Obadiah
Verses 3 & 4 focus on Edom’s pride:
3 The pride of your heart has deceived you,
you who live in the clefts of the rock,
in your lofty dwelling,
who say in your heart,
“Who will bring me down to the ground?”
4 Though you soar aloft like the eagle,
though your nest is set among the stars,
from there I will bring you down,
declares the Lord.
One of my biggest pet peeves is pride and once again God is punishing the people of Edom for getting absorbed in themselves. They got in trouble for cursing Israel and were “humbled” by God. This is a stern warning to anyone who becomes prideful and pushes God to second or third or even away. The problem with pride is it’s so easy to hide and detect.
The best way to figure out your “heart” is look at how you spend your money. Pride will come out in the way you handle your money. If God is not first there are problems and I must confess I am there right now. As you know I let things go and have been faithful on my “tithe” through the rough spots. Recently I have let other events, like a new roof, change my spending habits and for whatever reason my spending for God has come to a crawl. Pray that the desire for ME stops and I refocus my finances.
Verse 12 continues the warnings:
But do not gloat over the day of your brother
in the day of his misfortune;
do not rejoice over the people of Judah
in the day of their ruin;
do not boast
in the day of distress.
This section is focusing on Edom’s violence against Israel and how their attention is wrong. Again pride got in the way of their kingdom and they become just a footnote in history only seen in our Bibles and a few archaeological findings. I find it interesting how many great and powerful nations have risen and fallen, yet through it all Israel has remained whole. Granted the nation has been “nomads” before entering the Promised Land and between the time of Jesus and 1948 when the UN gave Israel the Promised Land back.
We need to try to learn from Edom and all the other examples in the Bible on pride and try to remove it from OUR own lives. It destroys our relationship with God and if it infects a nation will quickly bring them down. Today I look at the USA and how that once shining light of freedom is being eroded because of pride. Unfortunately the pride that is destroying us is infecting the rest of the world. I pray this stops and people learn that having it all doesn’t mean squat if there is no one to share life with!!