Obadiah 1:1-21, Rev 4:1-11, Psalms 132:1-18, Proverbs 29:24-25
Today is the 13th day of December. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian. It is wonderful to be here with you as we move ourselves into the…the close of another week and come in out of…out of what’s going on all around us and just warm ourselves by the Global Campfire here as we continue our journey through the Scriptures this year. We concluded the book of Amos in the Old Testament yesterday. We’re kind of rapidly moving through what is known as the minor prophets. And as we mentioned earlier, when we began this kind of grouping of books, they’re not minor because they’re less relevant, they’re minor because they’re shorter in duration, which we will experience today. We will read another of the minor prophets the book of Obadiah, but we’ll read the whole thing in one sitting today.
Introduction to the book of Obadiah:
And that is in part because Obadiah is the shortest book in the Old Testament. And even though Obadiah identifies himself as the author, we know very little about him other than his…his name…means servant of Yahweh, but Obadiah wasn’t an uncommon name. So, that makes dating this prophecy difficult. If we’re trying to find consensus among biblical scholars it would be that Obadiah was probably contemporary with Jeremiah the prophet and that his prophetic work used the conquest of Jerusalem, when Babylon conquered Jerusalem as its backdrop, as the context. And if that’s a correct theory then that Obadiah could be dated somewhere to the late 500s B.C. It’s a short book as we just mentioned. It contains only 21 verses, but it deals with a very big long-running family issue and ultimately the book of Obadiah heralds the doom and destruction of the Edomites. So, we kinda need to just reflect back on the earlier days of our journey back at the earlier times of this year and remember…remember Abraham and remember he had a son of promise named Isaac. And we remember Isaac had sons, Jacob and Esau. Jacob’s name when he grew up would later be changed to Israel. And, so, therefore his children were most literally the children of Israel. Now, Esau was also Jacob’s son and he also had children and they also flourished, and they became known as the Edomites. The offspring of the two brothers born to Isaac, Jacob and Esau, the grandsons of Abraham. So, we follow Isaac’s story, we follow Jacob’s story, we follow his offspring, the children of Israel’s story, and we follow them into Egypt in the Scriptures. And then we follow them out of Egypt when God delivers them from slavery. The Edomites, their brothers, would not allow their relatives to pass through their land when they were traveling toward their own promised land. And at other points in history when Israel’s being attacked, the Edomites just watched their brothers be attacked basically. And Obadiah is speaking directly to this issue in his book. But it wasn’t just that they were passive at times. At times they were also active. They were like willing to pillage Israel, their brothers, while they were suffering, and God was not pleased as we will see. Obadiah ultimately announces complete destruction for Edom. But we have good application for this message in our own time because each one of us, no matter where we are on this planet, have been redeemed by Jesus and have become children of God. So, we are also family, brothers, and sisters, the body of Christ and we are often the witnesses of brothers and sisters at war with one another for one reason or another. And we can very easily stand by and watch our brothers and sisters suffer in all sorts of ways. And, remember that pride and arrogance that we were talking about from our reading yesterday, we can very, very easily slide into this arrogant posture toward our brothers and sisters just thinking, “well, they’re just getting what they deserve.” And as we’ll see from the book of Obadiah, this is not the posture. In fact, this is a bad posture and God is greatly displeased with such arrogance. And, so, we begin and read in its entirety the book of Obadiah.
Payer:
Father, we thank You for another day in Your word and…and we…we can count down the days we’ll been saying that because we’re so near to the end of the year and it’s so easy to begin checking out, really begin checking into this season, really begin checking into all the festivities, but begin checking out in other areas of our lives, thinking maybe we’ve gotten all that we’re going to get from Your word for this year. And yet, right here, right now, You are speaking directly to us from the Proverbs, just now. People are trapped by their fear of others, but those who trust the Lord are secure.” We needed to hear that. All of us needed to hear that. Once again, You’ve reminded us where our strength lies, where our future hopes are. And they are in You and You alone. And, so, come Holy Spirit, plant the words that we’ve read today from Your word into our lives and may our hearts be fertile soil for them we pray in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.
Announcements:
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And it’s all Christmas right now and there are two, specific…well…there’s more than two…but there’s two specific things going on we need to talk about.
One of them is our upcoming family Christmas party where we get together virtually and hear from each other, our Christmas wishes, our Christmas prayers, memories of specific things in the Bible that really spoke to us…just what we do as we come around the Global Campfire and celebrate Christmas together. So, we’re taking all those calls this week. And, so, here we are at the end of the week. So, we’re almost done. If you are procrastinating, if you’ve procrastinated you might get left out. Make sure you call in your Christmas greeting by tomorrow. And you can do that by the same method that we…that we call in our prayer requests to each other every day. You can use the Hotline button in the app, or you can dial 877-942-4253. Since that is the prayer request line, here's…here’s the rule. Don’t call in a prayer request and a holiday greeting in the same call. This is the one time you can make multiple calls and call them in separate and we will be taking those calls today and tomorrow and then we’ll start putting things together for our Global Campfire Christmas this year.
The other thing that’s going on is the Daily Audio Bible Christmas Box for 2019. And it is packed full of resources that have been the most popular this year. And it is a wonderful box, a powerhouse box, I think. And, yeah, so those are available now. I’m reminding you that the Christmas shipping cutoff date is this coming Wednesday for those living here domestically in the United States. The international date has passed. We’ll still ship them until we run out of them but those are kind of the dates that we’re looking at. This coming Wednesday we’re gonna be shipping and that’s where we think we’re safe for Christmas arrival. So, check them out. It’s got the God of Your Story, a signed hardback first edition copy of the God of Your Story in the Christmas box this year, the only place you can get it. It’s got the Daily Audio Bible Christmas ornament with our word maintain on it for this year, is in the Christmas Box. It’s exclusive to the Christmas Box. And just a lot of other resources that you can find in the Daily Audio Bible Shop. Just go to the Christmas section and you’ll see all of this. And, yeah, we always make these with the idea that there’s gonna be things that you’ll want to keep, and there’s gonna be things that you might want to give away. And you get to pick and choose all of that and pray over it and we love that because we pray over these boxes as they go out and make their way around the world. So, those are available at dailyaudiobible.com in the Shop in the Christmas section. Check it out.
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And that’s it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I will be waiting for you here tomorrow.