Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / November 8, 2015 | Route 66 - Obadiah

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November 8, 2015 | Route 66 - Obadiah · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: How are you?
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: College Avenue building, Mulvaine, around the world, Mars, Jupiter, Venus, wherever you are.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's great to have you here.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: We're on a journey through the Bible called Route 66, and we have come to the smallest, by far, smallest book in the Old Testament, the book of Obadiah.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Better start now trying to find it.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: So you go to the midway point in your Bible, and you do need to find this.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to underline a few words in this today.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Go to the right.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's after the nine chapters of Amos.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Just start working on that, okay?
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: You got it.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: Free trip to Hawaii.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: First one who got it.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Good to see you this morning.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm all peppy because Melody and I started a diet, this complicated diet, 24 hours ago, and I've already lost 20 pounds and I feel a lot better.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: What?
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: You don't believe me.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: So we're in uh we're we're headed into the holiday season.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: We've got uh, you know, this little book, Obadiah.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm excited about this, about sharing this book with you.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: My title for this book is My Brother, My Enemy.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: And uh let me start with a little story.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: A Sunday school teacher, second graders, uh, as the holidays neared, she was trying to sort of communicate with her kids, trying to help them understand that some things can't be bought.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: You know, Christmas gifts are one thing, but the most important things in life you can't buy.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: She said, you know, um, can you can money buy laughter?
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: No, they said, you're right.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: She said, money can't buy, can money buy love?
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: No, they said, no, you're right.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: She said, can you imagine, you know, how you would uh uh uh laugh at me if I offered you a hundred dollars not to love your daddy or your mommy?
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: It was really quiet for a while, you know, and then the mood is broken by a little boy raised his hand and said, How much should you give me not to love my big brother?
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: Oh that's sibling rivalry.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: Sibling rivalry is something that drives mommies a little baddie, frustrating.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: When I was a high schooler, uh I had five younger brothers, or six of us boys in a row.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: The Bible verse that would apply, I suppose, in our case was wherever two or three brothers are gathered together, there I am in the midst of rivalry.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: Clambering over each other, fighting each other, wrestling with each other, competing with each other.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: But uh, if sibling rivalry between ten-year-olds is a pain in the neck, rivalry between adult siblings is wow, it's a deadly poison.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: It ruins reunions, holiday reunions.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: It uh fractures families for life.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: I mean imagine that you're told, say, imagine you're told that you were gonna have to spend this holiday season, this Thanksgiving or Christmas, with that person in your family, you know, that brother or sister.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: That can make you feel about like Jeb Bush being told he would have to spend these holidays with Donald Trump, if you know what I mean.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: Because you've been betrayed or hurt or wounded in some significant way by this person who's very close to you, this brother, this sister, this parentist child.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: And this is what makes the little book of Obadiah not just another rest stop along Route 66, but one of the most practical little books that you and I could ever imagine, especially coming up on the holidays, because it introduces us, Obadiah does, to the sordid world of adult, grown-up sibling rivalry.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: To summarize the rivalry, uh, and I've written most of this on your front of your study sheet if you want to follow along.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: Their relationship was never silky smooth.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: It began before they were born in their mother's womb.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: Twin brothers, Esau and Jacob, fought to get out first.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: Esau won.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: It turned bitter when as young men they fought over the birthright and the blessing.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: Jacob won, but had to run for his life from his enraged brother.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: Twenty years later there was a reunion and an embrace, but the animosity remained.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: The basic difference was spiritual.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: Esau, at heart, Esau was a Canaanite who rejected God's will.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Jacob, Israel, God called him, was a man of faith.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: And the feud carried over to their descendants, the Edomites and the Israelites.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: But Edom was sure to lose, for God had declared his love for Israel.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: Two nations are in your womb, God had said to their mother Rebekah.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: The older will serve the younger.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's Genesis 25.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: Basically, Jacob I've chosen, Esau I've bypassed, Malachi 1, quoted in Romans.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: But God cares about family loyalty.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: Be civil, he told the feuding brothers.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: Don't despise an Edomite, he said to Israel, for he is your brother.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, that was a hard command, I'm sure, for the Israelites to hear, because when it was given, Moses gave it, God had given it through Moses.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's about 1400 BC, and something had happened between them that had really frayed their relationship recently.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: Israel had just come out of Egypt and was traveling up toward the promised land on what's called the King's Highway, the only highway that direction, it ran right through Edom.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: So Israel's traveling, they came up to the toll booth, so to speak, and Edom, you know, we'd like to travel through.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: We'll stay on the highway.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: If the cows get off and drink your water, you know, we'll pay you for it, we'll pay your tolls, whatever.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: Can we travel through?
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: And at that point, Edom was unbelievably mean.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: Edom says, No, you won't, called their soldiers, God pulled their swords, and they shoved Israel back in the desert.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: And now God says, Don't despise an Edomite, for he's your brother.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: So you can see why this relationship was frayed, because Edom had treated his brother, Esau treated his brother as though he was a stranger.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's called disloyalty.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: When you treat a brother like a stranger, treat someone intimate, you like a stranger.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so the relationship is frayed, but they're sort of like two adult brothers who have been invited to the same Thanksgiving, you know, dinner, same Christmas, and they're together for one day, and you sort of have this, you know, uh, you know, keep quiet and we'll just, I'll be civil to you, you be civil to me.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, sort of a cold war, delicate tension.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: But what happens now, after 800 years that's existed this way, this sort of a strange relationship, this whole thing has been brutally violated in one bloody awful year, actually two years, 587 BC and 586 BC, in this catastrophe known as the fall of Jerusalem, still one of the greatest catastrophes in Israel's history.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: What had happened is that the mightiest armies in the world, that would be Babylon, Iraq today, had the walls of this great city had opened up, and the mightiest ruler in the world, Nebuchadnezzar, had marched out with his professional warriors and they had swept across the Fertile Crescent and come down like a lion upon this little helpless Judah, you know, in the town of Jerusalem.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: And they had surrounded this town, and all of the farmers and everybody else had crowded in, the Judean farmers had crowded into Jerusalem.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: So the city, this small little city behind the walls, you know, is crowded with people without any, hardly any food, so they begin to starve and they're surrounded.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: And Nebuchadnezzar builds siege engines.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: This is what they did, you know, these mighty, huge trees and so forth, and they start banging against the walls, the rock walls, and you got all these people for a year and they're beginning to starve inside, and it's absolutely horrible.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: And finally the rocks begin to give way and holes appear in the walls.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: And these professional warriors, the Babylonians, you know, who conquered the known world at that time, they rush through the holes and they start slaughtering people, and the bloodbath begins, and you find, you know, like rats trying to jump off a sinking ship.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: You've got the women and the children, you know, scuttling out, trying to hide behind bushes and get away.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: And many of them can't get away.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just horrible.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: Eventually, the Babylonians set the city on fire.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: Now listen, it was unforgettable.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: It was horrible, it was a terrible calamity.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: But listen carefully, it's understandable.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: For the Jews, that was understandable.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's what happens in war.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: Foreign oppressors who are stronger than you, they come and they take you over and they slaughter.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: That was understandable.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: But something happened that was unforgivable.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: And that is that from down the road in the next door neighbor country, you know, the they were neighbors.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: It came, came Brother Edom just up to sea, and they sat on the hills around about Jerusalem, the Edomites did.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: Esau, brother, cousins.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: And they sat on the hillsides round about and they cheered for the wrong team.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: And they sat and they stood aloof and they didn't help.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: They weren't like Cory Tinboom and other Gentiles in the Second World War who protected Jews from the Nazis.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: They let them get slaughtered and they cheered and they mocked and they laughed and they joked about it.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then it got worse when they saw that some of the Israelites were getting away.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: They actually got up and they grabbed him and they threw him back in the city and actually participated in the slaughter.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: And then when the Babylonians pulled away, we find that Esau's descendants, the brother, went in and raped and looted and pillaged the city themselves.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: Now that's unforgivable.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: Edom's blows weren't nearly as powerful as Babylon's, but they hurt a lot worse because blows from a brother hurt a lot worse than blows from a stranger.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: When I was 15 years old, I participated in sort of the early Friday fight nights in my high school, you know.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: I back in the sorry, this probably doesn't happen anymore, but in my high school, you know, sort of a rite of passage.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: If you're middle teen, you know, boy, you got in fights.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, go to the Friday night ball games and you go underneath the stands.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's just what you did, okay?
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry, I mean I know it sounds bad, but you go underneath the stands and you'd trash talk a little bit and get in a fist fight.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: Just what happened.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: And if you won, great.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: But if you lost and you could sport a black eye out of it or a split lip, I mean that was, you know, cool too.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: I know it sounds awful, but but that's just what we did.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: But the fight I I remember I've never forgotten, uh, and I'll explain why I never forgot, is is is so I'd trash talked a little bit in a fight, and then these two guys would come at me, and and I remember as I'm fighting them and losing, which I always did, but uh uh as I as I was getting pummeled, I look over and close to me, there's a there's a my best friend, or one of the guy who I thought was my best friend, one of my best friends, he's standing there.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: And to my utter shock, he not only doesn't help me out when it was clear that I was gonna lose, he joined them and he slugged me one.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: It hurt our relationship.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'll just be honest about that.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: It damaged our relationship, but our relationship never quite recovered from that.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: And and you know what?
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and and I didn't mind the black eye and the split lip and so forth because I was cool as a result, and you could go to church and the other kids admired you because you're tough.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you you're now you're a man.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: But hey, but but here's the deal you know, the uh uh the other blows, other blows were more powerful, but they didn't hurt as much as the blow from a friend, because that's just the way it is, and I think some of you know exactly what I'm talking about.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's a distinction in a way.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh disloyalty is sitting on, sitting by and treating your brother like a stranger, not getting involved.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I don't I don't know him.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then, but then there's something even worse.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's betrayal when you treat your brother like an enemy.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what Edom did.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: They were treating a brother like an enemy.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine how Israel felt seeing their cousins, seeing their brother piling on?
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: And the short message of the book of Obadiah is a message of judgment and a message of hope for the betrayed and brutalized and beaten-down people of God in those years, just after the fall of Jerusalem, just after this whole thing happens, to encourage his people, God says, This is at the end of your summary, that for such a cruel crime, the doom of Esau was sure.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: Come the day of the Lord, Esau will be destroyed forever, and Jacob will be restored.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what I want to do this morning, uh, for the only time in all of Route 66, maybe, or at least in the Old Testament, I get to read the whole book.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, we're gonna go through the whole book.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: I put it on the screen.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you found it in your Bible, but I confess to you, the translation you're gonna see is sort of my amalgam of uh uh of the Holman and my own translation and so forth.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: Just, but, but here, this is close to what you have in your Bible.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: So follow along as I go through these 21 verses, and I want you to look for brother betrayal.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: Will you look for that and will you sort of feel how heaven feels about this?
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: The vision of Obadiah, that's verse one.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: We're in the introduction.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: This is what the Lord Yahweh has said about Edom.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: We've heard a message from the Lord.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: Messengers been sent among the nations.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: Rise up and let us go to war against her.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: God is uh hinting he's gonna call the nations to come and get vengeance on Edom to come against Edom.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: And now we have the judgment.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: Normally in a court case, you first have the accusations, what you did wrong, and then you have the judgment.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's flipped around in this book.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: You have the judgment first, what God's gonna do to them, and then the explanation of why.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: The judgment is in verses 2 through 9.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: God says, see to Edom, I'm gonna make you small among the nations, I'm gonna make you insignificant.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna be deeply despised.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: The smugness of your heart, love that word, the smugness of your heart has deceived you, you who live in the clefts of the rock, in your home on the heights, who say to yourself, Who can bring me down to the ground?
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you've been with me over to Israel or to Petra, to the Edom area at the southern end of the Dead Sea, you know that down there you have the biggest, most, you know, so it's sort of like Arizona mountains and so forth.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's the Purple Mountain Majesties, and this is where Edom lived in the clefts and in the heights and felt very proud to live up there and impregnable, okay?
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, just a couple hundred years later, the Nabataeans took over the same area and carved uh the rose red city of Petra out of solid rock.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: But you can see in these pictures, you know, the amazing power of this city that they felt was impregnable.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: No one can take us down, Edom said.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: An amazing, amazing city.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so God says, listen, the smugness of your heart has deceived you, you who live in the clefts of the rock in your home in the heights, you say, Who can bring me down?
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: God says, I can bring you down, verse 4, though you may soar like an eagle.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: And even if you can make your nest among the stars, even from there I will bring you down.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: This is the Lord's declaration.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not gonna leave anything, he says.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, if thieves came to you, burglars at night, ah, how you are gonna be ravaged.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: Wouldn't they steal only what they wanted?
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: If grape pickers came to you, wouldn't they leave some grapes?
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: I ain't leaving nothing, God says.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, how Esau will be hunted down, his hidden treasures searched out.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: You can hear God's heart here.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: Verse 7, and everyone, you know, you betrayed your brother, same thing's gonna happen to you.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone who has a treaty with you is gonna send you to the border.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone at peace with you will deceive and conquer you.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: Those who eat your bread will set a trap for you.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then God says under his breath again, he has no clue.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: On that day, eight and nine, this is the Lord's declaration.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: Will I not destroy the wise from Edom and the understanding from Mount Esau?
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: They were known for their Socrates' their wise people.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: Then your heroes, your warriors, are gonna panic, O Temon.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: So every man will be cut off from Mount Esau.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the judgment.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: And now he lists the crimes in the next five verses.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because of murder, violence against your brother Jacob, shame shall cover you, and you shall be cut off forever.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: On the day you stood aloof, on the day strangers carried off his nobility, and foreigners entered his gates, and for Jerusalem they cast lots, you were just like one of them.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: You shouldn't gloat over the day of your brother on the day of his calamity.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: You shouldn't rejoice over the people of Judah on the day of their destruction.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: You shouldn't boastfully mock on the day of distress.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: K Staters, you shouldn't be happy that Kehu hasn't won a football game since 1912.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: No, so sorry, sorry, that just came to mind.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: So verse 13.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: You shouldn't enter the gate of my people on the day of his doom.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: You shouldn't gloat, yes, you, over his misery on the day of his doom, and you shouldn't stand at the crossroads to cut off his fugitives, and you shouldn't hand over his survivors on the day of distress.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: So then God moves to give good news.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now first comes the bad good news, and then the good good news.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: The bad good news is I am going to get them.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna take care of Esau for you.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: Surely the day of the Lord against all the nations is near.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: As you've done, so it'll be done to you.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: Your actions shall return on your own head.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: And as you, Judah, have drunk the cup of judgment on my holy mountain, because remember, he brought, he brought the Babylonians on them for their sins.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: God just lost it when the brother came and piled on.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: And as you, Israel, have drunk the cup of judgment on Mount Zion, so all the nations will drink to the full.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: They'll drink and they will puke.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's the actual Hebrew word, P-U-K-E.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: Not really, but I mean it's I mean that's the best translation.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: They will drink and they will puke, and they will be as if they had never existed.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: But on Mount Zion there will be an escape, and there shall be holiness, and the house of Jacob shall possess their own possessions.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: Then the house of Jacob is going to be fire, and the house of Joseph a flame, the house of Esau will be straw.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then they, Jacob, Israel, will burn and consume Edom, and no survivor will remain of the house of Esau, for the Lord has spoken.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: No survivor.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry, I just at this point the princess bride came to mind.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: There will be no survivors.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: Andre the giant, one of the great lines in all movie them.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: So but anyway, sorry, every time you think we're going deep, we move back into the shallow water.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: But now he moves from the message of judgment to the message of hope.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: Last three verses of the book, the good, good news, Jacob's restoration.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: And the Negev will possess Mount Esau, and the Shephalah will possess the land of the Philistines, and they will possess the territory of Ephraim and Samaria and Benjamin.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to know where these places are, next May 24th through June 5th, I'm going over to Israel.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: Feel free to join me.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: So uh uh, but his point here is that one day you will possess all of that land that I promised to your forefathers.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: One day, you know those promises, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob?
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: You're wondering how in the world these can ever be fulfilled.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: You're lying there in ruins, you're bleeding into the ground.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna happen.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: I will restore you.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: And his final verse, deliverers will ascend Mount Zion to rule over Mount Esau, but the kingdom will be the Lord.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: He pictures here two mountains representing the mountains of the world, Mount Zion and Mount Esau, which represents the whole rest of the nations of the world, and he says, uh, one final day the deliverers, the saviors will ascend Mount Zion, they'll judge the mountains of Esau, but the overall ruler, the kingdom, will be the Lord.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: So what a book.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: 21 verses, we're done.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna keep you here for another 15.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: So listen, I have a friend who, when he gets done explaining books, uh the you know, and so forth, explaining passages, a pastor, he always goes, so what?
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, say that with me.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: So what?
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so so what?
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so this is gonna happen, eat them, all this other stuff.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: So wonder what difference does this make to me?
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, flip over your sheet.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: I've got three takeaways.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, do you know, first one is do you know the days of our lives?
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: You need to know the days of our lives.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not talking about the 50-plus year old TV show, of course, but I'm talking about the fact that in this book the word day is the single most common word.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: A dozen times in 21 verses, God letting you know something, and that is that God cares about history.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: He cares about time, he cares about days, and he wants you to know that history falls really into two days, and you presently are living in what we would call the day of Esau.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Ten times in this book, you have sort of, it's the day of Esau, it's the day of Jacob's calamity.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: Listen, this explains why you're not everything is not hunky-dory right now.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: This explains why you're getting betrayed, why you feel disloyalty, why your best friend at work, you know, went and told the boss that secret you told him, and as a result, you didn't get the job.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: This explains why a husband leaves his wife, why you feel the pain, you know, when your wife left you, or when your children left home and haven't written to you or even contacted you since and say they don't want to come home for Christmas.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: It explains why you have such pain in the world, why Christian churches are getting burned down and innocent people are suffering around the world.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's because we live, friends, in the day of Esau.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: And you find this day thing repeated ten times on the day you stood, look, the day strangers carried off his nobility.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: Verse 12.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: You shouldn't gloat over the day of your brother.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's the day of Jacob's calamity, the day of their destruction, the day of distress, the day of doom, day of doom, day of doom, day of distress.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: So you have all of these statements that we live in a day today.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: God wants us to know that if you're unhappy because this day is not what you expected, you've got to understand something that we're in the day of Esau today.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: We're in the day of Jacob's calamity.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: But there's another day coming, and that's the day of Yahweh.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: The day of the Lord.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: Surely, he says, in a contrast, the day of the Lord against all the nations is near, and it is near.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how near it is, but it's coming.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: And it's going to turn everything around, and the day of Esau will be done forever.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: And it will be replaced by the day of the Lord.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: And do you know who's going to be brought down on that day?
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: Who's going to be brought down that one day?
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the answer is first of all, the smug.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: I love that word smug.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we've heard the word pride a million times.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: I like the word smug.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: Trying to keep the picture of Donald Trump out of my head.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: Or who's that British guy on American Idol or whatever?
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm trying to keep certain pictures out of my head, so I just put the frog up there.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: So, and you know, these are people, you know, like us sometimes who feel like nobody can bring us down, that we control all of, you know, we everything else.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so you tend to be tend to be high and mighty and smug, and God's gonna bring down the smug one day.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: He says, even if you soar like the eagle, I can bring you down.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: And the other, there's a there's another group he's gonna bring down one day, and those are the brother betrayers.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: God absolutely hates it.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's bad enough when the Babylonians come and wipe out his heel, but but when a brother comes and betrays a brother, or a sister, a brother, or a brother, a sister, parents betray a child.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: There's every 10 years or so, by the way, this represents the last 30 years.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: The one on the far right was 30 years ago.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: Forgiving the unforgivable, or 20 years ago, Beverly Flanagan, wonderful book.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: These are all great books, and they all say pretty much the same thing.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: One of the far left just put out last year.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: Forgiving the unforgivable.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: Basically, what they say, listen to me carefully, is that there are really two kinds of sins against each of us, or crimes.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: The one we could call forgivable sins, and they're painful and they really hurt, like when people tell a white lie.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: Or when they cheat you out of something, or when they break a promise to you.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: Or even there could be some physical, or in an argument, there's a slap on the face.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: They're bad, but but you get over them.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: You better get over them, because I mean, life's so full of these things that if you don't get over them and you become a scorekeeper, it'll it'll warp you, become neurotic.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: So there are for sort of forgivable sins.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: They're painful, but you get over them.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: But then there's this other category of crimes, and these are the, shall we say, unforgivable sins.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: Sins of disloyalty.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: When when an intimate friend or sibling, whatever, treated you like a stranger.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: A wife walked out on you, preferring someone else, treated you as though you're an absolute stranger.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: Your son lied right to your face, treating you like a like a stranger.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: Children refused to return your phone calls.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: Those are those are deeper hurts.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: Or then even the worst ones.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: Betrayals.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: When you get treated like an actual enemy.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: When Peter denied Jesus, that was disloyalty.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: He treated Jesus like a stranger.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know the man, he said.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: That was serious.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: What Judas did was worse.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: He treated Jesus like an enemy.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: He betrayed him for 30 pieces of silver.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: When Brutus, the best friend of Julius Caesar, a few years before that, was the one who took the dagger and actually stabbed his best friend to death.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: That was an act of betrayal.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: And those are, in a sense, unforgivable sins.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: And unforgivable sins, though of course the titles are forgiving the unforgivable because God calls on his people to do that.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: Unforgivable sins maybe have three elements.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, they're acts of betrayal committed by people that we are in an intimate relationship with, that shatter our most cherished beliefs.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: They shatter our trust.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: Shatter our trust in the other person.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: I thought I could predict her behavior, but obviously I can't.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: They shatter our trust in ourselves.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: I thought I was smart, intelligent, lovable, but obviously I must be none of those things.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: And worst of all, they shatter our belief in God.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: Because if the Lord is my shepherd and I shall not want, how can he treat me this way?
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: If he's in control, if he's if he's a just God, how could this completely unjust?
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: Those people, by the way, who've written books about atheism, who've thrown off God, some of them were fervent Christians.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: One of them went to Wheaton College, the Moody Bible Institute, but when his little sister died after he had prayed, shattered his faith in God.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: Can't be a God.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: Because he said he'd be our shepherd.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: We shouldn't lack for anything, and he's just.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what happened to Judah.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's what happened to Israel when her brother Esau betrayed her, close relative.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: It shattered her trust in her brother and in herself, but worst of all, as heaven's looking down, worst of all, in 586 and 585, and 584 BC, God is looking at his own dearly beloved people lying in the dust, and as they bleed out into the dust, their trust in him bleeds out into the dust.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: And going, we don't, I thought, I thought God existed.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: I thought God was our God.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: I thought he loved us with an everlasting love.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: I thought there was justice in the world, but there is no justice in the world.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: And we've been fooling ourselves all of these years, and their faith is ebbing away.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: And God says, I've got to do something about that.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't need to be a long message, just 291 words long, but I've got to get a guy named Obadiah Prophet, and I've got to have him share a message, a message of justice and a message of hope to let them know.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'll set this thing straight.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I will restore you, I will perform all of those promises.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: People from the outside, look at this book.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: People who just who study the Bible but don't have faith in their heart, look at the book of Obadiah.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know what they say about this book?
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: They say, this is proof that the Bible is some pre-modern book of revenge.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's all about squashing Edom because they're so mad that they hurt them.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's not about that at all.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's about the fact that God cares so deeply when you've been betrayed and when you've been hurt, and it starts to threaten your trust in him, that God will do nearly everything and nearly anything to bring you back to himself and to let you know that he, yes, he is in control, that he is the just God, that one day, when the day of Esau is over, there will be a day of the Lord, and he will bring justice on the earth, and he will restore you and fulfill all his promises to you.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's what God cares about.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's why the book of Obadiah is written.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: Disloyalty, dear friends, is when you treat your brother like a stranger.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: Betrayal is when you treat him like an enemy.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: And God says, Do you know who I'm gonna bring down on that day?
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna bring down the brother betrayers.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: And at the same time, I'm gonna bring down all of the haters of God's people.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: Babylonians as well.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: Doesn't your heart break when you turn on the news and you see Syrian Christians in front of the United Nations building in New York City pleading, save Christians in the Middle East?
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: Because they're being targeted in Syria?
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: Targeted simply because they're God's people, simply because they're Christians, God says, I'm gonna bring those people down.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: And do you know who I'm gonna raise up one day?
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna raise up my people.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: And they'll be at the top of Mount Zion to rule over the nations.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: But listen, they won't have to do the job really because I'm gonna raise up the Lord Yahweh to rule over all.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the last line in the book.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: And his kingship will be over the whole earth.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that what Jesus told us to pray about?
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: Don't you ever pray, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven?
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: And when you pray that, do you realize that you're praying that the high will be brought low and the small and insignificant will be brought up, that God's people will be rescued, that justice will come, there will be no more betrayals, no more disloyalties, no more Edom coming up the road and piling on.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: And God assures us in the final words of this prayer that we pray that it's going to happen.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_00: Say this with me, for the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours now and forever.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: Friends, I'm almost done, but I want to give you three quick takeaways from the book of Obadiah.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_00: Three takeaways, very short, very easy.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: Don't be smug, don't be smug this Christmas.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: Be small.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus said, don't go to the head of the table, or else you'll be embarrassed when they say, I've had you down at the children's table.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: Now, start out small, start out low.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, don't be cruel, be a heart that's true.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: I got this out of Elvis Presley, two, three.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: Don't be cruel, be a heart that's true.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: Be a brother this Christmas.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: God would be so happy in heaven if you somehow were able to forgive the unforgivable, if you were stuck in a house with someone who betrayed you or was evil to you, and somehow you were able to bring the grace of God into that situation.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: And number three, don't be scared.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: Don't be scared.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: If you look at ISIS, if you look at the world, as you look at the election that's coming up, you know, we have a way of going.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, I wish it was the day of the Lord.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: I wish it wasn't the day of Esau.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: I wish I had more control.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: I wish my candidate was going to get elected.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: I wish ISIS wasn't sweeping through the Mideast.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: I wish these things weren't happening.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: Listen, don't be scared, God says, the kingship is the Lord's.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to know I really am in control.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: Lord Yahweh is over all, and the kingdom will be the Lord's.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now you bring that over into the New Testament.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: Here's what's interesting in the Bible: the Lord turns out in the New Testament to be the Lord Jesus Christ.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: Lord Yahweh is Jesus Christ, and as he had the thorny crown on his head and the nails through his palm, in the Gospel of John, we're told that he is being raised up and lifted over all the earth to show that he's the King of kings and he is the Lord of Lords.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: And at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, Lord Yahweh, to the glory of God the Father.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: Thank God it'll all be set straight one day.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: We live in the day of Esau, and God begs you, begs you in the midst of your pain and your hurt to come to Him and hang on to His justice and hang on to His hope.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, thank you for this little book and the reminder that you understand where we're at when we feel betrayed and hurt by the people who are closest to us.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_00: I pray for those so many people in this room, so many people within the sound of my voice who've been betrayed or hurt, treated in a mean way just this past week.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: I pray that you'll share your comfort with them and remind them that vengeance is yours and all things will be set right one day.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: And your love for them hasn't changed at all.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: Give them great comfort and strength, Heavenly Father, as they look up to you and as they pray, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: You're dismissed.