A study in the Minor Prophets - Obadiah and Jonah

Thank you, Lord. I thank you, God, for this service this evening. And I ask, Lord, that you would anoint my mind and you would anoint my words, that you would help me, Lord, to communicate the topic tonight. And that the listener would be sensitive to the words, Lord, that you've given me tonight in Jesus name. Amen. You guys can be seated. Thank you. So tonight the uh the two minor prophets that we are going to be talking about are going to be the book of Jonah and the book of Oadiah.

And uh I really really really love the book of Jonah. And the reason I love the book of Jonah is to me it's one of the most real books in the entire Bible. Not that they're all not real, but I mean like I could identify with it because I've hated people before. Um I've wanted to punish people before. I have punished people before. Um but and yes, I have been punished before. Um but I feel like it's very very very real. And I think that if we're honest, we all can identify with what uh the book of Jonah is written about.

So when we hear about the book of Jonah, typically what we do is we immediately go at least I do go and the whale and it's like in my head Jonah and the whale. Um and I think that if we just concentrate just on that part of the story or that part of the scripture rather then it becomes just that just a story when there's a much deeper meaning uh behind behind Jonah. So, it is one of the most dramatic parts of all of scripture where a man uh is told by God, hey, go do this.

And he says, not going to do it. And so, uh I I think that there's not a lot of part parts in the scripture that I can identify with um as much as I can identify with that because I am at my nature um just like Chris Buoy, very rebellious. And so I totally identify um with uh the book of Jonah. Did you say amen, Tina? Okay. I thought she did. So Jonah uh the book of Jonah, if uh we we to get a background on it.

Um actually before I get in that, I'm going to say some other things first. So uh we want justice. everybody has in their in their brain when they see something bad, they want justice. And so that's what we're going to wrestle with tonight in this uh with the with this book is justice and the idea of God providing mercy to somebody who quote unquote doesn't deserve it. I think we've all wrestled with that as well. And I always think it's interesting, by the way, when God quote unquote punishes somebody, we get mad at God for doing that.

But if we were to do it, like it's okay. Um, very, very interesting. So, as humans, we do cry out for justice. We want justice when somebody hurts us. We want it when evil rises up. We want it when we want it when wickedness goes unchecked. Uh, Jonah puts all of this on full display. And the state of mankind is destruction. We left to our own devices. Usually, we don't make beautiful music. we we usually pillage. And so um again on full display, we don't move towards mercy typically um on our own.

We move towards bitterness. So we move towards revenge. We move towards let them get what they have coming. And this this book is real enough to show us that. And so the the this book is written in the 8th century BC. uh most likely during the reign of Jeroboam II who was king between 793 and 753 BC. Jonah's ministry is typically uh around 780 BC to 750. And his name that has it in this book is only four chapters, but we do first see him also in the book of 2 Kings 25:14.

And I'm going to read this for you. He was the one who restored the boundaries of Israel uh to the dead. I think I have a typo here. So to the Dead Sea in accordance with the word of the Lord, the God of Israel spoken through his servant Jonah, the son of Amiti. I remember that. By the way, Travis Miller said, "When when you don't know what the word is, if you just say it with confidence, people will think you know what you're saying." So I don't know how to pronounce that word.

So the prophet the prophet from uh Gath Heeper the Lord had seen how bitterly everyone in Israel whether slave or free was suffering there was no one to help them and since the Lord had not had said he would not blot out the name of Israel from under heaven he saved them by the hand of Jeroboam the son of Jehosha and what happens here is uh Jonah prophesies in the affirmative saying hey some good things are going to happen a few years later a prophet comes by and just basically says all those things that Jonah said, "Yeah, it's the opposite now."

And so, um, I think that what we see here is the direct result of the people that Jonah was sent to talk to, um, and I say talk loosely, uh, to prophesy, to preach to, uh, they, it looks like what happened was they were ready to change. We're going to see here. And then the man of God who was sent to help them chose not to help. And so maybe we know that they didn't change. So chapter one, I'm not going to read the entire thing even though we could in less than five minutes read the entire book.

Uh chapter one I'm going to is the word of the Lord come came to Jonah the son of Amati. Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it because its wickedness has come up before me. But Jonah ran away from the Lord to Tarsus. He went down to Japa where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fair, he went aboard and sailed to Tarsus, sailed for Tarsus to flee from the Lord. So to be clear, God had asked him to go over here and preach and he said absolutely not.

Uh I am not going to do that. And we think that he's just a stubborn man, a stubborn prophet. He says just not going to do it. Um, but he had a real problem on his hands. The Assyrian Empire, if you've ever done any research on it, these are some really, really, really bad guys. I'm going to show you something here in a moment. I'm going to give you enough time. Um, trigger warning. Everybody knows the word trigger warning. I'm going to show you some reliefs that are on some palace walls.

They're not going to be nice. Okay? So, I'm just going to tell you if you don't like violence, you might want to get up and use the bathroom just for a second and then come back in and pretend like that's what you had to do this whole time. So, um the Assyrians were brutal people. They were violent. They were cruel. Uh they were the kind of people that left a lot of trauma behind him. And Jonah knew exactly who these people were. He knew exactly what they had done.

And he knew their bloodshed. He knew the fear that they would instill in people and he said absolutely not. I'm not going to go help those people. And so when people would enter the Assyrian king's palace, people like palaces in Nineveh or in Nimrod, they would see graphic scenes of enemy torture and execution, sieges of cities. They would see captives being enslaved, captives being punished, and the king's military victories. They were not meant to be nice. They were meant to be intentionally inflict to rather inflict psychological warfare on people to display the king's dominance and his power.

And so to rein reinforce that the idea of resistance, it's futile. do not resist my power or you will end up like these people on the walls. If you go to the British Museum in in London, you will see these. And I will tell you that if you go ahead and put up the first one here, I recently so we went on our family vacation and we actually did go to the British Museum and saw these. These are not my pictures. I actually took them um off online.

But the first thing that we're seeing here is this is on the walls of the Assyrian king's palace. And this image shows a mace being slammed into a prisoner's head. So you're walking in to the to the palace. All right? And on your left and on your right are these images and you're looking at you're like, "Oh, okay. Oh, man. Look what's happening here." and you're seeing this and you're getting closer and closer to the king and it's meant to do this to you because you're like if I resist I'm going to be just like one of these people up on the walls here and um they they they perfected some of these methods here.

So the ne next one here um this image shows a person this image shows a person being outstretched by their hands. You can see at the top at the top um this is rope on somebody's hands, rope on their feet. Um and they're being filleted. Um so again, you're walking down and you're seeing this happen. The the next one, um this is somebody uh getting their hair pulled while they're losing their eyes. So again, not not exactly the place that you want to be. And you can starting to see why Jonah's like, "No, not not this guy.

I'm not going there." And the last one we'll show of the reliefs here. This is you can you see up here on the bottom left. Can anybody shout that out? What do you think those are in the bottom left? Heads. Yes. And you can see they stack them. And what they would do is they would stack them all along the roadway. So you would go and you'd be like, I'm literally going to lose my head if I don't submit to the Assyrian power structure. So you can see Jonah's not having a good day when the Lord Almighty says, "I want you to go preach to these people."

And again, this is psychological warfare. They're not like it's it's today. But what do we do? When I say we, I mean we as human beings. What do we do when we do something wrong as a society? We cover it up, right? Not then they put it on full display. I want you to see that I'm violent. I want you to see that I'm ruthless. I want you to see what I will do to you. And so, um, this is psychological warfare. So God says, "Go tell those people to repent."

And if anybody needed to repent, it's these guys. So, but Jonah, I don't think necessarily that Jonah is as scared as I just made him out that he possibly could be. Who would be scared, by the way? Are you? Yeah. Eric Tanderup said he would not be scared. He kept his hand down. Eric is tough. He's like a Viking warrior. So, I I think I would be I think I would be scared. So, um but but I think that if we're really honest, um he says, "I'm not going to do it."

And he tells us why in the fourth chapter when he gets angry at God because most of you have read this before. But he knows that God is longsuffering and he has shows mercy and he's like I I'm not going to help you help them. Not going to do it. And so how would you respond if somebody had brutalized your family? How would you respond if somebody had hurt the people that you loved? How would you respond if somebody had brought terror into your world? If if this if God says, "Hey, I want you to go to Syria and I want you to preach to the people who are in ISIS."

You're like, "Sign me up?" No. No. Are you sure you don't want me to go to Africa? I mean, I I'll go anywhere, just not there. And so, um, Jonah didn't run because he was afraid. He ran because he knew God. Um, he knew that God was gracious. He knew that God was merciful. He knew that he was slow to anger. He knew that he was abundant, abundant, and loving kindness. And Jonah did not want that mercy wasted on them. So this is the tension of this entire book.

Um, so Jonah again running because he knows God's character. So you can be the the the Bible is showing us that you can be a man of God, which Jonah was, a prophet, know the voice of God, and still have a lot of unresolved bitterness in your heart. And so if we're also truthful, remember I said I love this book. It's because I I get it. I'm not probably not the only person who has maybe ever been a little bitter. So Jonah is real. Have we ever wanted judgment more than redemption?

Have we ever wanted somebody to be exposed more than we wanted them to be saved? Have we ever wanted God to punish somebody more than to redeem them? I think the answer is yes. So you can go ahead and put the the map up there. So in the very beginning of the book he says go to Tarsus. Now to give you an idea um Nineveh is 550 milesish away from Jerusalem. To give you an idea Atlanta is 480 miles from here. Okay. So not exactly close but not not crazy.

the known world at that time. That's about the farthest you're going to sail. So he says, "You know what? Not only I'm not going, I'm going the farthest away I can possibly get because I know that you're merciful, God. So no, I'm going to get on this boat and we're out of here." And so he runs. He's in the back of the boat boat sleeping while a storm is going on. So, he gets on this boat. For those of you who have not read read the read this, it's four chapters.

Read it. He gets on the boat. While he's on this boat, a great storm happens and he's on the boat sleeping. Any other story like that in the Bible? A person on a boat during a storm and they're sleeping, that would be Jesus. and there's a there's lots of parallels between Jonah and Jesus. So, he's on the boat. They wake him up and they're like, "Hey, what's going on? Do you know what's going on?" He's like, "Uh, man." They cast some lots and it falls on Jonah.

What that basically means is they drew straws and he drew the short straw and they said, "What did you do?" And he's like, "Well, I serve the real God, and he told me to do this, and I'm running." And they said, "Uh, okay. We're going to not kill you yet. We're going to go ahead and throw all this stuff off of the boat, get it lighter, try to get to shore." And as they do that, it gets more intense and more intense, and they say, "What should we do to stop?

This is your god, obviously, doing this. What should we do?" And he says, "Well, just throw me overboard." Um, and they're like, I don't know about that because if he's like a god who can like do this storm, he's going to kill us, too. And he says, "No, you got to do it." This is the Aaron Bachman Revised Standard Version. So, um, they say, "Yeah, go. Uh, fine. We'll do it." But as they're doing it, they're saying, "Uh, living God, true God, please don't hold this against us.

We're just simply doing what he told us to do. Please don't kill us all. throws him off. The storm is gone. Boom. Just like that. Another parallel, by the way, between Jesus and Jonah. And these people, they start to worship God. So, we start to see again in Jonah, did he preach to these people? No. He just like, yeah. He's not concerned about them at all. He's not. But we see there's his first chance at revival. And as he does this, as he gets thrown off, the the Bible tells us that he is thrown into the sea and he is swallowed by the some translations say a whale, a creature, a fish.

What we know is it's a big aquatic animal. That's what we know. Okay. Now, there's been people for years who have said, "Well, this is how he could have potentially lived if he was like in the rip cavity." And he's dead and then he lives again. Why do I say that? He's either dead or God keeps him alive, but you're not going to survive without a m miracle three days inside of a fish or a whale. Is everybody with me? He either died or God kept him alive.

One of those two things. But he didn't just get lucky. Okay? He didn't just like find a pocket of oxygen. So why can we also say this in the New Testament? What does Jonah say? There's a wicked and adulterous generation. Not Jonah. What does Jesus say? He says that a wicked and adulterous generation demands a sign. I will give him the sign of Jonah. Three days I will be buried and I will rise again. This is the sign of Jonah. Does anybody know what an acawary is?

This is what's called a bone box. So what they would used to do is they would put people in caves and let the bodies disintegrate. Then they would take all their bones and they would put them into a box and cover the box. Okay. So they stack all of your bones nicely for you. Give it as a present to somebody I guess. But so on the side of those they would carve fish. Why would they carve fish? It's the sign of Jonah. So this even though it's only four chapters, this is a very very important book of the Bible.

So, and we see the the language here. When he flees, everything is down, down, down, down. He goes down to Japa, down to the ship, down into the side of the vessel, down into the sea, down into the fish. And possibly the reason why it's written this way is because that's where bitterness will take us. Bitterness takes you down. Hatred takes you down. Unforgiveness takes you down. Pride takes you down. But we see here when um we see in the chap in chapter 2 there's a prayer of Jonah and the fish goes spits him out.

We don't know exactly where he spits him out but he he spits him out onto dry land and when he does that from there on we see up language redemption. So he goes up to Nineveh. There's a few other things as well. But in chapter 2, Jonah has this beautiful prayer. Um, and again, we don't know whether or not he was dead or God kept him alive. But the but the verse in chapter 2 seems to give us language that says that he had died. It talks about she talks about the grave.

Um, and he bas he asked for forgiveness. And then we go into chapter three. Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time. Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim the message that I gave you. Second, the third verse, Jonah obeys the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh. Nineveh was a very large city and it took three days to go through it. Think about that. Three days to walk. I feel like I could walk through St. Louis in less than three days.

Does everybody agree? Like even if I'm like walking like not crazy fast, I think I could walk through St. Louis in three days. So he w So it takes three days to walk through this very very large city. Jeff, do you doubt that I could do that? Okay. Seem to doubt my powers. So, um, so Jonah goes and he preaches to the Ninevites. Now, when I say he preaches to the Ninevites, that's really generous of me to say that he preaches to the Ninevites because when he preaches, he does the absolute minimum that he can do.

Remember, he still doesn't like these people, but he ran. God brought him back and said, "Now you're going to do this." And he said, "All right, Lord. I'll do it, but I'm not going to be happy about it." So he says, "Yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown." Drop my That's it. That's the message. So he was he was in a sea creature and that's it. You see what I'm saying? He's still really really bitter. Who's he bitter at, by the way? He's bitter at two parties here.

He's bit he's bitter at the Nvites and he's bitter with God. And we'll find later here in chapter four, he's so mad at God. He says, "I just wish you would kill me because these people, they don't deserve your mercy, so just kill me." So, um, yet 40 days in Nineveh shall be overthrown. rather than ignoring the prophecy, which you would think based on the images that I had up there earlier that they would ignore. They didn't ignore. They said, "What are we going to do?"

They put on sackcloth. They put on ashes. They repent. But rather, rather than Job saying, "Wait, you're actually going to live right? You're going to give your lives to God. You're ready to change." What does he do? He just leaves. He walks out of the city. He doesn't give them any Bible studies. He doesn't disciple them. Instead of helping them grow, he says, "I'm not helping you. I want God to judge you." Still very bitter bitter. So, he leaves the city and he goes up outside of the city where he can see into the city.

Must have been a high place, right? if it's three days to walk through and he's up there and he can see everything. Must have been a pretty high place up there to where he can see the city. So the Assyrians had already destroyed lives in this world and what Jonah wanted, he wanted even more than that. He wanted them to be destroyed for eternity. And so he was that bitter with them. And so this story also shows us, this scripture shows us that God even wants the furthest off person.

The person that you despise the most, God can still reach that person. And God wants to reach that person. Um and and so again, he sends Jonah to do this. Jonah chooses to do just the absolute minimum. And so we also think if God wants that person, maybe he wants me too because I think that there's people who will listen to this, whether it's online or listening right now or people who will hear in the future or you hear now. If we're also all honest, we've at some point and said, we've some point said, "I've done so much.

There's no way that God can actually help me. Look what I have done." But we're talking about the worst of the worst here. And God was still willing to intervene on their behalf. So as people who have received great mercy, that being us, we have no right to withhold that mercy from other individuals. We should go to the farthest length to help other individuals. But Jonah did not. Jonah again goes and he sits on a hillside I assume to look into the city and as this happens God sends a the two things a plant that kind of grows over him to give him shade and he's like oh thank you God you gave me this plant so great he's waiting for the ultimate destruction and the next day God sends a little tiny tiny tiny worm it eats the plant, the plant weathers and dies.

And he gets so angry for at God for taking his shade away. And he says, "Hey, God says to him, again, Aaron Bachman, Revised Standard Version, why are you so mad about a plant? You want me to kill these people?" And Jonah goes through goes through and and says, "I knew this. I knew it. I knew you would do this. I knew that you would not kill them. You're so kind and you're so merciful and you're so long-suffering and I didn't want to go here because I knew exactly what you would do.

You would save these people and I don't like it and I want to see them all dead. And Jonah and God says, "Yeah, but like you're sad because of a plant and there's 150,000 people in there who don't know their right hand for their left." Now, could that mean that these were people who uh had some sort of mental illness or maybe they were children or somehow they uh were developmentally challenged or something along those lines? I I don't know if this is what he's talking about.

He says there's 150,000 people though that don't know their left hand from their right. So, he's ready just to go ahead and say, "Look, all those people, destroy them all even though they're kind of innocent." the way that we would define innocence today. Is this making sense? So, he gets angry uh and God says, "Is it right for you to be angry?" So, I'm going to read this. Jonah had gone and sat down in a place east of the city. There he made a cell for him a shelter and sat in the shade and waited to see what would happen to the city.

Then the Lord God provided a leafy plant and made it grow over Jonah to give him shade for his head to ease his discomfort. Very kind to ease his discomfort. And Jonah was very happy about the plant. But at dawn the next day, God provided a worm which chewed through the plant so it withered. The sun rose and God provided a scorching east wind and the sun blazed on Jonah's head so that he grew faint. Wanted to die and said, "It would be better for me to die than to live."

But God said to Jonah, "Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?" He says, "It is. I'm so angry. I wish I was dead." Two words. It is. It is right. It sounds like me when I was like 12. Really? Or yesterday. But but the Lord says, "You've been concerned about this plant, though you didn't tend to it. You didn't make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. And you should not have concern for the great city of Nineveh in which there are more than 120,000 I said 150 sorry um who cannot tell their right hand for their left and so many animals animals.

End story. That's it. End of the story. Now, do we know whether or not Jonah repented? Do we know what happened? No, we don't. But here's one thing we do know. He wrote the book. Generally speaking, you write things after they happen. So, I would assume that he may have done something right because he took the time to write the book. Now, that's just conjecture on my part. I don't know whether or not he did do what he was supposed to do. So, uh again, I'm going to give you a few different examples of types and shadows.

Jonah is a prefigure of Christ. And I'm just going to read directly from my notes. Three days and three nights and the whale or the fish sent by God to preach repentance, the storm, sacrifice to save others. Gentiles respond to fa in in faith. Uh from death to life, preaching leads to repentance, going down, being raised up. Um, and the again the thing is is remember what Jesus said, I will give them the sign of Jonah. That's why this is such an important book. We'll spend a little less time on the book of Oadiah, which is um the minorest of all the minor prophets.

And um Stephen, if somebody's a minor prophet, that doesn't mean they're underage. I know that some people think that, but just means that it's a shorter book. So there are 12 minor prophets by the way in the Old Testament and five major prophets. So the difference being the minor prophets are small books. The major prophets are big books. So the book of Oadiah happens later than Jonah. It happens around uh 586 BC. 586 BC. Um, we know that the author was Obadiah and that it is the shortest book in the Old Testament.

It's only 21 verses long and the main audience is Edom. Edom, if you remember, is are Esau's descendants, Jacob and Esau. So, Edom is related to Israel. Everybody with me? They're they're cousins. The way that we would define that. So God jud the themes of this is that God judges pride especially when it leads to the betrayal of others. And we're about ready to see some pretty nasty betrayal. So uh the lived south of Judah in a m in mountainous territory. You want to put that last one up.

This is probably the most famous landmark in the territory. We don't I don't believe that this is from that time, but this is Petra. This is in Jordan. Um, a lot of you uh will recognize that from the Indiana Jones uh part three movie. At least that's what I think of it as. So that's where the Holy Grail was still stored. Got one one thumbs up. So um but this area here was a trade route. This area here was full of rocks and protection. So if you're living amongst the rocks and you're it's very difficult here for you to be invaded and so you could have a a confidence we'll see a false confidence that you're protected because you live in in an area like this.

So they had a longstanding tension. and the with um the uh Isra Israelites. And so Babylon invades Jerusalem in 586 BC. So remember it goes Assyria falls to Babylon, Babylon falls to Persia. And so this is in that middle time. So Babylon uh invades Jerusalem 586. The city is destroyed. The temples are burned. People are taken captive. And Edom didn't just stand by. It'd be one thing if they were like, "We don't want to get involved. We're probably going to die, so we're not going to do that."

They were way worse than that. It was like if if Michael over here, let's just say that he's an Israelite and I'm an Edomite and Kenan over here. Colin, sorry, bro. So Colin says he was about, he's like, I'm not going to say it. I'm going to say it later. But anyway, so Colin, he gets to be a Babylonian here and I am the Edomite. I'm like, hey, he's hiding behind this rock. He's right here. He's right here. Come get him. That's my cousin. What a sellout I am, right?

That's what happened. So, they took advantage of the fact that the city is sacked and they're like, "Hey, they're over here. Come get them." Because they're like, "We're going to clean up, man. We're going to make so much money." So, again, Revised Standard Version. So, um, they rejoice over their cousin, if you will, calamity. They looted, they captured fleeing Israelites. Um, it's only one chapter, so when I say 10 or 11 or 12, that's the verse. So, uh, 10, because of the violence against your brother Jacob, you will be covered in shame.

You will be destroyed forever. On the day that you stood aloof while strangers carried off his wealth and foreigners entered his gates and cast lots for Jerusalem, you were like one of them. You should not gloat over your brother in the day of his misfortune, nor rejoice over the people of Judah in the day of their destruction. Oadiah was written to pronounce judgment over Edom because of their pride, because of their violence, and because of their betrayal to remind Israel that God still sees and judges.

So the same as the book of Jonah, we want justice. And we see here that justice does happen. Shortly after this, the uh Babylonians, they didn't just go thanks. They came for them, too. They came for them, too. God oppos opposes pride and he defends his own people. So, they had pride in their location. They thought the cliffs will hide us, our trade routes, our importance in the region, that will help us. Our alliances will help us. No. And we look at three. The pride of your heart has deceived you.

You who live in the cliffs of the rocks and make your home on the heights, and you say to yourself, who can bring me down? And when I hear that, I think of one of my favorite places in the entire Bible, the Nebuchadnezzar. He goes out and he's on his his terrace. Look what I have built here. Man, am I good. And instantaneously, God brings him down and says, "For the next seven years, you're going to be like a cow that feeds on grass. you're going to be crazy.

So, and then we see, by the way, that Nebuchadnezzar, one of my favorite scriptures, he says, "I write this by my own hand." You find this in the book of Daniel, I believe. Um, he says, "By my own hand, I'm writing this." And he says, "My senses returned to me and I praised the living God." That's so cool. So cool. So pride makes you feel like you're untouchable, but God says, "I'll bring you down." So the sin of Eden of Edom, violence against his brother or cousins Jacob, standing by during destruction, rejoicing over Israel's suffering and blocking their escape routes.

That's like, wow. your cousin's getting ready to leave and you're like, "No, you ain't leaving. I'm gonna let him get you." So, um, then we have verse 15. The day of the Lord is near for all nations. As you have done, it will be done to you. Your deeds will return on your own head. Just as you drank on my holy hill, so will the nations drink continually. They will drink and drink and as and be as if they had never been. But on Mount Zion, Zion will be deliverance.

It will be holy and Jacob will possess his inheritance. So there are many people who believe that this is uh foreshadowing a uh Christ himself. Is it direct? Is it is is it as direct as like for example Isaiah 9:6 here not um uh a child is born unto us, a son is given, government shall be upon his shoulders. Is it that direct? No. But it does point towards a savior. So again, we wanted divine justice. We see some divine justice uh uh in chap in 18.

Jacob will be a fire. Joseph will be a flame. Esau, Edom, will be a stubble and they will set him on fire and destroy him. There will be no survivors from Esau. The Lord has spoken. There's hope. Israel will be restored. God's kingdom will prevail. The kingdom shall be the Lord's. So outcome, what happened to Edom? Eventually, we see that Babylon does conquer them. They're absorbed into other nations. And by the time that uh the New Testament comes along, they they they don't even exist anymore.

So there's no nation of Edom. and the prophecy is fulfilled. So, three simple takeaways. Pride leads to destruction. Edom's downfall started in their heart. God sees how we treat people, especially when they're weak. God always has the final word. Obadiah reminds us that no one is above God's justice. Pride may elevate us for a moment, but only humility keeps us secure. And in the end, the kingdom belongs to God. He will have his way. Thank you, Lord, for this evening. God, I ask that your hand would be upon us, that you would help us to live lives that are pleasing to you, that are right before you.

that as you've spoken through me tonight, I hope that something that I've said will stuck stick and resonate with somebody and that your word will continue to grow in their hearts and in their minds and that we will continue to be humble in your presence.