Living In The Rocks (Obadiah 3)

 


Tuesday, September 10, 2024


Psalm 25

Obadiah 1-14

1 John 4:13-21


Living In The Rocks (Obadiah 3)


When was the last time you read the book of the prophet Obadiah? Considering it is the shortest of all the Old Testament books, it is a wonder we don’t read it more often. And how marvellously vivid is the imagery!


One can just picture it: the Edomites, living up in the mountains, keeping themselves aloof from the world around them, hoarding their treasure deep in the rock. When the world around them is burning – and in particular, their kin in Jerusalem, ravaged by the Babylonians – they remain up in their mountain strongholds, counting their coins, ignoring the cries below. It almost makes you wonder if they also were a short, stocky people, with thick beards and axes; the connection to the dwarfs of fantasy is uncanny.


But we read about dwarfs (and goblins and dragons and elves) so that we know what to do when we come across them in real life. Because as the book of Obadiah demonstrates, dwarfs do exist in real life. There are people who hide themselves away in safe mountains and hoard their treasure and don’t care at all for the people around them. And God has something to say about them, too: they will get what they desire. When it comes for their turn to be attacked, no-one will be around to help them. As they lived alone with their wealth, they will die alone.


If the dwarfs want to hide up in the mountains counting their gold, then we need not be concerned with them. Plenty of people have tried to break into those fortresses and take it off them, but for all that effort, they usually become dwarfs themselves. We instead are down on the plains, facing the foe, following our Captain. Christ Jesus came as a man, not a dwarf, or an elf, or any other fantastical creature. He comes to lead us as the race of men, of human beings in the midst of danger, and he leads us into victory.


This is our charge, as men and women made in the image of God and redeemed by the blood of Jesus: to build the kingdom of heaven here on earth, to wield the sword and the trowel, and not to hide away in the mountains. There is work to be done here and now. Our kin are suffering, and Jesus has given us the grace of God to take to them and free them, just as he has freed us.


If you lived in a world of fantasy, what creature do you think you are most like? What makes a human being different from everything else? What is our responsibility in this world as followers of Jesus?


Lord Jesus, our Captain and Saviour: lead us from our hiding-places of fear out into the wide plains of your victorious love.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Knowing The Difference (2 Chronicles 12:8)

Image
  Wednesday, June 26, 2024 Psalms 137; 138 2 Chronicles 12 James 2:8-26 Knowing The Difference (2 Chronicles 12:8) Let’s be honest for a moment. It is all too easy to look around ourselves, at the world around us, to see how non-Christians are living their lives, and wonder if the grass over there might be greener. Our Lord’s commands often seem confusing, or burdensome, and if we were to pack it all in and go our own way, might not things be easier? Becoming lords of our own destiny is the ongoing temptation of the human race. From the fruit in the Garden of Eden, to today’s mantra of “be all you can be”, we have been trapped in this to-and-fro between the intentions of our Creator and the desires of our own hearts. And why not, thought Rehoboam? Why shouldn’t I look at the success of my own rule, and abandon the law of the Lord? Or perhaps he justified his apostasy not from his success, but from his failure to bring the northern kingdom back in line. P
Read more

Anxiety For All The Churches

  Tuesday, June 18, 2024 Psalm 107:1-22 2 Chronicles 6:32-7:6 2 Corinthians 11:16-29 Anxiety For All The Churches (2 Corinthians 11:28) A phrase I often come across when talking with people about life is “I can’t complain; others have got it much worse.” I appreciate the sentiment; when life turns around and smacks you about, one of the most difficult problems to solve is trying to figure out how to deal with it on a spiritual level. For Australian Christians, it seems like an easy lifeline to consider how good our life is from an overall perspective compared to many other people around the world. But then I read this passage from St Paul and I wonder: is that attitude good enough? What if things get really bad – I mean, really bad – will I be able to say “I can’t complain; others have got it much worse”? Because the apostle had it worse than most: beatings, imprisonment, starvation, homelessness, shipwrecks, he had it all. Who could say they had it wor
Read more

The Lord’s Plumb Line (Amos 7:7)

Image
  Tuesday, July 23, 2024 Psalms 54; 55:1-12 Amos 6:8-7:9 Romans 2:1-11 The Lord’s Plumb Line (Amos 7:7) For all these terrifying words about death and destruction, can we find any positive words about God’s judgement? First, there is a vision of locusts devouring a harvest. This seems pretty bad; and Amos intercedes for the people, and God says that “this will not happen”. Then there is an enormous fire that devours everything, a supernatural nuclear holocaust. Again, Amos intercedes, and God replies that “this will not happen either”. But God is coming to pass judgement. And it is not a judgement of a capricious or arbitrary type. It is a fair judgement. It is the judgement of the eye of the careful builder. God sets a plumb line against his people. We use something similar, and we call it a “level”; that small capsule filled with water, with a single bubble within, set on a straight piece of metal or timber. Line it up against whatever you
Read more