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Obadiah 2. Declaration of War
It is a simple and unpretentious beginning. Appearing as it does in our Bibles, as the opening sentence of the first verse, much of its force is lost. It is really the heading of the prophecy, the title of the book. Were the writings of Obadiah to be printed by themselves, these four words would stand upon the front cover, limned in letters of gold. There is no attempt at anonymity but at the same time no self-laudation nor obtrusion of the man's own personality. Obadiah has the courage of his convictions and is not afraid to attach his name to the message he proclaims and for which he stands. It is not his own message and he does not pretend that it is. It is a vision, something that he has seen and which he wants others to see also. So, simply, he pinpoints the whole of what he has to say and stands in the background, the servant who saw the vision and played the part, first of the scribe who wrote it down and then the herald who proclaimed it abroad. Good it was for us if we could capture this same simplicity. Sometimes we make our own names and personalities too prominent in the work we are privileged to do for the Lord, sometimes we tend to retire into obscurity and leave the work altogether nameless. There was a well-known and well-loved disciple of the Master, long since finished his course—Benjamin Barton—who used to say "Humility is not thinking too much of oneself; humility is not thinking too little of oneself; humility is not thinking of oneself at all." There is a world of truth in that simple observation. Obadiah came to his commission with mind and heart so full of the revelation that had been made to him that he had no thought for himself at all; he just announced in quiet sincerity and warm-hearted zeal "the vision of Obadiah" and proceeded to say what had been laid upon his heart. "Thus says the Lord God about Edom." Another simple statement. The message is from God and it concerns Edom. The reverence of the prophet is revealed in his use of the term "the Lord God". To him, God is supreme and there can be no other object of worship and adoration. Obadiah himself is but a voice, to declare what the Lord has said. The message is not man-made. It is not born of the prophet's own wisdom or intellectual acumen, nor yet of any insight he may have into the affairs of the nations. It is a message from the Most High God, the one who ruleth among the children of men, and as such it must be respected. We must not leave this simple and reverent use of the expression "the Lord God" without recalling the example Israel has set us in this connection. The sacred Name was never pronounced by them; they used a substitute. Christians generally have followed that example and use the expressions "the Lord" or "God" when referring to the Deity. Still more reverent but the more truly expressive term is "the Father", and this is one that is in the highest degree appropriate on the lips of those who by reason of full consecration to his service have become "sons of God". An enthusiasm verging on fanaticism in the case of one Christian group has led to the widespread use of the Anglicised form of the Name—Jehovah—as an appellation for the Deity to be used on every possible occasion; the very frequency of its use begets a familiarity which is the antithesis of that reverence which we should seek to preserve when speaking of the Most High. The translators of the Authorised Version were rightly guided when they decided to translate the Hebrew YHWH—the Hebrew word for the sacred Name—by "LORD" in practically all cases, and we in our day do well to follow some such example as that of Dr.Moffat who renders it "the Eternal". We cannot be too careful when we take upon ourselves to speak and write of the great Creator and Father of all. It is the height of irreverence to address him as one would address an immediate superior upon earth with whom one is on terms of easy familiarity. Obadiah possessed an intense consciousness of the overwhelming might and majesty of the One who had spoken to him, and it must have been in tones that we can be sure were hushed with awe that he declared his message "Thus says the Lord God". The message is about Edom. In Obadiah's own day such reference to Israel's brother-nation, the children of Esau, would be quite enough to arouse interest and command attention. We today must associate Edom with all in this world who together form the worldly-minded kinsmen of the true disciples of Jesus, all who claim a degree of kinship with Christ but have no share in his Spirit. This Age has produced many spiritual Edomites and they have been and are scattered among all the denominations of Christendom. This word of the Lord God is for them and it is a word of judgment. In this end of the Age the fact that spiritual Israelites are to be gathered together into the "general assembly of the Church of the Firstborn" implies that spiritual Edomites are to suffer the judgment that puts an end to their pretensions for ever. In the new Age there will be no Edomites. "I have received a declaration from the Lord, and He has sent forth a message to the nations, to rise and make war upon her." There are two important factors in this opening announcement. One concerns the Church in the flesh and the other concerns the world in general. Obadiah is the Lord's servant and he has received intimation of the Lord's command and intention. To no one else but his own servants does the Father reveal his will, at this or any time. "The Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secrets to his servants the prophets and them that trust him." In every age has God had his witnesses, who, because of whole-hearted consecration and complete dedication of life are able to interpret, by reason of the indwelling Spirit, that which He will tell them. So when judgment is to come upon the world or any part of it in consequence of sin, the servants of God are the ones to whom are entrusted the knowledge of what is impending and the duty of proclaiming it. This does not include the duty of executing it! Christians are not empowered to act as executors of judgment whilst they are still in the flesh. Some there are who exultantly chant together "let the saints be joyful in glory... to bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron; to execute upon them the judgment written. This honour have all his saints." (Psa.149.5-9). They claim the right by virtue of that text to arrogate to themselves powers that belong of right only to the Lord the Head, and in thus exceeding the commission given to the disciples of Christ at the first they stray into grievous error to their own spiritual hurt. There is more than a suspicion of the desire to exact revenge for past indifference or opposition when Christians conceive it their solemn duty to inflict Divinely approved chastisement upon those whom they esteem fitting subjects for judgment. Here in this verse the implication is plain. The other nations, not Israel, are to rise and make war upon Edom. Obadiah's mission was to proclaim the inevitability of judgment but the execution of that judgment was to be left to the nations round about. So it was in fact. Although in later days Israel did absorb the Edomites into themselves and extinguish Edom as a nation, the fulfilment of the prophecy really belongs to the Babylonians who forced the Edomites out of their mountain fortress not long after Obadiah's day, and after them the Nabatheans, another Arab people, who completed the work and occupied the Edomites' land until in the early centuries of the Christian era they in turn were dispossessed by the Saracens. The nations did indeed rise and make war upon Edom, and fulfilled every word of Obadiah to the letter. So too in the larger fulfilment. Spiritual Edom is destroyed by the very nations of the world whose favours she solicited and for whose sake she denied and ignored, and of times persecuted, spiritual Israel. Hear the Divine sentence expressed in words directly applicable to the Edom of this Age, "The ten horns which thou sawest upon the beast, these shall hate the whore, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire." (Rev.17.16). That is not an isolated instance of the Divine revelation as to God's intentions, John gave but a brief word but what he saw took its inspiration from a far more detailed prophecy spoken by the prophet Ezekiel and recorded in his 16th chapter. The picture there is of apostate Jerusalem, meeting at last the penalty of her unfaithfulness to her God. Referring to those whom she had preferred to God, He says "I will give thee into their hand, and they shall throw down thine eminent place, and shall break down thy high places...they shall also bring up a company against thee, and they shall stone thee with stones, and thrust thee through with their swords. And they shall burn thine houses with fire, and execute judgements upon thee..." (Ezek.16.39-41). There is a Divine law of retribution which we might call, in the language of men, "poetic justice", which decrees that those who are apostates from God, unfaithful to their profession for the sake of worldly honour and interests or the approval of men, shall receive judgment at the very hands of those for whose sake they rejected God. The nations of this world will, at the last, in Obadiah's language, "rise and make war upon" spiritual Edom, and at their hands will the Edom of this Age suffer, and fall, and be no more. "Behold, I will make you small among the nations; you will be completely dishonoured." (vs.2). Small among the nations! That is a very apt description of the true Church in the flesh, the disciples of Jesus. It is also an apt description of "spiritual Edom", the nominal professors of Christianity, but for a different reason. True Christianity is at a discount because the nations of the world "will not have this man to reign over us". They do not want Christ and they are not prepared to pay the price that consecration to his service demands. So they treat the appeal of the Gospel with indifference. The Edomites know that, and they have endeavoured to compromise with the world by rejecting all there is in Christianity that runs counter to the world. For a time, in past ages, that course of action brought results. Organised Christianity was a very useful ally to kings with turbulent subjects. State and Church found many common interests and between them they ruled the common people with a rod of iron. Today all is different. Men and women are no longer driven by fear; the State has found other and more effective means of keeping the masses in check, or at least, in these days when the masses themselves wield much power, of making those same masses serve the interests of the State. The former assistance is no longer needed. "The pride of your heart has deceived you, living as you do in the fastnesses of the rocks, building your home on high, and saying in your heart 'Who will bring me down to the ground'?" (vs.3). How like is this expression to the words in Rev.18.7 "She saith in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow". The pride of the Edomites was in their lofty dwellings high up among the pinnacles and crags of their mountain city. They were supremely confident that no enemy would ever be able to dislodge them, and they sat there in arrogant pride. So with all in this Age who have had any part or lot in that which is symbolised in the Book of Revelation by this woman seated upon the scarlet beast, arrogant in her pride and proud in the power she wields over the kings of the earth, never dreaming that the end of that power is shortly to come. Jeremiah the prophet saw something of this when in his splendid vision of the fall of great Babylon he was shown by the Holy Spirit God's judgment. "Behold, I am against thee, O thou most proud, saith the Lord GOD of hosts: for thy day is come, the time that I will visit thee. And the most proud shall stumble and fall, and none shall raise him up: and I will kindle a fire in his cities, and it shall devour all round about him." (Jer.50.31-32). Babylon was the proudest and greatest city of antiquity; with her massive walls and mighty Tower it must have seemed as if she could never be overthrown, but overthrown she was, and she lies today a waste of broken brickwork inhabited only by jackals and lizards. AOH (To be continued) |
