Pride: God's Reason for Destroying Nations (2)

Introduction:

Last week, we saw the divine authority of God’s message established.

Through a messenger, God has called other nations against Edom to do battle against them.

We also learned of the certainty of that coming judgment, and that is very important for the mindset of the letter.

God judges individuals, but he also judges “nations.”

Nations are most often judged in this life.

Individuals can be in this one and in the world to come.

This morning, we need to investigate why God was going to judge Edom.

In doing so, we will learn about proud.

We will also learn about the inability to trust the collective thinking of a nation.

Pride: The Reason for Judgment

We will need to consider what it is to be prideful.

Physical security alone does not make a nation secure.

Was it just arrogance to think they were secure, or does Obadiah mean that Edom had refused to hear the message of God to Judah and all the surrounding nations to submit to Nebuchadnezzar. Instead, they thought themselves immune from any threat because of their own security.

In its basic meaning, the word refers to “a sense of self-importance, which often is exaggerated to include defiance and even rebelliousness. TWOT lists three specific uses of “pride.” It may refer to presumption, that is an arrogance of thinking everything is in ones favor. Another usage, perhaps apropos here, is asserting “his own will to the point of rebelling against one in authority over him.”

According to TWOT, in its noun form, as here, it specifically has usage in contexts where people are “having pride in view as opposed to God.”

Of special note in the latter usage is Jeremiah 27.

Pride, in this case then, includes a nation thinking itself to be immune from the word of God.

They had heard Jeremiah’s prophecy.

It would not apply to them.

Notice where the pride is found, namely, the heart of the people, the nation.

The Lord then makes it clear that the heart “caused to deceive them.”

The heart seduced them into their defiance of God.

Physical security for a nation cannot be provided by geographical isolation.

This was the “logic” behind the pride of Edom.

They thought their physical location made the word of God irrelevant for them.

They did not have to listen to his word because of their situation.