.
"But that’s not my problem. Why should I get involved? They made their bed. Let them sleep in it."
        Be that the horrors in Mozambique and calls to donate.
        Or the tears of a classmate.
        Or the hospitalization of a neighbour.
        Or the quiet sufferings of the poor, of child poor, at the expense of the powerful and wealthy.
        Or the twighlight years of those confined to nursing homes.

Sometimes pride goes even further, slipping into an ugly form that relishes the downfall of another. Obadiah 12. It slips out when we hear that the boss is sick and remark, "Hope it’s serious." Or we hear about something going wrong in a person’s life, and we nudge the person next to us, "Told you so. I knew it would happen." Or when we see someone of prominence in Canadian society get knocked down a peg or two.

Once there it’s not a long leap to where we take advange of another’s problem. Check out verses 13 & 14. Oh, maybe we in Canada don’t loot and invade (though when I watched riot scenes in Montreal this week, I began to wonder).
        But what about lotteries – propping up our social, cultural and health care systems by preying on the gambling instincts of particularly the poor? And allowing slot machines, as addictive as crack, to prop up the so-called entertainment industry?
        And what about when someone bids on doing a job for us and makes a mistake. They’ll lose big and we know it. But we hold them to it – "Their problem" we say. Or the cashier at Loblaws gives you $20 back instead of $10.
        What a bargain!
                Oh?

Someone has pointed out v.7: "All your allies will force you to the border; your friends will deceive and overpower you; those who eat your bread will set a trap for you, but you will not detect it."
        Pride is deceptive. We get slowly sucked in, and don’t realize it until it has taken us down for the count. Let us hear the prophet and be alert.

Be alert even as we head the New Testament’s warning from the life of Esau.
Hebrews 12:16 says "See that no one is immoral, or is godless like Esau, who for a single meal sold his inheritance rights as the oldest son."
        Esau becomes a Bible picture for the cravings and desires we have inside each of us ---- cravings and desires that satisfy us for the moment but run clearly counter to the Word and Will of God.

Esau – the cravings of our flesh, our sin-tainted side
Jacob – the side called and chosen by God
                These two figures were at constant historical odds.
                They represent the two forces constantly at odds within us.

As Romans 7 says, "I find this law at work: when I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?"

Esau – building up pride, and dashing us to moral bits on the ground
        at war with.
Jacob – the inner call of God that desires purity within us, calls us to live as His Holy and chose children.

Which brings me to the deepest level – that which Obadiah could not have forseen. I’m drawn to another confrontation between Israel and Edom; personified in two persons.
        The Edomite was a king.
        The Israelite was a prisoner.

The king’s name was Herod, the Idumean.
The prisoner was Jesus.
        Esau and Jacob face to face.

Herod the Edomite, proud, arrogant and rebellious, watches the cruel mockery of the soldiers as they strip the Lord down and dress him in his royal robes. The Gospel writer says that Herod plied him with many questions, but for the son of Esau there is no answer from the son of Jacob. He has nothing to discuss with him.

And what is the final outcome of that account? The prisoner went out to a cross and a grave, and from it he emerged a king; but King Herod went on to disgrace, exile, and, finally, to a grave in a foreign country.
        Beyond that he is a prisoner, bound by chains of his own making, eternally.

Jesus wrestled pride and Edom to the ground.
He remained steadfast and pure.
And He won for us eternal freedom so that we need not be subject to the curse of Obadiah.

Which is why Paul could finish Romans 7 and begin Romans 8 with these words:

"Thanks be to God - through Jesus Christ our Lord!..... Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ     Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the Law of the Spirit of Life set me free from the law of sin and death."

In the end, all the nations who look so strong, all the voices that pour scorn on Israel, every kingdom, will be gone.
        Except for one kingdom; one kingdom that's centred on Mount Zion.
        That’s God’s promised word through Obadiah.

It’s the promise that, through Jesus, now applies to all who believe. As Galatians 3 says, "If you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise." (Gal 3:28-9)

Through Jesus we can see Obadiah fulfilled in Revelation, the last book of the Bible with prophet John’s vision of the end of time. He writes:
"The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and He will reign for ever and ever...... and his servants with Him." (11:15; 22:5)