Purification or Punishment

Listen Online:

Transcript:

Well, if you’ll turn with me tonight to the book of Obadiah, we’re going to continue our study of God’s message to the people of Edom that we started last week. There’s only one chapter in the book of Obadiah, and tonight we’re going to take a look at verses 10 through 16 of that chapter. So Obadiah, verses 10 through 16.

Now, last week, we spent some time digging into the first nine verses of the chapter as God warned the Edomites about his upcoming judgment. And God used the prophet Obadiah to explain some of the ways that they were going to pay for their years of sin against him and their years of violence against his people. And in this second section of the text, God explained the reasons for his judgment against the Edomites.

He laid out the consequences first before going back and explaining the reasons for them. It’s sort of like when a child’s behavior is out of control at the dinner table. You might first make them leave the table and go to their room.

a consequence. And then eventually you’ll go back and talk with them about why their behavior was so problematic. But in some cases, the consequences have to be outlined first, and then we’ll have a discussion about the reasons.

And that’s what God did here. In his patience, God had given the Edomites opportunities to repent over the course of over a thousand years. But when that patience ran out, he was going to bring things to a quick conclusion with the Edomites.

The consequence was announced first, but then he gave the reasons. That’s what we’re going to study tonight. So what had the Edomites done to deserve the judgment of God on their nation?

What had they done to earn the destruction of their nation? Now, God began to reveal this in verse 10, and we’ll see that the destruction suffered by Edom was a direct consequence of the role that the Edomites played in the suffering of Israel. The things that they had done to Israel were the things that now were going to happen to them.

Anything that the Edomites had done to Israel, either through their direct actions or through their indirect influence, anything that they had done to Israel or encouraged others to do to Israel, they were now going to suffer the same things only to a greater degree, because God is bigger and tougher than the Edomites and their allies. So where the first section of the text in verses 1 through 9 has been called God’s declaration of war against Edom, I talked about that last week, where that’s been called God’s declaration of war, verses 10 through 16 read like God’s indictment against Edom, like an indictment in a criminal case. But as we read through it, it’s not an exhaustive list of every sin the Edomites had ever committed.

If we let ourselves think that the things we’re going to read in verses 10 through 16 are the only things that Edom ever did wrong, then we sort of lose sight of how incredibly patient God is and had been through that whole thing. Though God will judge every sin, and he’ll judge every sin of ours, he’ll judge every sin of the Edomites, even though God will judge every sin, he didn’t swoop in to destroy Edom the first time they messed up. And this was hardly the first time they’d ever messed up.

Their wickedness, as I said, had gone on for a thousand years or more. And the actions that he outlined here in verses 10 through 16 were sort of the final straw. They were the worst of the worst. Now, to try to understand that, to try to understand how that works, Think about how the prosecutors handled the case against Timothy McVeigh for the Oklahoma City bombing.

In that act of terrorism, he murdered 168 innocent people. But on top of murder, he committed a host of other crimes all the way down to driving a vehicle without a tag on it, which is how they eventually caught him. But he was guilty of all these crimes.

Or at least, well, I say he was guilty. He was charged with all these crimes, but he wasn’t tried for every crime that he committed. He wasn’t necessarily even charged with every crime that he committed.

In fact, when it got to the murders, even in terms of the murders, he was only charged with the murders. The indictment was only for the eight murders of the eight federal agents inside the Murrah building. But once he was found guilty of those eight murders, and once he was given the death penalty, In federal court, the state of Oklahoma declined to charge him with the other 160 murders or even a host of lesser crimes.

And it’s certainly not that those 160 murders, that those 160 lives were any less important. It’s because those eight murders had already earned him the maximum penalty. And so there was no need to go back and rehash all the things that he had done.

And in the same way, God didn’t list every sin the Edomites had ever committed when he revealed verses 10 through 16 to Obadiah. He didn’t list every sin they’d ever committed because the few sins he did list were already egregious enough to earn them the maximum penalty. So that’s why God’s judgment was so vehement against this nation, and yet we have a short list of things.

Understand, there was way more that the Edomites were guilty of. So the sins that God pointed out were sort of the culmination of a thousand years of Edom’s wickedness and their violence, and God had had enough. So let’s look at what Edom had done to earn such a spectacular outpouring of God’s wrath.

Now in verse 10, God said, You will be covered with shame and destroyed forever because of violence done to your brother Jacob. God’s anger with Edom centered around their mistreatment of Israel. That’s what upset God the most was their mistreatment of Israel.

These two countries should have been friends, or at least they should have found a way to work together and coexist. I don’t like that word coexist because it’s too bumper stickery. People usually mean something different by coexist, but they should have been able to get along and not kill each other, is what God expected from them. The Israelites and the Edomites, as I told you last week, they were related countries.

Last week I referred to them as cousins. And speaking to the Edomites here in verse 10, God mentioned their brother Jacob. He says that in verse 10.

He was reminding them that these two countries were the offspring of two brothers, Jacob and Esau. The Edomites were descended from Esau. The Israelites were descended from Jacob.

They were cousins. And so they should have had each other’s backs. It should have been sort of that love-hate relationship between siblings.

We can fight and squabble, but anybody outside messes with us, and they feel the wrath of the family. It should have been that sort of relationship at least. But they couldn’t. The Edomites hated them too much.

God wanted them to get along. God even commanded the Israelites not to mistreat their Edomite cousins. The Old Testament law says in the book of Deuteronomy, Do not despise an Edomite because he is your brother.

The Israelites were told not to mistreat the Edomites. As far as we can tell, the Israelites did a decent job of this. Not perfect, but decent.

They had gone to war against the Edomites at times, but they didn’t seem to return the Edomites’ almost pathological hatred of them. That seems to be one-sided. when an Edomite sought refuge inside Israel’s borders, God’s word said that he was supposed to be treated with kindness.

And that’s way more than the Edomites ever did in return, as we’re going to see in just a little bit. The Israelites appear to have tried to keep the peace, but the Edomites wouldn’t go for it. They despised Israel, and they actively cheered for any enemy that Israel had.

Now, our church is divided between the state’s two major football teams. All right, but some of you have a better attitude about it than others. Some of you have a better attitude about it than I do. Exactly, that’s where I’m going with this.

I hear some of you say you cheer for both the OU Sooners and OSU Cowboys. You cheer for both of them. You have a preference when they play against each other.

preference yeah sometimes it’s a strong preference but you have a preference you have one that you cheer for over the other but you you know you’re a good sport and you cheer for the other when they’re not playing against your team you’re okay with cheering for both I’m not quite as open-minded about a lot of things but I’m not quite as open-minded about that and so you may hate me for saying this I hope not you may hate me for saying this but I went to owe you and that’s not what you’re for, I’ve been known to say throughout the years that my three favorite football teams in order are the Oklahoma Sooners, the Arkansas Razorbacks, and whoever’s playing against OSU this week. All right? Yeah, I’m in trouble with some of you.

It’s just a joke. It’s a joke. Hopefully, I don’t lose my pulpit for that.

But the Edomites, that’s why I’m saying that’s the wrong kind of attitude, and that’s the attitude the Edomites had. It should have been one of these, you know, we have a preference and we cheer for one over the other when they’re against each other, but we’re related countries, we should kind of have each other’s back and cheer for each other. No, no, no. The Edomites had a bad attitude like I do.

The Edomites, they, man, their two favorite countries were Edom and whoever was fighting against Israel that week. That was sort of where they stood. Their dream was to see Israel brought to ruin.

God didn’t like that attitude. And that placed them on a collision course, that attitude, that hatred for Israel placed them on a collision course with the God of Israel because he had not only made a covenant to protect Israel, but he’d also promised that he was going to repay other countries depending on their treatment of Israel. So when God says, I want to prosper Israel and take care of them, and I want to bless anybody that blesses them, Edom says, we want to see Israel Now they’re at odds with God.

We know the promise that he gave to Abraham about blessing those who bless Israel and cursing those who curse Israel. Now if we want to say the Edomites were descended from Abraham too, we know that promise was specifically to Israel because in the book of Numbers, God sent Balaam to tell specifically Israel, those who bless you will be blessed and those who curse you will be cursed. all right so that was specifically for Israel so when the Edomites routinely sided against the good of Israel they were actively working against the will of God is what they were doing their bad attitude put them on opposite sides of God you never want to be on opposite sides from where God is right never stand on the opposite side and say God we hope you’re on our side no find out where God’s side is and you get there.

That’s the important thing. So they were dead set on seeing Israel destroyed. And to stop their mistreatment of Israel, God decided that Edom would be cut off forever.

Now, at this point, I have to stop and tell you, I think I may have been wrong about something last week, as hard as that may be for you to believe. Last week, I mentioned that I’ve believe for a long time that Obadiah, the prophet Obadiah, wrote in the 840s BC, which would make Obadiah the earliest of the minor prophets to write. I also told you that there are some conservative scholars out there who make a good case for him having written in the 580s BC.

And the more I’ve read and studied, especially this passage this week, I think they make a really good case, and I think that later date might be a better fit for the text. Because if Obadiah wrote later, then what he was describing here in these verses was the Edomites’ indirect role in the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 BC. What he describes fits really well with that historical event, and it looks like that may be what he was talking about.

Because the Edomites’ mistreatment of Israel in the next few verses seems to line up with their mistreatment of Israel when the Babylonians came in. And there were four significant things that they did during that time, according to the text, things that they did to Israel that angered God. And we’re going to look at those tonight.

Look at verse 11. He says, on the day you stood aloof, on this day, strangers captured his wealth, while foreigners entered his city gate and cast lots for Jerusalem, you were just like one of them. So God had told these two related nations to be good neighbors, as I said.

Told the Israelites, don’t mistreat the Edomites. You can be good neighbors without being best friends, right? Should be able to be.

When good neighbors see your house on fire, they call the fire department whether they like you or not, because they’re good neighbors. But the Edomites were more like the kind of neighbors who see your house on fire, see the Israelites’ house on fire, and they throw a little gasoline on the roof to make sure it spreads, and then they get out sticks and marshmallows so that they can make s’mores over the smoldering embers. That’s the kind of neighbors that the.

. . I have some neighbors like that.

That’s the kind of neighbors that the Edomites were to the Israelites. So when the Babylonians were wrecking Jerusalem, the Edomites didn’t lift a finger to help their neighbors. Now they were glad about the calamity that was happening to the Israelites, and God was angry with them for standing idly by over here, smirking about the destruction of Jerusalem.

The Babylonians were tearing down the walls and the city gates of Jerusalem. They were pillaging the city. They were slaughtering people, and they were out there casting lots over the Israelite stuff like the whole thing was just a game.

and it was a scene that would have elicited sympathy from any decent human being. Any observer who had a shred of human decency would have been upset by this, and it would have gone so far as to break the hearts of anyone who loved God and His people. But it didn’t have that effect on the Edomites.

The ability of the Edomites to stand by with this kind of aloof amusement. God says they were aloof, and we know that they were amused by this. It just showed how hostile they were toward the things of God.

Just showed how far their hearts were from God, that they were able to enjoy watching God’s people endure this devastation. And so Edom earned God’s judgment, first of all, because they refused to help God’s people. Now, the second point of God’s indictment against Edom, The second reason why they earned the judgment of God was that they rejoiced in the suffering of God’s people.

They rejoiced in the suffering of God’s people. Verse 12 says, Do not gloat over your brother in the day of his calamity. Do not rejoice over the people of Judah in the day of their destruction.

Do not boastfully mock in the day of distress. Now in this verse we see God making the same point in three slightly different ways, using three slightly different sets of words. Israel suffered and Edom liked it.

That’s the bottom line of each of these three things. And so when God said the Edomites shouldn’t gloat over Israel in their day of calamity, that’s the first thing he said, he meant they shouldn’t find delight, find this inward delight in the hardships that were being faced by the people. I mean, these were people’s lives being turned upside down, and they found joy in it.

When he told them not to rejoice over their day of destruction, he meant that they shouldn’t outwardly celebrate over the destruction of the city. They found joy in the fact that people’s lives were being ruined. They openly celebrated that the city was being destroyed.

And when he told them not to boastfully mock in the day of distress, he was telling them not to look at Israel’s pain and rub it in that they were now better off than the Israelites. You know, that’s sort of when you see somebody going through a hard time and you kind of, hopefully y’all don’t do this, but you know, people will sometimes exalt themselves and say, well, I’m doing better off than you are. Stop doing that to the Israelites.

You’re taking entirely too much joy in what’s happening to them. All of these things were hateful that they were doing, And they saw Israel suffering, and they were inwardly happy. They were outwardly celebratory.

I mean, they weren’t just happy, they were showing it. And they were ready to do anything they could to pour salt in the wounds and make things worse, to make the Israelites feel even worse. Now, if this refers to the event where the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar broke down the walls and captured the city of Jerusalem in 586 B.

C. , then this was one of the darkest days in the entire history of Israel. One of the worst things that ever happened to them.

And now the reason that God referred to Judah in this is because the kingdom of Judah here was alone. This was technically the kingdom of Judah that was captured by the Babylonians. The original kingdom of Israel had split nearly 500 years before that into two different kingdoms who also didn’t get along.

There was the northern kingdom, which was called Israel, and it was based in Samaria. There was the southern kingdom that was called Judah, that was based in Jerusalem. But by this time, the northern kingdom had long since been destroyed by the Assyrian Empire.

And so that left Judah behind as all that was left of the original kingdom of Israel. And they were on their own. and so for this message I’ve been using the terms Israel and Judah synonymously but that’s that’s when this was and and in 586 BC is when this this small kingdom of Judah all on its own was left to face the the Babylonian empire and they were just devastated by the things that happened to them it was one as I said it was one of the darkest days in the history of of Israel at any point and the Edomites were thrilled to see God’s people suffer.

They saw God’s people suffering and they loved it. And to be clear, God allowed the people of Judah, God allowed the Israelites to suffer the invasion, but he didn’t allow them to be wiped out by the invasion. And that was because of his promises to them, his promises to David and his promises to Abraham.

God still loved them and God still had plans for them because of the promise that he’d made to them. He had plans to one day restore them, but to get them to where they needed to be, he had to allow them to go through a time of discipline and purification from sin, and especially the sin of idolatry. That’s what they dealt with more than anything, and so God allowed them to suffer at this time for their eventual good.

Even to watch them suffer. And it certainly didn’t make God happy to see others rejoicing in their suffering. But there was a third reason why God was upset with the Edomites.

They had refused to help his people. They had rejoiced in the suffering of his people, but God was also upset because they had robbed his people at their weakest point. Look at verse 13.

It says, Do not enter my people’s city gate in the day of their disaster. Yes, you. Do not gloat over their misery in the day of their disaster, and do not appropriate their possessions in the day of their disaster.

That word appropriate means take. Don’t just walk in and assume it’s yours for the taking. Now, last week I talked about the strength of Edom, one of the things that they trusted in.

And what I should have emphasized more was the point that the Edomites’ power was mostly defensive. Under normal circumstances, other countries would have had a tough time invading Edom, but Edom would have had an equally tough time invading anybody else. And so they weren’t strong enough to invade Israel, but once the invasion had occurred, they were just strong enough to join in on the humiliation of the newly weakened Israelites.

So they came in and they took advantage of the Israelites’ weakness. But you know what? This means God held them just as guilty for the destruction of Israel as the Babylonians.

God saw them just as guilty as the Babylonians for what was done to Jerusalem because they joined in there at the end. The Babylonians tore down the gates and they tore down the walls of Jerusalem, but once they were down, the Edomites came in like the scavenging vultures that they were, and they took the spoils of war. they were looters.

They were looters. They came in, they added insult to injury by taking the stuff from what stuff was left by the Israelites, and it infuriated God. It infuriated God to see them take advantage of his people while they were down.

Now, last week in the passage we looked at, we saw that the Edomites were going to lose everything. They were going to lose everything they owned to these foreign armies when the judgment of God came down on them, and this was because they had robbed God’s people at their weakest point. And so now it was going to happen to them, only worse.

All right, and there’s a fourth reason why God was upset with the Edomites. There’s a fourth thing they did to upset God and earn his judgment. They resisted, I think this is the worst of all, they resisted God’s people as they tried to escape.

Now, resisted may not be the best word, but I saw the other three points started with an R, I was trying an Adrian Rogers thing. Alliteration. They resisted God’s people as they were trying to escape.

What does that mean? It was probably the worst of all of these things. Look with me at verse 14.

It says, Do not stand at the crossroads and cut off their fugitives, and do not hand over their survivors in the day of distress. Now, you see, when Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians, there were a relative few who were fortunate enough to escape the devastation. And so once they got out of the city, once they actually got out of Judah, they thought they were safe, but then they met the Weasley Edomites.

These crossroads that it talks about in verse 14 were these places up in the hills where there were multiple trails or roads that kind of intersected. They met in different places. They were places where the Edomites could position themselves strategically to control multiple routes at once, and they could confront people as they came from all directions.

They could confront the refugees. And as these Israelite refugees fled up into the mountains of Edom, they were hoping to escape the Babylonians and make it to safety, perhaps in Arabia or Egypt. They were just trying to get to safety, and the Edomites would ambush them, even the civilians.

They would ambush these people. They were too weak and cowardly to attack Jerusalem directly, but they had no problem attacking the refugees of God’s people who were just trying to escape with their lives. Now, think about how disgusting that was, that they would behave that way.

2,000 years later, some Jews were able to flee to countries like Switzerland and Sweden to escape destruction at the hands of the Nazis. What if the Swiss and the Swedes had waited until they got just inside their borders and had ambushed them? The world would have been outraged, right?

We’d still be mad at those countries. What if they had let these refugees come in their borders and then they had robbed everyone and they had killed some and they had sent some back, we’d still be outraged. That would be an outrage, wouldn’t it?

We’d still remember how the Swedes and the Swiss had behaved. And that’s what the Edomites did. That is exactly what the Edomites did.

Now, the Babylonians weren’t quite the Nazis. They weren’t bent on the total extermination of the Jews. But these Israelites had managed to escape the terror that was being unleashed on their city at the time.

and as they were fleeing through the mountains and thought they’d reached safety and the road to freedom, the Edomites took advantage of that weakness and they killed some of the Israelites and perhaps even more terrifying, they captured some of the Israelites and handed them back over to the Babylonians. Probably even sold some of them to the Babylonians. It was terrible.

There was no reason for the Edomites to do that. There was no reason for the Edomites to do that other than pure undiluted hatred of God’s people. So their cruelty made God angry.

And so as we look at the final two verses of this passage tonight, we’re going to see that God promised to pay them back for what they’d done to Israel. Now he said in verse 15, for the day of the Lord is near against all the nations. As you have done, it will be done to you.

What you deserve will return on your own head. Now the things that had happened to Israel, either directly through the actions of the Edomites or indirectly through Edomite influence, those things were going to be dropped right on the Edomites’ doorstep, God said. Because Israel was in a covenant relationship with God, how the other countries treated them influenced how God treated those other countries.

And now the Edomites, because of the way they treated Israel, they were going to receive all the consequences that they’d earned. And verse 16 emphasizes the same point. It says, as you have drunk on my holy mountain, so all the nations will drink continually.

They will drink and gulp down and be as though they had never been. Now, all the nations that stood there in Jerusalem and celebrated its downfall, all these nations, when the Babylonians came, all these nations that stood there and toasted the destruction, the devastation of God’s people, they were really drinking from the cup of God’s wrath. That’s a picture that’s used throughout the Old Testament.

God used their celebrations as a picture of this. They were feasting and they were enjoying the spoils of war, but in drinking the cup of celebration over Jerusalem’s destruction, God said they were really partaking of the cup of his wrath, and that once they started, they’d never be able to stop drinking it. See, God said these nations would continue to gulp down, they’d continue to gulp down his wrath until they just disappeared from the altogether.

They were just digging themselves deeper. I’m mixing metaphors here, but they were just digging deeper into God’s wrath. Edom and these other countries, some of them had done their best to try to wipe Israel off the map, but Israel outlasted all of them because God had made a covenant with them.

That was the key to all of this, was the covenant that God made with them. The covenant’s the key to understanding what was going on in the book of Obadiah. Now the word covenant is never used in the book of Obadiah.

Not that I could find, at least not in the Christian standard Bible. But we can see the impact of the covenant throughout it. Because God dealt differently with Israel than he did with the Edomites.

The Edomites had sinned against God, and they were about to receive the outpouring of his righteous wrath that they deserved. But Israel had sinned too, hadn’t they? Israelites were sinners too.

Israel had committed idolatry over and over and over again. The thing that made God angriest, they had done over and over and over. They also deserved God’s wrath, but their consequences weren’t the same as Edom’s.

Now, make no mistake, God takes sin seriously. God takes all sin seriously, and he will always deal seriously with sin. But Edom was doomed to their destruction because of their sin, and Israel wasn’t.

We see that here, and we’ll see that more next week. God had plans to restore Israel, but Edom was just doomed. Now, the difference was the covenant.

The difference between these two countries was the covenant. Edom rejected God and remained outside of his covenant, and they received judgment. For their sin, they received judgment that was designed to punish them.

Now, Israel was the recipient of God’s covenant, and they instead received discipline that was intended to purify them. And it was accompanied by the promise of restoration, which, as I said, we’ll look at more next week. The difference between the two was the covenant.

Inside the covenant, God deals with sin by purifying us. And outside the covenant, God deals with sin by punishing us. Now, again, Israel fell short of the covenant constantly, continually.

And they needed constant purification. That’s what these 70 years in Babylon were about. They were about a time of purification from the sin of idolatry.

But even though they constantly fell short and they constantly needed purification, God was always faithful to keep his covenant with them. God never gave up on Israel. And God works the same way today.

He’s still faithful to those who are inside the covenant even when they fall short of the covenant. He still deals with sin by purifying those who enter into the covenant. That’s how he deals with sin within the covenant.

He purifies us and he still deals with sin by punishing those who reject the covenant and remain outside of it. Punishment or purification. But today there’s a new covenant.

There’s a different covenant. Hebrews calls Jesus the mediator of a better covenant which has been established on better promises. Under the old covenant, we had to enter into the covenant by birth, and we had to be confirmed by circumcision.

Talked about that a little bit this morning. But in the new covenant, we enter by faith in Jesus Christ, and our place in the new covenant is confirmed by the presence and the work of the Holy Spirit within us. Now, God’s indictment of Edom stands as a stark reminder to us of how seriously God takes sin.

And it reminds us of just how dire the consequences are of continuing to reject His mercy and refusing to repent and insisting on staying outside the covenant. We can reject God’s mercy and we can remain outside His covenant like Edom did. And if we do that, God will deal with our sin by punishing it.

Or by faith in Jesus, we can enter into God’s covenant like Israel did. And if we do that, God will deal with our sin by purifying us by the blood of Jesus Christ. Jesus said that his blood of the covenant was poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. And the only way for us to enter into this new covenant is by trusting in Jesus Christ, who died for our sins and rose again from the dead.

Trusting in him as our one and only Savior. That’s how we enter into the covenant. And as Edom learned, only God’s covenant makes the difference between purification and punishment.

But that leaves us to the question of whether we enter into the covenant or if we insist on remaining outside of it. The difference between being inside the covenant and outside the covenant is whether God deals with our sin by purification