Obadiah: Warning to prideful gloaters

There are only 21 verses in Obadiah. If you are flipping through your Bible, you really might miss it.
And, six of the verses are repeated in Jeremiah.

Basically, the message of Obadiah is "God will exact judgment on Edom because they gloated over the disaster that befell Israel."

Let this be a lesson to the prideful and the gloaters. God hates that kind of thinking and behavior as much as all of us mortals do.

The only thing I'd add to this blog regarding Obadiah is a personal anecdote.

Several years ago, before I attended Dallas Seminary but when I was already an admirer, we had a new minister at our church who was a DTS graduate. Mindful of what an excellent job DTS does of educating students about all the books of the Bible, I asked this man, halfway in jest, what was the message, or rather the point, of Obadiah. He didn't have an answer.

That would not be very memorable, except for this. He told me he didn't know, but I recall a definite sense of haughty disdain for me and my question. (I'm very sensitive to slights, dontcha know.) Perhaps that's why my view of him was jaded going forward. I found him to be supercilious and pretentious. He let all of us know how holy he was. He and his wife refused to tell their tiny children about Santa Claus because that was a distortion of Christmas. He preached a sermon one night (he was not one of the main preachers) that tried very hard to be culturally relevant, depending on the "profound" lyrics of a well-known pop song that is in itself way overrated. The sermon was silly. And ultimately, he left the church staff under unpleasant circumstances.

I guess I feel as if he got his just rewards for his pridefulness, which is part of the message of Obadiah.

However, I confess that I, too, am violating the message of Obadiah by gloating over the man's departure!