Illus: In the year 2008, all 7,100 of the Starbuck’s Coffee shops closed for one day for employee training. The coffee chain said the in-store-training program would foster enthusiasm in its 135,000 U.S. employees and improve the quality of drinks made by Starbucks.
Starbuck’s felt that to continue the lead in coffee sales, it was necessary for them to evaluate and re-train their employees.
A day after evaluating and re-training at Starbucks, they welcomed customers back into their shops with a new promise posted on the door: "Your drink should be perfect every time. If not, let us know and we'll make it right."
Many successful businesses recognize the need to train their employees and evaluate their performance. The army does efficiency reports to keep the military operating smoothly!
Illus: It is said that one Sargent in the army was written up in a way no Sargent in the army would want to be written up. The report stated:
• "Since my last report, this employee has reached rock bottom and shows signs of starting to dig."
• "His men would follow him anywhere, but only out of morbid curiosity."
• "I would not allow this employee to breed."
• "This Sargent is really not so much of a has-been, but more of a definitely won't be."
• "He works well when under constant supervision and cornered like a rat in a trap."
• "When he opens his mouth, it seems that this is only to change whichever foot was previously in there."
• "He sets low personal standards and then consistently fails to achieve them."
• "This Sargent should go far - and the sooner he starts, the better."
• "This Sargent is depriving a village somewhere of an idiot."
Evaluations can serve the purpose of warning people. Obadiah issues a clear warning.
Whenever we have to tell someone that they have fallen short, it should be to help them, because we care. This is not always the case. Sometimes “performance counseling” is merely a “chewing-out” which helps no one.
The purpose of a reprimand is to assist, restore, and teach - NOT PUNISH!
Let’s look at-
I. THE MAN
In Obadiah 1:1, we read, “The vision of Obadiah. Thus saith the Lord GOD concerning Edom; We have heard a rumour from the LORD, and an ambassador is sent among the heathen, Arise ye, and let us rise up against her in battle.”
Obadiah’s name means, “servant of God”.
• The Book of Obadiah is the first of the Minor Prophets we have in the scriptures.
• Obadiah consists of only twenty-one verses and is the shortest book in the Old Testament.
Illus: The great Robert Murray McCheyne said, “Something we should always remember, that if we neglect any part of the Bible it will leave us with some spiritual weakness or handicap. We all understand what it means to have a physical handicap: short of sight, dull of hearing, or incapacitated in some other way. So shall we be if we are ignorant of any part of Scripture: all Scripture is profitable. That is the basis upon which we are looking at what often are neglected portions of the Word of God.”
Although the Book of Obadiah has only twenty-one verses and is the shortest book in the Old Testament, it is equally inspired with all the other Scripture.
It doesn't matter how weak we are in grace or gifts, we are as much a part of the true church as those with great gifts and great grace.
God has put these little books in the Bible as well as the bigger ones, to remind us that He doesn't judge a people according to their size or the amount of grace they have.
WHO IS OBADIAH? We can not be sure which Obadiah wrote this book. Thirteen different people are called by this name in the Old Testament
• The writer of this book also may have been...The Obadiah sent by Jehoshaphat to teach the law in Judah - 2 Chronicles 17:7
• The writer of this book could have been the Obadiah that was one of the overseers in repairing the temple under Josiah - 2 Chronicles 34:12
• One Jewish tradition identifies him as the one that was Ahab's steward. He hid 100 prophets from Jezebel, Ahab's wife - 1 Kings 18:3-4 He feared the Lord from his youth - 1 Kings 18:12
The Scholars aren’t sure which one wrote this brief message. Many believe that Obadiah the steward of King Ahab that hid 100 prophets from Jezebel later became Obadiah the prophet!
The prophet Elijah came to the servant Obadiah and said, in 1 Kings 18:8-12, “…Go, tell thy lord, Behold, Elijah is here. And he said, What have I sinned, that thou wouldest deliver thy servant into the hand of Ahab, to slay me? As the LORD thy God liveth, there is no nation or kingdom, whither my lord hath not sent to seek thee: and when they said, He is not there; he took an oath of the kingdom and nation, that they found thee not. And now thou sayest, Go, tell thy lord, Behold, Elijah is here. And it shall come to pass, as soon as I am gone from thee, that the spirit of the LORD shall carry thee whither I know not; and so when I come and tell Ahab, and he cannot find thee, he shall slay me: but I thy servant fear the LORD from my youth.”
This probably is the Obadiah that wrote this short book in the Old Testament. We see THE MAN and -
II. THE MESSAGE
The Book of Obadiah deals with the nation of Edom. Edom was a country, a nation, a kingdom; its location was immediately to the south of the Jewish country of Judah. I would be remiss if I did not remind you:
• Esau and Edom are the same person.
• Esau was the twin brother of Jacob.
• The Edomites were therefore, not strangers like the Philistines or the Egyptians; they were blood brothers with the Jews.
• They had their own nations certainly, their own territory, their own kingdom, their own government and so on but they were brothers according to natural birth: Esau was the older twin and Jacob the younger. So there was every reason why Esau should have loved his brother and the Edomites should have loved the Jews.
I have to tell you however, that is not the way matters were. As a matter of fact, the Edomites hated the Jews and they took every opportunity to make war against them, to trouble them and to vex them.
These Edomites were guilty of two things:
(1) These Edomites were PROUD people that thought no one could bring them down as a nation.
But look at verses 3-4, we read, "The pride of thine heart hath deceived thee, thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock, whose habitation is high; that saith in his heart, Who shall bring me down to the ground? Though thou exalt thyself as the eagle, and though thou set thy nest among the stars, thence will I bring thee down, saith the Lord."
Edom's country was an extraordinarily well-defended country. There was only one way by which you could get into it. There were great high rocks surrounding the entire country; it was a wonderful natural formation. It was impregnable by any enemy; apart from through one great crevice which lasted about two miles with high barren rocks on either side. Inside was this safe territory. The Lord was saying to them that it didn't matter how safe they felt, they were going to be defeated.
(2) They were brutal people.
They were brutal, barbarous, cruel and haters of truth. So the Lord is telling this people that they are going to be crushed.
Look at verses 11-12, we read, "In the day that thou stoodest on the other side, in the day that the strangers carried away captive his forces, and foreigners entered into his gates, and cast lots upon Jerusalem, even thou wast as one of them. But thou shouldest not have looked on the day of thy brother in the day that he became a stranger; neither shouldest thou have rejoiced over the children of Judah in the day of their destruction; neither shouldest thou have spoken proudly in the day of distress."
That is a sample of what God is saying about these cruel people.
That day came in the experience of the Jewish people when the Babylonian armies surrounded them.
• They captured them and killed many thousands.
• Many were scattered over the countryside, running for their very lives and many of them came towards the country of these Edomites looking for mercy and for, what we today call, asylum.
• The Jews became asylum seekers - to use a modern phrase. They wanted food, shelter, kindness, warmth, mercy, protection, care and medical supplies.
You would have thought that Edom, who was the brother, would have been ready to give all he had. However, for these poor refugees, it was not so.
Not only did Edom shut the bowels of their compassion against their Jewish brethren but, worse still, they took advantage of them in this time of their weakness to invade their land, to annex some of their property, to kill many of their refugees and to treat them with brutality.
There are people that, when they see someone is down, will have no mercy on them.
The Lord pays attention to how we treat others. Look at verse 13. We read, "Thou shouldest not have entered into the gate of my people in the day of their calamity; yea, thou shouldest not have looked on their affliction in the day of their calamity, nor have laid hands on their substance in the day of their calamity"
God saw what the Edomites did! God sent Obadiah to tell these people He saw what they did.
In the Old Testament, God communicated to the prophets in three ways.
• Sometimes by dreams
• Sometimes by God, as it were, whispering in their ear and telling them precisely what they had to say: their utterance was "Thus saith the Lord!" They received it by direct revelation from God, as though God was speaking in their ear or in their mind. They uttered it by divine inspiration.
• On other occasions God gave the message in the Old Testament through visions. Their mind and soul were so lifted up and illuminated that they truly saw a mental picture of the things they had to declare.
According to verse 1, God chose to speak to Obadiah in a vision about Edom. It was about them and their future and what was going to happen to them.
The true prophet of God can say, “Thus saith the Lord”. In other words it is not the prophet talking, but God talking! When the true prophet speaks it will happen!
Illus: Today we hear a lot of people making predictions that are never fulfilled.
• Dr. Lee Deforest, the inventor of TV, said, "Man will never reach the moon regardless of all future scientific advances."
• Admiral William Leahy, U.S. Atomic Bomb Project - "The bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosives."
• Robert Millikan, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1923 - "There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom."
• Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949 - "Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."
• Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943 - "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
• The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957 - "I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year."
• Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip. "But what ... is it good for?"
• Western Union internal memo, 1876 - "This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us."
• Gary Cooper on his decision not to take the leading role in "Gone With The Wind." "I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face and not Gary Cooper."
• Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962 - "We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out."
• Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895 - "Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible."
• Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859 - "Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil?”
• Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre - "Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value."
• Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899 - "Everything that can be invented has been invented."
• Sir John Eric Ericksen, British surgeon, appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria 1873 - "The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon."
• Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977 - "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
God can predict the future because He is Omniscient, which means He knows all things. He could not be the Omniscient God and not know the future. That in itself reminds us that God sees the future, not only of individuals, which is true, but also of nations.
Nations rise and fall, they come and go! When they come to an end of the purpose that God has for them, they wither and die; very much like the flowers in your garden.
The message God gives these Edomites is this:
(1) JUDGMENT IS COMING
In verses 1-8, Obadiah tells these Edomites God is going to destroy them with war; He is going to raise up enemies to defeat them. There is no such thing as an enemy to a nation except by God's divine appointment.
So, in verses 1 to 9, God is threatening these Edomites, saying that they are going to be the objects of an invasion: war is going to break out. They are going to have a terrible time, so terrible that they will be crushed and overthrown; they will cease to be a nation - they will come to nothing. They will be virtually annihilated.
(2) GOD’S EXPLANATION OF JUDGMENT (10-16)
Before a person is locked up in prison or fined, they are told what they have done wrong. So it is here with God.
In the second section He informs these Edomites why they are to be punished, why they are to be judged and why they are to be annihilated.
I want to make this observation. The God of the Bible is a God of love and also a God of justice.
Many today say that God is love and is forgiving, but they do not want to hear that He is also a God of righteousness, justice and holiness.
Of course, God is a God of love but we must never give people the impression that God is a God of love only. When we conjure an image of God as only a God of love, we are not worshipping the true God - that is idolatry. You are stripping away half of God's attributes as soon as you say that He is love and nothing else.
The God of the Bible has these two aspects to His moral character - more than two, but two that concern us just now:
• He is full of love, kindness, goodness, affection, mercy and compassion
• He is also a God of righteousness, justice and holiness.
Because He is this kind of God, He has no choice but to send judgment on these wicked Edomites.
Many of the ministers of this country that get in any prominent position on the radio and television that we hear about, almost never tell the nation about this sobering aspect to the character of God - His justice and holiness.
Men need to know that nobody is going to come to Christ for salvation until he realizes that God is a God of righteousness.
If people don’t fear God, then they see no need of Christ. If God is a God of love and nothing else, then we don't need a Savior do we?
The third section of this book, verses 17-21 of Obadiah, deals with the Kingdom of God, which was going to succeed the judgement upon Edom and Esau and was going to last to the end of time.
The third section looks to the New Testament age. The vision that he sees carries his mind beyond time in the Old Testament period to time in the New Testament period.
He sees something of the glory in which, after Jesus Christ has come into the world, this great Gospel that was now among the Jews, would be spread abroad throughout all the world. All the ends of the earth would see the salvation of the Lord.
That is how the book actually ends.
Conclusion:
• Verse 1 - Tells us of this prophet Obadiah
• Verse 2 - God said he was going to cut these PROUD people down
• Verse 3 - They are proud because of their strategic location but it will do them no good
• Verse 4 - It would have been better if thieves had robbed them than what God is going to do to them
• Verse 5 - All their friends will turn against them
• Verse 6 - Not one person among them will be able to save them
• Verses 10 - All these bad things happen to them because of what they did to Israel
• Verse 11 - They gloated when Israel was captured by the Babylonians
• Verses 14 - What they have done will backfire on them
• Verses 17-21 - But Israel will survive and return
We have looked at:
I. THE MAN
II. THE MESSAGE
