Brian Berry, Instructor of Biblical Studies at Texas Baptist College, preached from Obadiah in SWBTS Chapel on October 2, 2025.
The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.
Thank you acapella, for that captivating song. As we continue our worship, worship doesn’t stop when the praise team, the worship band, goes down, but we’re continuing our worship this time in the Word so good morning. Amen. Amen. Y’all talk back to me. I’m back Baptist preacher. Good morning, southwestern Texas, Baptist College. It’s good to be before you another time is sharing the Word of God, and I get chance to serve you in the Word of God, and not just teaching today. So first, before we go any further, I want to say thank you to Dr Dockery, for his confidence in me, not only to teach here at Southwestern this institution that has done so much, has invested so much in me, but also to be selected to preach before you today, to serve you today in the Word of God.
Also, I want to thank Dr grace for those words and the kind pushing towards the finish line that he so often does every time he sees me in regards to finishing the dissertation. But I know it’s for my good. So thank you for the kind words and for that as well. And then also thank you for my friends. They’ll also call colleagues, faculty, staff, students, people who have texted me and have called the saying, who are praying for me, my parents, who are watching online, most likely right now and then, not least, but last, but not least, my beautiful wife, she already knows I was going to point her out, even though that’s embarrassing, it’s good to have her stop by and share this time with me as well, and then also my brother from Destiny Church. It’s good to see you brother.
All right, let me pray, if you don’t mind. I’ve been praying this whole time, and I feel better after they prayed for me earlier, but I want to pray for all of us as we get ready to hear the Word of God. So if you will, let’s pray. Father God. You are great, you are mighty, you are awesome, you inspire all. You are holy. You are Lord. You are king of kings and Lord of lords. You are the king that’s both in heaven and in earth. So Father, God, we worship you, we recognize who you are, and we see ourselves in light of who you are, that we are needy, we are dependent. God, we were sinful, we were wretched. God undone, if it wasn’t for Your Grace, God that stooped down, that rescued us, that washed us off, that regenerated us and called us your children, So Father God, thank You for the privilege of being a child of God, a child of the king, and one that benefits God. Of being a child of yours, as we have your spirit living on the inside, which we sung about God, we have your people that encourages us, God that stirs us up for love and good deeds. And also God, we have your word that is living and active, that helps us to be a light into our path, as the psalmist says, to guide us into all truth, as John says, and to revive us So Father, God, I pray that you do all of those things today through your prophet, Obadiah, even convict us.
God, however you want to guide us today on this part of the service. God, I pray that you use me, God your servant. God to be your instrument. God of just your mouthpiece, just for a few minutes. God, I’m undeserving of this task, God, but I need you and father, God, even beyond me, I pray that your spirit, as we hear your words, that you will bring application to our hearts. We bring belief to our hearts. God, you bring the faith to our hearts that we may do your word after this session, this time is done. So we thank You God together as we’re in anticipation of hearing your word. So we ask this in Jesus name. We pray everyone who agree. Let us say, Amen.
That’s a hearty Amen. I like that, alright? So what I want to do, I want to help you out this morning. Not only we’re helping you by, you know, sharing the book of Obadiah, or, you know, preaching Obadiah to you, but also I want to help you in your your Bible reading. So some of you might be doing, you know, a walk through the Bible in a year and going to Old Testament, New Testament. So I want to help you out. This morning, we’re going to read the whole book of Obadiah. The whole book Obadiah. So if you have a friend, if you have a fellow student that has this missing chapel, this morning, I give you the opportunity, the privilege to be able. To be super holy this afternoon, and saying, in chapel, I read a whole book of the Bible until they flip and find out that Obadiah is only 21 verses. So we’re going to read the whole book of Obadiah for your hearing, and then we’ll, we’ll get into what Obadiah is saying. So Obadiah from the CSB version, it says the vision of Obadiah. This is what the Lord God has said about Edom. We have heard a message from the LORD an envoy has been sent among the nations. Rise up and let’s go to war against her. Look, I will make you insignificant among the nations. You will be deeply despised. Your arrogant heart has deceived you. You who live in the clefts of the rock in your home on the heights, who say to yourself, who can bring me down to the ground, though you seem to soar like an eagle and make your nest among the stars. Even from there, I will bring you down.
This is the Lord’s declaration, verse five. If thieves came to you, if marauders by night, how ravaged you would be when they steal only what they wanted. Or if grape harvesters came to you when they leave a few grapes. How Esau will be pillaged his hidden treasures searched out. Everyone who has a treaty with you will drive you to the border. Everyone at peace with you will deceive and conquer you. Those who eat your bread will set a trap for you. He will be unaware of it in that day, this is the Lord’s declaration. Will I not eliminate the wise ones of Edom and those who understand from the hill country of Esau, temon, your warriors will be terrified, so that everyone from the hill country of Esau will be destroyed by slaughter. You will be covered with shame and destroyed forever because of violence done to your brother, Jacob, on the day you stood aloof, on the day strangers captured his wealth while foreigners entered his city gate and cast lots for Jerusalem. You were just like one of them. Do not gloat over your brother in the day of his calamity. Do not rejoice over the people of Judah in the day of their destruction. Do not boastfully mock in the day of their distress. Do not enter my people’s city gate in the day of their disaster. Yes, you do not gloat over their misery in the day of their disaster and do not appropriate their possessions in the day of their disaster.
Do not stand at a cross votes to cut off their fugitives and do not hand over their survivors in the day of distress. Verse verse 15, for the day of the Lord is near against all the nations. As you have done, it will be done to you. What you deserve will return on your own head as you have drunk on My holy mountain. So all the nations will drink continually. They will drink and go down and be as though they never have been. But there will be a deliverance on Mount Zion. It will be holy. The house of Jacob will dispossess those who dispossessed them. Then the house of Jacob will be a blazing fire, and the house of Joseph a burning flame, but the house of Esau will be stubble. Jacob will set them on fire and consume Edom. Therefore no survival. Survivor will remain of the house of Esau, for the Lord has spoken verse 19, almost done. People from the Negev will possess the hill country of Esau. Those from the Judean foothills will possess the land of the Philistines. They will possess the territories of Ephraim and Samaria, while Benjamin will possess Gilead.
The exiles of the Israelites who are in hallah and who are among the Canaanites as far as Zarephath, as well as the exiles of Jerusalem who are in sepharad, will possess the cities of the Negev saviors will ascend Mount Zion to rule over the hill country of Esau, and the kingdom will be the Lord’s thus, so reads the Word of God. Now before we get started and. Looking into this text, what I want to do is I want to do an informal poll, kind of like what I’ve done in a couple of my classes, just by a show of hands. How many of you have ever heard in your church or just anywhere, a sermon from the book of Obadiah? Show of hands? Okay, pretty good, more than I thought. So just from that informal poll, I think we can properly establish that this is a neglected book of the Bible. Obadiah is a neglected prophet, and there’s many reasons for that. First thing that’s in an Old Testament, no no no shame, no shade, to my fellow colleagues in the Old Testament department, but many times in our churches, we are preaching from the New Testament. Another reason is because the content, because it’s talking about an ancient city and an ancient people, an ancient empire, and we don’t know how to relate that to ourselves. But probably another reason why it’s neglected because it’s one of the shortest books in the Bible.
In fact, the book of Obadiah is the shortest book in the Old Testament for my brothers and sisters. Just because something is short doesn’t mean that it is insignificant. See, my favorite sport is basketball. I play it as much as I can with my girls out in the hoop that we have in front of the driveway. And in basketball, a game of giants, a game where you have seven footers, even seven foot six players like windy in a game with all of these tall players that make millions of dollars for a living, sometimes it’s the shortest player, the point guard, who can drive a whole team. We’re my brothers and sisters. I think this is true for the book of Obadiah, a short book like this in the Minor Prophets. I think the truth as in this book, I think the theological truth that Obadiah is telling us. I think the word of God filtered through the prophet Obadiah is a driving force, not just for this book, but a driving force for all the Minor Prophets, just because it is short doesn’t mean that’s insignificant. But before we get into that truth this morning, before we get into that timeless truth that I believe is relevant for our lives and for our time, we first need to ask some questions. We need to ask the question, Who? We need to ask the question, what? We need to ask the question, why?
And we need to ask the question, how, in fact, I feel like I’m in my hermeneutics class. We need to ask some questions from the text. We need to ask, who is Obadiah talking about? And then we need to ask, What is God doing in this book? And then we need to ask question, why is he doing it? And then finally, how do we apply it to our lives? So let’s start out with the first question, who? Who is Obadiah talking about? Well, we see this in verse one. Verse one says the vision of Obadiah that this is what the Lord has declared, or this A message from the Lord that he has said about, or sometimes some Version says concerning Edom. Who is Obadiah talking about? He’s talking about the nation of Edom. So who is Edom? Who are the idiomites? Well, their story goes back all the way to Genesis. You remember the patriarchs. We have Abraham Isaac and Jacob, and then Jacob, he had a twin brother by the name of Esau. And the Bible says that Jacob’s descendants later became the 12 Tribes of Israel, and Esau’s descendants later became the nation of Edom, south of the Dead Sea, and just like the relationship between Jacob and Esau, though these nations share a common ancestry, though these nations, in some way, are Brothers, they have a complicated and a messy relationship throughout their history, to the point of Obadiah, because my brother and sister, it was Edom when the children of Israel were making their way to the promised land that prohibited them from going through their country. It was Edom during the ninth century that attacked and revolted against the nation of Judah. It was Edom in the eighth century that invaded and took captives from Judah, and it was Edom once again in the sixth century as Babylon was raiding and destroying the city, as Babylon was destroying the temple, according. In this psalm 137 it was the Edomites who were cheering. They were saying, lay it bare. Lay it bare all the way down to the foundation. My brothers and sisters, Edom was once a brother, but now they have become an enemy to God’s people. So God sends a vision. He sends a message through the prophet Obadiah.
So my brothers and sisters, we have who Obadiah is talking about. He’s talking about this brother nation who has, now has become an enemy called the Edomites. But now that we have the who we need to see and look at the what. Well, in verses one through nine, we have the what of what God is doing to the nation of Edom through obadiah’s text. In verse one, Obadiah says that he’s that God’s going to gather up the nations and call them to battle against Edom. In verses three and four, we have God saying that he’s going to bring them down from the cities that have built among the hills and the mountain tops. In verses five and six, God is going to allow the other nations to plunder Edom, where they will wipe them clean and there will be nothing left. And in verse seven, God says he’s going to make even their allies that made treaties with them, they’re going to turn against them in battle, my brothers and sisters, Obadiah is saying against Edom, that God has set his face against Edom. God has declared judgment against this nation. God declares judgment against Edom, and he’s going to do so through the other nations. We have the who of Obadiah.
We have what God is doing in this book. But now that we have the who, we have the what we first need to we next need to look at the reason why. Well, we see that in verses 10 through 14 of our text, it says, in Verse 10, you will be covered with shame and destroyed forever. Why? Because of violence done to your brother, Jacob, on the day you stood aloof, on the day strangers captured his wealth, and while foreigners entered the city’s gates and cast lots for Jerusalem, you were just like one of them. And then he goes, on verse 12, do not gloat over your brother. Notice that in the day of his calamity, then he says, Do not rejoice over the people of Judah in the day of their destruction. Do not, do not enter my people’s city gates in the day of their disaster.
Do not go over the mystery in a day of disaster. Do not, do not appropriate their possessions in a day of disaster once again, do not stand at the crossroad and cut off their fugitives and hand over their survivors in the day of their distress, my brother and sister. Did you catch the repetition that Obadiah is talking about a day? Remember what we heard about the day of the Lord, a day of decision, a day where God comes and intervenes a decisive event from the Lord God. Remember how we heard that the prophet Joel preached about a day? Remember what we heard just on Tuesday from Dr Taylor, that the prophet Amos preached about a day? Well, my brothers and sisters, a version of that day has come to the nation of Israel and also the nation of Judah, a type A version of that day has already come upon God’s people before the writing of this book, bobadiah says, when that day came, Edom taunted his brother when that day came to God’s people, Edom cheered and laughed. When that day came, Edom participated and took away some of their captives. So my brothers and sisters, God is going to judge the nation of Edom, because they took joy in the judgment of God’s people. So God says the way I would say it, since Edom reveled in Judah’s day, you’re going to have a day of your own, my brothers and sisters, this is the why of what God is doing to the nation of Edom.
Why is God judging the nation of Edom? Because they reveled in someone else’s suffering, and most importantly, they reveled in the judgment of God’s people. But there’s a deeper reason why, my brothers and sisters of what why God is going to judge the nation of Edom? Him, and we can find this deeper why squarely in verse 15. For verse 15 says in the CSB for the day of the Lord, there that is again, for the day of the Lord is near against how many all the nations, as you have done, it will be done to you what you deserve. We will turn on your head, my brothers and sisters, verse 15 shows us that this day is not just reserved for Edom. Verse 15 shows us that this day extends beyond the neighboring nations around Israel. Verse 15 shows us that this extends beyond the pagan nations that is around Israel that are not supposed to be like verse 15 shows us that this goes beyond the rebellion in the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom. But this leads to a timeless truth that I believe is to hinge to the book of Obadiah.
And this truth is that the God of Israel is Lord over the nations, and the one who is Lord over the nations cares for his chosen people, my brothers and sisters, this is a double sided truth, and it is the key to understanding the book of Obadiah. This double sided truth, I believe, is repeated throughout all of the Minor Prophets. This double sided truth, it applies to books like The Book of Daniel later on, earlier in the canon. And this truth, my brothers and sisters, this double sided truth still applies to us in 2025 that the God of Israel is Lord over the nations, and the one who is Lord still cares for his people. And I don’t know how you’re feeling this morning, my brothers and sisters, I don’t know what weights or anxieties you are carrying. Before we go into fall reading days you may be anxious, even as you sit here looking at and thinking about all the wars and rumors of wars. But remember, our God is still Lord over the nations. You may be feeling anxious over the humanity crisis in different pockets over our world, but remember, our God is still Lord over the nations.
You may be distressed over the visions in our own country, but remember our God is still Lord over the nations, and you may be burdened about situations and circumstances in your own life. Remember that our God is Lord over the nations, but he also cares for his chosen people, my brothers and sisters, this truth, this double sided truth, is meant to be a warning for some, but an encouragement for others, and this double sided truth in the book of Obadiah still applies in 2025 so with just a few minutes, I have left about 15 more minutes. I’m the only one in between you and lunch this morning, I want to give you two ways. Hallelujah. I want to give you two ways. I want to show you how this double sided truth is relevant for us here in Fort Worth, Texas, or wherever you’re watching in 2025 the first way that this truth is relevant for us is that, since our God is Lord over the nations, he will bring justice in his own timing. You see, my brothers and sisters, one of the hardest things to do, my opinion, one of the hardest places to be is to live in the gap. What do I mean by in the gap?
The gap, you might ask. The gap is an interval of time between God’s promise and God’s fulfillment. The gap my brothers and sisters is the interval of time between when he said it and we see it. The Gap my brothers and sisters is the interval of time between the presence of evil and his justice. And some people, some skeptics, even some believers, get stuck on the gap. They get stuck at looking at the gap and they consider it as a sign of God’s non existence. Some get stuck on the gap and they consider it as evidence. US of injustice, but Obadiah helps us look at that same gap and to remember the Lord’s sovereignty. Obadiah reminds us that the God who is Lord over the nations, he will bring his justice in his own timing. So my brothers and sisters, sometimes God’s God delays his justice in order to give us time to repent, and in other times, we see in the Bible, God delays his justice in order to store wrath for the day of his vengeance. Second Peter three says, don’t look at the gap. Don’t consider the gap as a sign of God being slack. God may be giving us a gap my brothers and sisters, to give us time to repent. God might be giving us a gap to mourn for our nation, to mourn for our country.
God may be giving us a gap to give us time to evangelize our neighbors, but for others, God may be giving a gap to store up wrath for the day of vengeance. Our God is still Lord, and He will bring justice in his own timing. But there’s a second part of that double sided truth on brothers and sisters that’s meant to be an encouragement for all of God’s people, that not only the Lord who is Lord over nations that he will bring his justice in his own timing, but that same one, the same Lord who is Lord over nations, he cares for his people, and he will bring a reversal of their fortunes on that day, Hallelujah. Verse 17 of our text says, he says, but there will be a deliverance on Mount Zion, and they will be holy. The house of Jacob will dispossess those who dispossess them. And in verse, 19 people from Negev will possess the hill country of Esau. Those from the Judean foothills will possess the land of the Philistines, verse 21 and saviors will ascend on Mount Zion to rule over the hill country of Esau and the kingdom. On that day, the kingdom will be the Lord’s my brothers and sisters. There will be a day when God will bring a reversal to his people. And this truth is not just in the book of Obadiah. We find this truth all throughout the scriptures. For Jesus said, Blessed are the poor in spirit. That’s the gap for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. That’s the reversal.
Jesus says, Blessed are those who mourn. That’s the gap for they will be confident. That’s the reversal. Jesus says, Blessed are the meek. They’re in the gap for they will inherit the earth. That’s the reversal. John says, it has not yet appeared what we shall be. We’re in the gap, but we know that when He appears, that we will be like Him. The reversal Paul says in Romans chapter eight, For I consider the sufferings of this present time we’re in the gap shall not be compared to the glory that will be revealed within us. That’s the reversal, my brother and sister, I don’t know about you, but I’m waiting for that day. I don’t know about you, I’m waiting for that reversal, because on that day, God’s going to reverse the fortunes of his people. God’s going to bring a reversal.
So are you waiting for that reversal, when every wrong will be right, when justice will flow like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream? Are you waiting for that reversal, when death will be swallowed up and this mortal will put on immortality, my brother and sister, are you waiting for that reversal, when the King of kings will step put his foot on Mount Zion? My brother and sister, are you waiting for the reversal, when the kingdoms of this world will become the kingdoms of our God and His Christ, my brothers and sisters, we’re living in the gap right now. You and I are in the gap. We’re living in that time between the promise and the fulfillment. We are living in the time between the already and the not yet. We are. Are living in the time between the cross and the culmination. We are living in the time between the ascension and his return. But Obadiah reminds us, in this short, the shortest book in Old Testament, that don’t, don’t look at that gap and consider it as a sign of God’s non existence. Don’t look at that gap between the crimes and the justice and consider it a sign of injustice. But Obadiah tells us, don’t look at that gap and consider that God, in some way, is being slack on his promise. But Obadiah reminds us to look at that gap and to see to remember the sovereignty of our God. Obadiah says Our God is still Lord over the nations, and the one who is Lord over the nations still cares for his chosen people.
Let’s pray, Father God, we have heard your Word this morning. I in Your word is a double sided sword, as you say in the New Testament, it brings warning to some and it brings encouragement to others. God, so have your way through Your Word. Have your way in the soil of our hearts. Father, God, whatever side of those categories we find ourselves on, God, convict us. Give us urgency, but also give us assurance and give us a reminder that you are still God over the nations. You are still sovereign, but also you still cares for your people no matter what is going on. So Father God. We, thank You for Your Word. We thank you for this time as we close out and praise God, help us to apply this word to our hearts in Jesus name we pray. Amen.
