God’s judgment is our hope
One evening eight years ago myself and a few others sat down for dinner with a woman who was about to cross a lifeless border, pass through a foreboding customs office, board a worn-out city bus, and take a journey that would likely end in death.
Awaiting certain persecution
This woman had become a Christian and had traveled from her home country in order to learn the Bible and grow in her faith. Now she was at a table in the quiet back room of a restaurant, sharing a meal with Christians for perhaps the last time in her life.
Her home country is known for its severe persecution against the church. Families are incentivized to turn one another over to the authorities if they suspect that their son or daughter, brother or sister, mother or father has become a Christian. Christians face sham trials and then certain death via execution or a dragged-out death sentence via brutally harsh labor camps.
The odds are high that this woman I had dinner with eight years ago is no longer alive.
Encouragement in the face of oppression
That night, as we all conversed over dinner, I felt a sense of Spirit-infused awe as I reflected on the power of the Gospel through which this woman, who was decades older than me and from a different part of the world than me, had become my sister in the faith.
But I also felt a sense of dread as if I was watching her paddling into a storm with relentless wind, rain, and waves and swells that were 100-feet high in the kayak of her faith in Christ.
Yet she was resolved to face the storm. She had a husband and teenage children who were drowning in their sins and didn’t realize it. Maybe she would capsize and sink, but she had to paddle with all her might and see if she could be the means by which they would hear the Gospel and experience new birth.
Back to that crowded table with room-temperature appetizers and empty plates: what hope could I give her? Could I find something to tell her that would nourish her soul like a meal that continually satisfies? As she prepared for a famine of the soul with no Christian fellowship or encouragement, what could I tell her to keep starvation at bay?
Truthfully, I can’t recall what my companions and I shared with her, aside from urging her to trust the Lord and to know that He would be with her.
Of course, this is true, and it is an encouragement to the Christian who stands on the shore as the ominous storm of the evil of this world approaches. But I wish I had shared with her the promise and the hope of the book of Obadiah.
Particularly, I wish I had shared with her the promise of God’s judgment upon those who work evil against His people.
Judgment and hope
As Babylon invaded Jerusalem in 586 BC, Israelite refugees fled for their lives. Obadiah tells us that the Edomites captured and turned many Israelite refugees over to the Babylonians. This was evil no matter who did it, but it was particularly evil given that the Edomites were distant relatives of the Israelites (through the line of Esau, their ancestor Jacob’s brother).
Obadiah tells us that God saw all of it.
Obadiah shows us that God sees when wicked nations harm His people.
Obadiah promises that God will act.
For the first 14 verses of the book, Obadiah lays out the charges against Edom and God’s verdict of total judgment against her, but then, as the book seemingly reaches a crescendo, we read in verse 15, “For the day of the LORD is near upon all the nations.”
Strangely, the whole book, which had been a judgment against Edom, is now pronounced as a verdict against all nations. Edom would not only face the wrath of God for her injustice towards Israel, but she also would serve as a warning to all nations who oppress and harm His people.
The Day of the Lord is coming
Throughout the Old Testament prophets, “the day of the LORD” was a promised day of God’s judgment perfectly and fully delivered to those who would harm the people of God.
Government leaders and authorities may think themselves untouchable as they seek the destruction of the Church. But Obadiah warns those who are drunk on their own power as they oppose God’s people, that God Himself will come and make them drink the cup of His wrath.
Even if the people of God are eradicated, Obadiah promises that God will rebuild that which has been destroyed.
Obadiah 16-18 gives us this hope in God’s judgment:
For as you have drunk on my holy mountain,
so all the nations shall drink continually;
they shall drink and swallow,
and shall be as though they had never been.
But in Mount Zion there shall be those who escape,
and it shall be holy,
and the house of Jacob shall possess their own possessions.
The house of Jacob shall be a fire,
and the house of Joseph a flame,
and the house of Esau stubble;
they shall burn them and consume them,
and there shall be no survivor for the house of Esau,
for the Lord has spoken.
Do you wonder about whether or not God sees the grotesque evils you have endured? He does. He will act. He will restore you in mercy.
Do you wonder whether or not God will help the Church in New England through whatever the years ahead hold? Be assured that He will.
He sees. He will act. He will bring about His Kingdom.
Edom is no more. But the Church marches on.
Stephen McDonald is the pastor of First Baptist Church of Scituate, MA.