Obadiah: "The Kingdom Will be the Lord’s" | Obadiah
Brian Hedges | July 6, 2025
Turn in your Bibles to Obadiah, page 770 in your Bibles; it’s actually page 772 if you’re using one of the Bibles in the chairs in front of you. You can also probably find it more easily on your phone or the text will be on the screen here in a few minutes.
While you’re turning there, let me ask you this question: How do you make sense of history? I think a lot of people don’t care that much about history today. It was Henry Ford who famously said, “History is bunk.” He didn’t really want anything to do with history, didn’t care much about the past.
But the older I get, the more I see the significance of history in trying to understand the world in which we live, and then also thinking about the world in which we live and the direction that it’s going. It raises certain questions. When you look at the headlines and you see wars, you see elections, you see coups and collapses of nations, you see scandals and revolutions, there’s a question: What is driving history forward? Who’s in control? Is there any meaning behind the rise and fall of nations, or is all of this just chaos and chance?
There have been many different answers to that question in the course of Western philosophy. Thomas Carlyle, the nineteenth-century historian, said that “history is just the biography of great men,” and he essentially looked at these important figures in history, like Oliver Cromwell or Napoleon Bonaparte or, we might say today, someone like a Winston Churchill, and he said that history just followed the course of these great men.
The philosopher Hegel believed that history advances through ideas. You have these two ideas in tension, thesis and antithesis, and then through those eventually there is a synthesis and a new field of human thought develops so that there’s this slow but inevitable march of intellectual progress.
Karl Marx, the father of communism, focused on economics. For him it was all about material conditions, class struggle, who controls the wealth. Who controls the means of production? History really follows those who have the power.
In more recent years, thinkers like Jared Diamond, in his Pulitzer-prize winning book Guns, Germs, and Steel, argues that it’s all about geography and environment, and it’s it’s in those places where you have the most fertile crops and you have the best environment that are the places that really are successful, and that’s how nations rise and are prosperous.
What should a Christian say to these different ways of thinking? I think we could say that each of those perspectives offer something insightful; they all also share one glaring omission in that they neglect the hand of God in human history. They leave God out of the picture.
Scripture gives us a very different perspective. While not neglecting the role that people and ideas and even material forces have, the Scriptures show us that there is a deeper story behind all of these stories, that there is a sovereign Lord, Yahweh, the God of Israel, who is working out his purposes in human history, and he’s doing so not just for the nation of Israel, he’s doing so not just in the church today, but he is at work in the nations.
We sang about that this morning, this God who reigns over the nations and calls the kings and the nations to bow down before the Lord our God.
That, essentially, is the message of this Old Testament prophet, Obadiah. This is the fourth in our series on the minor prophets, and we might even say that Obadiah is the most minor of all the minor prophets, because it is the shortest book of the twelve; in fact, it is the shortest book in the Old Testament, only twenty-one verses in our English translations. It’s probably also the most neglected. I’ve never heard a sermon on the book of Obadiah, until this morning; I heard myself preach it in the 9 a.m. service. Now I’m preaching it again. This is the first time I’ve ever prepared a message on this book, and my guess is that most of us have not heard anything on the book of Obadiah.
It’s also one of the more difficult books in the Old Testament. The church father Jerome said that “it is as difficult as it is brief,” and it’s difficult partly because we know so little about the original context. We know the author of the book was named Obadiah, a name that means “the servant of Yahweh,” and a very common name in the Old Testament. There are probably a dozen figures or so, in the Old Testament, named Obadiah, but we cannot reliably attach this book to any of those other figures.
We know that the book was addressed to the nation of Edom. Edom was a small kingdom to the southeast of Judah that had descended from Esau, who was the twin brother of Jacob, who became Israel and the father of the nation of Israel.
There had been something like a centuries-long sibling rivalry between these two nations, the descendants of these two brothers. Edom here is in the crosshairs of the prophet Obadiah as he prophesies a doom oracle, an oracle of judgment, against the nation of Edom. In fact, there are more prophetic doom oracles and more hostile references to the nation of Edom than to any other foreign nation in the Old Testament.
The historical context we’re not sure of; it may have been the raids against Judah during the reign of Ahaz. Most scholars today seem to think it was connected to the Babylonian invasion of Jerusalem in 587 and 586 B.C. We can’t be sure.
What is clear here is the portrait of God that is given to us in this book, and it is the portrait of a sovereign God, a God who reigns over the nations.
I want us to see three things this morning as we work through this little book. I want us to see that:
1. The Sovereign Lord Speaks His Word
2. The Sovereign Lord Judges the Nations
3. The Sovereign Lord Establishes His Kingdom
Now, we can just acknowledge from the outset that this is not the easiest book of the Bible. You’re going to have to put your thinking cap on, especially for these first couple of points, as we wrestle with the message of this book and the implications of it for today. But there is gospel here, and you’re going to see how the gospel comes at the end of this little book. So let’s begin.
1. The Sovereign Lord Speaks His Word
Of course, we can say this about any of the prophetic books. The prophets always begin with something like a “Thus saith the Lord,” but I think it’s good to emphasize it here in this often-neglected book of the Bible. You can see the Lord’s word in Obadiah in four places, beginning in verse 1. Obadiah 1 says, “The vision of Obadiah. This is what the Sovereign Lord says about Edom—‘We have heard a message from the Lord,’” and then he begins to deliver this message.
Just mark that. The Lord speaks. We serve a God who speaks, a God who reveals himself and a God who reveals his purposes and his plans for the nations, and he revealed that to the prophets.
We see in verse 4, “‘I will bring you down,’ declares the Lord.” In verse 8: “‘In that day,’ declares the Lord.” So again, the Lord is declaring something about Edom.
Then, at the end of this prophetic oracle, verse 18 says, “The Lord has spoken.”
This is a significant thing that sometimes as Christians we perhaps take for granted, or we give lip service to the fact that the word of God is literally that; it is the very word of God, it is God’s revelation of himself, and we believe, “Yes, this is the word of God.” We call it the word of God. But the question is, do we really treat this like the word of God? Do we treat even these obscure parts of the Bible as if God is speaking, and are we listening to what he says in these parts?
I think we need to remember a couple of things, and this is really the application for this first point. We need to recognize that while God’s word is for us, it is not about us. While God’s word is for you, it’s not about you. One of our problems when we come to the Bible is that we have a very man-centered, even a very self-centered approach to the Bible. We turn to the Bible looking for what we want, looking for what we think will help us. We look for warm devotional thoughts; we look for reassurances of God’s love and grace. Of course, all of that is there, but the Bible is so much more than that. The Bible is really not a book about you! The Bible is a book about something much, much bigger, and it’s to our great disadvantage if we ignore that wider context, because there will come times in our lives when we need something more than a warm devotional thought, we need something that gives a granite foundation under our view of the world that will hold us up in times that are really scary in world history.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones, that great preacher of the twentieth century, addressing the post-World War II generation, addressed exactly this issue. He talked about in one of his books the problem of history and how the problem of history was such a stumbling block for people’s faith. He said earlier it had been the problem of science, but now it was the problem of history, because he’s looking at people who have lived through two world wars. They’ve lost thousands upon thousands of their friends and their loved ones in these wars, and they’re asking the question, “What is God up to in the world?” He addressed this in one of his books, and this is what he said. He said,
“The main reason that Christians are troubled about the problem of history is that there are those who use the Bible in a narrow sense as being exclusively a textbook of personal salvation.”
Now, just see if that doesn’t apply to you this morning.
“Many people seem to think that the sole theme of the Bible is that of man’s personal relationship to God. Of course that is one of the central themes, but that is not the only theme of the Bible. Indeed, the Bible puts the question of personal salvation into a larger context. Ultimately, the main message of the Bible concerns the condition of the entire world and its destiny, and you and I as individuals are part of that larger whole. The trouble is that we are inclined to be exclusively concerned with our own personal problem, whereas the Bible starts further back and puts every problem in the context of this worldview.”
That’s an important corrective for many of us in the way we treat the Bible. We treat the Bible as an encyclopedia of wisdom or as a systematic theology that we can use to bolster up our belief in particular doctrines or as a resource of devotional thoughts for the day, but we don’t really know the Bible; we don’t really know the message of the Bible. We are not embracing the fuller picture, the wider lens, the biblical worldview in Scripture. We can’t embrace it unless we know it. We have to know the word of God. That means that we need to give attention to all of God’s word, not just our favorite parts.
I could give you many New Testament texts that tell us that the Old Testament Scriptures, while they were not written about us, yet they are for us. Here’s just one, Romans 15:4. Paul says,
“For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide, we might have hope.”
Paul is telling us that we need the whole Bible. We need the Scriptures, because the Scriptures give us hope. He’s not just talking about the Psalms; he’s not just talking about the best stories in the Gospels; he’s talking about the whole of Scripture.
You might think of it in the analogy of the world of nutrition. We all know that there are those foods we love to eat, that taste good, and we know that there are those foods that we should eat, that maybe don’t taste as good but they’re actually more nutritious. I mean, I like a juicy hamburger. I love a chocolate cake. I like the foods that really taste good. But I need to eat more the rabbit food, you know—the lettuce and the spinach and the carrots and those kinds of things. That’s true for all of us.
When we get to Scripture, there are those parts of the Bible that are more savory to us, they’re more tasteful to us. We love Romans 8, we love John 3:16, we love the stories of Jesus. We might even enjoy the rich and detailed narratives of Old Testament characters. But we get to the prophets, and maybe if you’re honest you just weren’t very excited about a sermon on Obadiah today. It feels like you’re eating rabbit food. But listen, this is nutritious for us! This is good for us. This is part of God’s word, and it has something to teach us.
So, if necessary, let’s recalibrate the way we read our Bibles. If you tend to gravitate only to certain passages of Scripture that you’re already familiar with, you already know they’re going to comfort you, you already know they’re going to help you—that’s good, go read those passages; but you need to build this into your diet as well. So maybe during this series one of the things you do during this twelve-week series is you read for yourself through all of the minor prophets. Take time to read through this part of Scripture that is often neglected, and you challenge yourself to get a better understanding of biblical history and how God reveals himself in these parts of Scripture; and let the whole Bible shape your worldview. Don’t just read for personal comfort; read to understand God and who he is, the God who governs nations, the God who judges evil, the God who advances his kingdom in the world.
We serve a God who speaks. He is the sovereign Lord who speaks his word, and this book, Obadiah, is part of that word.
2. The Sovereign Lord Judges the Nations
And the word he speaks is a word of judgment, as we find so often in the minor prophets, leading us to point number two: the sovereign Lord judges the nations.
Let me, first of all, explain what we see, and then I’ll read some of the verses so that you can see it right there in the text.
(1) We see, first of all, the basis of God’s judgment against this nation, the nation of Edom, to the southeast of Judah, involved somehow in hurting and harming the people of God. The basis of that judgment can be seen in three things: first of all, their national pride in verses 2-4; secondly, in their violence, verses 8-10; and then in their opportunism, because they took advantage of Judah’s misfortune. You see that in verses 11-14. Let’s read those verses.
First of all, their national pride, Obadiah 2-4.
“See, I will make you small among the nations;
you will be utterly despised.”
This is God speaking; this is the message of the Lord to Edom.
“The pride of your heart has deceived you,
you who live in the clefts of the rocks
and make your home on the heights,
you who say to yourself,
‘Who can bring me down to the ground?’”
They literally lived in the mountains. They were in the mountains of Seir, and they had these fortresses up in the mountains. They thought they were untouchable, and God says, “You think you’re high and lifted up; you think nobody can touch you; but I’m going to bring you down.” Look at verse 4.
“‘Though you soar like the eagle
and make your nest among the stars,
from there I will bring you down,’
declares the Lord.”
He’s confronting them for their pride and for their arrogance.
Listen, we live in a time, perhaps the most significant time in our current generation, where the nations of the world are governed by self-interest, to the neglect and even to the harm and exploitation of other peoples in the world. There is such a thing as national pride that is an affront to God, and God judges nations who are guilty of that pride. You see the warning right here in Edom; we should also heed that warning today.
God also was to judge Edom for their violence. Look at Obadiah 8-10.
“‘In that day,’ declares the Lord,
‘will I not destroy the wise men of Edom,
those of understanding in the mountains of Esau?
Your warriors, Teman, will be terrified,
and everyone in Esau’s mountains
will be cut down in the slaughter.
Because of the violence against your brother Jacob,
you will be covered with shame;
you will be destroyed forever.’”
Because of their violence. And the way it is spoken here, “Because of the violence against your brother Jacob.” God goes centuries back to the kinship between Jacob and Esau, the fathers of these two nations, and he sees their violence now as a violation of that basic brotherly kinship.
I think by extension we could go back to the very first sibling rivalry in the Bible, of Cain and Abel, when Cain persecuted and even killed his brother Abel. This is the very first murder in the Bible. Do you remember the Lord’s confrontation with Cain and how Cain said, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” He had violated that basic relationship with human beings, that brotherly relationship by creation, by acting in violence against his brother. This is what Edom had done, and once again, God judges those who are guilty of such violence.
Then the third since was opportunism. You see it in Obadiah 11-14. Notice here the emphasis on the day. This connects us to the theme in the prophets, the day of the Lord.
“On the day you stood aloof
while strangers carried off his wealth
and foreigners entered his gates
and cast lots for Jerusalem,
you were like one of them.
You should not gloat over your brother
in the day of his misfortune,
nor rejoice over the people of Judah
in the day of their destruction,
nor boast so much
in the day of their trouble.
You should not march through the gates of my people
in the day of their disaster,
nor gloat over them in their calamity
in the day of their disaster,
nor seize their wealth
in the day of their disaster.”
There was a day of disaster for the people of Israel; this was the day of the Lord that the earlier prophets like Amos and Micah had prophesied that was going to come to the people of God because of their son. The day of the Lord has come, and it has been a day of disaster, of judgment for Judah and for Jerusalem. The Lord here is saying to Edom, “You shouldn’t rejoice in the fact that Jerusalem falls. You shouldn’t take advantage of them.” Verse 14:
“You should not wait at the crossroads
to cut down their fugitives,
nor hand over their survivors
in the day of their trouble.”
They were taking advantage of the misfortune of the people of God, as Babylon had come through, burned the city to the ground, and here’s Edom standing aloof, indifferent to the suffering of the people, and even more than that they’re looting the city and they are seizing these exiles, taking them captive, selling them into slavery. It’s the sin of opportunism, rooted in their deep indifference to the suffering plight of the people of God.
Friends, we can do the same, not just on a national level but on an individual level, when we stand aloof to the suffering and the needs of others. Do you remember the story of the good Samaritan that Jesus told? Here’s this man who’s been beaten by robbers, who’s left for dead on the side of the road, and a priest sees him, sees the need, and he just passes by. A Levite sees the need; he just passes by. Who is the neighbor to this man? Only the despised Samaritan. He’s the one who actually takes care of the man. The others are aloof; they are indifferent. They’re not caring. It violates the principle of neighbor love.
This is what Edom had done on a national scale, and it was one of the reasons for God’s judgment of them.
(2) National pride, violence, opportunism. For all of this God will judge Edom; how will he do it? You see several indications of this in the text. Verse 2: “I will make you small among the nations.” Verse 4: “I will bring you down.” God was going to humble this nation. Verse 10: “You will be destroyed forever.”
Then Obadiah 15-16—I’ll read those two verses together—say,
“The day of the Lord is near
for all nations.”
The day of the Lord, which had been a day of judgment for Israel when they fell to Assyria and then for Judah when they fell to Babylon, now the day of the Lord, Obadiah says, is going to be for all the nations. This isn’t just for Edom, it’s not just Israel and Judah; it’s for all the nations.
“As you have done, it will be done to you;
your deeds will return upon your own head.
Just as you drank on my holy hill,
so all the nations will drink continually;
they will drink and drink
and be as if they had never been.”
The commentators tell us that this means something like this: that Edom, when Jerusalem fell, had plundered the stores of wine in the city, and they had drunk in celebration at the downfall of the people of God. But God is now saying, “You drank, but now you’re going to drink and drink as if you’d never been. You’re going to drink of the cup of the wrath of God.”
Judgment will fall on Edom; this is prophesied by Obadiah, and it was carried out in 553 B.C., when the final Neobabylonian king defeated Edom and annexed this territory to the Babylonian empire. The word of God was fulfilled.
Now, that’s the history. That’s what this book is basically about: the doom, the judgment of Edom. But of course, it raises a bigger biblical issue, and it is the issue of divine judgment. The Bible portrays God to us as a God who judges the nations. He judges sin, he judges evil, he judges wickedness. It’s one of those doctrines that people want to do away with. Many, many people will say, “You know, I like Jesus in the New Testament, but I sure don’t like the God of the Old Testament. I don’t like a God of judgment. I don’t believe in a God that judges sin and evil.”
But I want you to see, friends, that we can’t do away with the doctrine of divine judgment. In fact, we can even say that the doctrine of divine judgment is good news if we understand it correctly, and it’s good news for two reasons: first of all, because it means that justice will prevail. If there is no divine judgment, there will be no ultimate justice done in the world.
Let me illustrate this from a theologian named Miroslav Volf, who was from Croatia. He wrote a wonderful book called Exclusion and Embrace, and he says that before war came to his country of Croatia, he had held to the fashionable view that God was just a God of love; he dismissed the wrath of God, the whole idea of an angry God. That seemed incompatible with a God of love. That was his view as a theologian. Then war came to his country, terrible atrocities were committed, and he found himself growing exceedingly and justifiably angry. He began to realize that if God is not angry at such injustice and cruelty, then he is not a God worth worshiping.
In his book Exclusion and Embrace, he argues that the Christian position of responding to evil with nonviolence, not retaliating, not taking vengeance into our own hands—that’s the Christian position; that’s what is taught both in the Old Testament and the New; not responding to violence with retaliation—he argues that that actually requires a belief in divine vengeance and justice. Listen to what he says. This is the key quote from the book on that point. He says,
“My thesis, that the practice of nonviolence requires a belief in divine vengeance, will be unpopular with many Christians, especially theologians in the West. To the person who is inclined to dismiss it, I suggest imagining that you are delivering a lecture in a war zone. [Here’s the scenario.] Among your listeners are people whose cities and villages have first been plundered, then burned and leveled to the ground; whose daughters and sisters have been raped; whose fathers and brothers have had their throats slit.”
Remember, he had been through this. This is what had happened in Croatia.
“The topic of the lecture: a Christian attitude toward violence. The thesis: we should retaliate, since God is perfect, noncoercive love. Soon you would discover that it takes the quiet of a suburban home for the birth of the thesis that human nonviolence corresponds to God’s refusal to judge. In a scorched land soaked in the blood of the innocent, it will invariably die.”
The reason we don’t retaliate is because we believe that there is a God of justice who will see to it that justice is done in the world. Listen, friends; we don’t live in an imaginary world, we live in the real world. We live in a world that has terrorism and genocide and rape and murder and nuclear war and racial violence and human trafficking. In that world, the doctrine of a final judgment, a divine judgment, judgment against sin and evil and wickedness, is good news because it means that justice will be done and that God will punish every wickedness and every sin.
It’s also good news because it means that the villains in the story of the world will be punished. It’s another way, really, of saying the same thing, but I want to illustrate this now from the world of literature. There’s a scholar named Gene Edward Veith who wrote a wonderful book on literature from a Christian perspective, called Reading Between the Lines. In that book, he quotes the scholar Bruno Bettelheim about the appropriateness of children’s fairy tales that have violent endings for the villains.
Just think for a minute. Do you remember the story of Hansel and Gretel? They’re little children, right, and they get captured by a witch, and they are being stuffed and fed in order to be cooked and eaten. I mean, this is a story about cannibalism! This is really, really grotesque stuff. You remember what happens at the end of the fairy tale? Hansel and Gretel push the witch into the oven, so she dies and they escape.
So people in the very tame, innocent West are objecting to this. “These stories are not stories for children. This is too scary for kids.” This is what Bettelheim said, and Veith quotes him in this book. He said,
“Adults often think that the cruel punishment of an evil person in fairy tales upsets and scares children unnecessarily. Quite the opposite is true. Such retribution reassures the child that the punishment fits the crime. The more severely those bad ones are dealt with, the more secure the child feels.”
It’s a good point, and it means for us that the doctrine of divine judgment gives us the assurance that in the end justice will prevail, that evil will be punished, that God’s suffering people will be delivered, that the villains in the story of the world will not be the victors, but God will be the victor.
3. The Sovereign Lord Establishes His Kingdom
That leads us to the third and final point: the sovereign Lord establishes his kingdom. We serve the Lord who is the sovereign; he is the king who reigns over all things. He speaks to his people, he judges the nations, and he establishes his kingdom. And this is really the gospel note that you have in the book of Obadiah. There is something of a turn in Obadiah 17-21. Having given the prophetic oracle of doom for Edom, now he turns to the future for Zion, for Jerusalem, the city of God. Let’s read it, verse 17.
“But on Mount Zion will be deliverance;
it will be holy,
and Jacob will possess his inheritance.
Jacob will be a fire
and Joseph a flame;
Esau will be stubble,
and they will set him on fire and destroy him.
There will be no survivors
from Esau.”
This is a reversal. The people of God are being plundered by Edom, and God says, “There’s coming a day when there’s going to be a role reversal and there will be deliverance for Jerusalem.”
“The Lord has spoken.
“People from the Negev will occupy
the mountains of Esau,
and people from the foothills will possess
the land of the Philistines.
They will occupy the fields of Ephraim and Samaria,
and Benjamin will possess Gilead.
This company of Israelite exiles who are in Canaan
will possess the land as far as Zarephath;
the exiles from Jerusalem who are in Sepharad
will possess the towns of the Negev.
Deliverers [or saviors] will go up on Mount Zion
to govern the mountains of Esau.
And the kingdom will be the Lord’s.”
End of the book.
What does all that mean? That’s a lot of geography, that’s a lot of names that are hard to pronounce. What does all that mean?
I think we could say—and this will be helpful for you in reading the Old Testament prophets—that when the prophets spoke, they spoke with an immediate horizon in view, but also there’s a more distant horizon in view that concerns the kingdom of God. It’s often been compared to someone seeing a range of mountains, where you see a mountain range from a distance, and the various peaks look like one from a distance, but the closer you get, the more you see that there are several different mountains in this range.
We could say that in Obadiah’s prophecy there are three peaks that are in view. There is, first of all, the historical, the immediate history: the return from exile in the biblical history of Israel. Note in verse 20 the reference to the exiles. So the Israelites have gone into exile to Assyria, the Judeans are going into exile to Babylon, and seventy years later there is a return. So in our Bibles it’s the stories of Ezra and Nehemiah and Zerubbabel rebuilding the walls of the temple. That happens, and it is a partial fulfillment of what the prophets had spoken.
But there’s another fulfillment, what we might call the Christological fulfillment, in the arrival of the kingdom of God in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus; because Jesus comes on the scene born as the king of the Jews. Incidentally—just a little side note—when you get into Matthew 2, as soon as Jesus is born, you remember that King Herod is trying to put him to death, so you have the slaughter of the innocents in Bethlehem. All of the Herods were Idumeans, or descendants of Edom. They were Edomites. So you still have this conflict between Edom and Israel, and now you have it on this very personal scale between King Herod and the infant King Jesus.
Of course, Jesus dies, is raised to life, ascends to the right hand of God; the apostles go about preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, but there’s a future fulfillment that we are awaiting. So this is the ultimate fulfillment, the eschatological fulfillment in Christ’s second advent, the consummated kingdom of God, and the new creation. And when we read these final words in the book of Obadiah, “The kingdom will be the Lord’s,” that’s what we’re waiting for. We’re waiting for the final consummation of the kingdom of God on earth, when Jesus comes again.
Let me give you one more passage, Revelation 11:15-18. Notice here the emphasis on the kingdoms of the world and the nations. He says,
“The seventh angel sounded his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, which said:
“‘The kingdom of the world has become
the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah,
and he will reign for ever and ever.’
“And the twenty-four elders, who were seated on their thrones before God, fell on their faces and worshiped God, saying:
“‘We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty,
the One who is and who was,
because you have taken your great power
and have begun to reign.
The nations were angry,
and your wrath has come.
The time has come for judging the dead,
and for rewarding your servants the prophets
and your people who revere your name,
both great and small—
and for destroying those who destroy the earth.’”
This is the hope of the suffering people of God, that the kingdom of this world will become the kingdom of our God and his Christ, Jesus the Messiah.
Listen, friends. This is the application for us today, at least one application: When we are faced with all of the social and geopolitical and international issues of the world, we don’t know what to make of it, here’s the way you pray. Our prayer, first and foremost, is, “Thy kingdom come,” because the peace we long for, the justice we long for, the kingdom we long for, it’s not the United States of America, it’s not any other earthly kingdom; it is the kingdom of God! We’re waiting for Christ to come, and Christ is the one who will come and will make all things new. Trust in the God who reigns, who is reigning in and through human history, and who someday will bring his kingdom to earth.
Let me end by telling you a story about a famous painting. It’s a painting that shows two figures who are sitting across from one another at a chess board. One of them is a young man; his head is in his hands, there’s a look of despair on his face, a look of defeat. And across the table sits this dark, sinister figure that pretty clearly in the painting is the devil. The title of the painting is Checkmate. The idea is that here is this young man who has been defeated; the devil has won. He has no moves left.
But there’s a story about this. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but perhaps it’s true. It’s a wonderful story. This painting—it’s a real painting hanging in a museum—was one day viewed by a man who happened to be a master, world-class chess player. He stood at the painting, and he examined for the longest time the pieces on the board, and eventually he stepped back and he said, “Either the title is wrong, or the artist did not understand chess, because the king still has a move.”
Friends, we could say that that’s essentially the message of Obadiah. Here are the people of God. It looks like a checkmate. Babylon has invaded Jerusalem. The Edomites are plundering the people of God. It looks like all hope is lost, but this book ends by saying, “The kingdom will be the Lord’s.”
This is the message of the gospel, it’s the message of Scripture, the whole message of redemptive history; because time and again the people of God come into these scenarios where it looks like all hope is lost. Here’s Pharaoh, chasing down Israel to the brink of the Red Sea. They have Egypt behind them, they have the Red Sea in front of them; it looks like a checkmate! Then God divides the sea and the people walk through on dry land, and Pharaoh and his armies are drowned in the sea.
Here’s Babylon, burning Jerusalem to the ground. Their children are being carried off in exile. Edom is plundering the city. It looks like checkmate. But God is preserving a remnant, and there will be a return.
Here is Herod, slaughtering the infants in Bethlehem, but the Christ child, Jesus, escapes into Egypt and then returns, and he grows up.
But then, it looks like the worst moment of all. Here is Jesus the Messiah, the one the people hoped for, and he’s hanging naked and bleeding on a Roman cros. s, crucified. It looks like checkmate; but the king still has a move, because this king, Jesus, is raised from the dead.
It’s not just a move, it is the move. It is the move that snatches victory from the jaws of defeat. It is the move that brings light into the darkness. It is the move that brings resurrection life into the very shadow of death.
That’s what Obadiah saw in the distance: the kingdom shall be the Lord’s. And brothers and sisters, no matter what we face in this world—and we will face things—no matter what we face in our nation, no matter what we see happening in world politics—we may see a World War III before many of us finish our lives—no matter what we see, what we can be sure of is this, that the kingdom belongs to the Lord and that Christ is coming again and that his will will eventually be done, justice will prevail, and the king who was raised out of death, when he comes again will make all things new. That’s our hope. Let’s trust in that hope today. Let’s pray.
Lord, you are the sovereign Lord, the Lord who reigns over all things in heaven and earth, the Lord who reigns over human history, over kings and kingdoms, over nations and empires, and the Lord who reigns over our lives today. We pray that, having heard your word, you’d give us the hearts to receive it and to embrace it, and that it would be a foundation under our feet. When everything seems lost, when it seems hopeless in our world, when we are faced with wars and rumors of wars, when we are faced with perhaps untold suffering in the world or maybe even in our own lives, that we will remember that you are the God who’s in control, and you’re working out your purposes, and history is not finished, and there is coming a day when Jesus will return, and where this momentary, light affliction will be seen to have worked for us an eternal weight of glory.
Lord, we pray today with the saints throughout history, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” We pray that we would see the establishment of your kingdom on earth, progressively now through the ministry of your Spirit and through the gospel and through the church, and definitively once and for all when Jesus comes again.
Lord, would you give us a deeper loyalty to the kingdom of God? Would you set our hearts and our minds on eternal realities? Would you help us, Lord, think more broadly than just about our own personal comfort and even our own personal relationship with you, as important as that is? Help us, Lord, see that we are part of a bigger story, the story of this world, the story in which you are the primary author and you are working out your purposes.
May we be reminded of those kingdom purposes as we come to the table this morning and as we reflect on what Jesus, our king, has done through his self-sacrifice to save us from our sins and to give us the hope of a better world. We ask you, Lord, to draw near to us now as we prepare our hearts for the table and to be glorified in our continuing worship together. We pray this in Jesus’ name and for his sake, amen.
Brian G. Hedges
