Prosperity to move a Nation

Obadiah verses 5

I have learned so little in my 70 years on planet earth, but I do have this one thought nailed to my thinker; “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD.  (Isaiah 55:8 ESV)  So for you or I to presume we understand the ways of God, unless they are from Scripture, is to raise ourselves to the level of God, and then we become a fool.  In that much of my early life was playing foolish games, living as if I had some control on what you and I call the future, I chose not to be foolish any longer.  With that said, have you ever thought about God using prosperity to move a nation away from His chosen ones?

Genesis 36 gives us the history of Edom in verses 6-8, “Then Esau took his wives, his sons, his daughters, and all the members of his household, his livestock, all his beasts, and all his property that he had acquired in the land of Canaan. He went into a land away from his brother Jacob. For their possessions were too great for them to dwell together. The land of their sojournings could not support them because of their livestock. So Esau settled in the hill country of Seir. (Esau is Edom.) (Genesis 36:6-8 ESV)  Scripture tells us that God gave Mount Seir to Esau. When the children of Israel journeyed into the wilderness by the way of the Red Sea they compassed Mount Seir many days and God instructed them not to take anything from the people of Edom without paying for it, and not to linger in their land, for God had given it to them.

It is always good to remember that God is not like us.  We are time critters and God is the Creator of time, and because He created time He has been to both the beginning and the end of time.  So with that thought, we look at verse five and we understand that God is telling the prideful Edomites that thieves are coming to ravage the land and they will not be like those who steal grapes and leave some for the widows, orphans, and aliens to gather, but Obadiah goes on in verse nine to tell them no remnant would be left.

It is a time of Edom reaping what they have sown, they had a history of opposing God’s chosen people all the way back to Moses time, and now they are helping and finding pleasure when Judah is attacked and they even help in the capture of some of their cousins.  It seems as if they put great trust in the treaties they had with the nations around them, and it was these nations that had attacked them.  The Lord tells Obadiah that the wise and the one with understanding will be eliminated, could it be that these so called wise were the ones who were wise in their own eyes, and foolish to the ways of God?

So a word to the wise is sufficient, and that word comes from 1Peter 1:10-12; “Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look.” (1 Peter 1:10-12 ESV)

From our Back Porch,

Bob Rice