The Wonder of Obadiah and The Red Pottage Flag of Rome

Did you ever wonder? Did you ever wonder?

I do. Did you ever wonder? Why the sun always rises, but the stars never fall?

Why dry land is never satisfied by water? And why fire never says enough? Oh, the wonder of the red porridge, or Edom, or the book of Obadiah.

You can figure it into all three very easily, and we're going to wonder about all that this morning. God clearly put me on the idea of Obadiah here about two weeks ago, and honestly, if you wonder why I haven't been producing my daily podcast, it's part of the reason I was at the NRB, but the other part is that I've just been totally confused and studying, and God's been pointing things out to me, and I didn't want to talk until I kind of had an idea what I was actually talking about, or where I felt like God wanted me to talk, and I felt like he hadn't released me till today, because I think today I finally got the picture of what he'd been trying to teach me for the last two weeks. So in the book of Obadiah, there is some amazing insight into much of life, into much of the United States of America, into Rome, it's into the book of Genesis, and all those things appear to be quite connected to the prophet Obadiah. So if you study Jewish literature on the book of Obadiah, which obviously I started out with Rashi, and then I went into the Talmud and several different sources, and they are very clear, and I think it's part of the miracle of Obadiah myself as I think about it and process it, that Obadiah himself was a servant to Ahab and Jezebel and an Edomite himself.

And so the way the Jews put that is that the wood of the axe came out of the forest. In other words, Obadiah is going to speak against Edom quite vehemently throughout his book here, and that clearly he came out of that tribe or that connection to Esau, which is, you know, the Edomites and where they lived on Mount Shenir, and so they are in that cleft of the rock that you'll read about in Obadiah. And I think it's really, really cool who Obadiah was to begin with.

He was a convert to Judaism, according to all of that Jewish literature. And certainly he is mentioned in the Book of Kings on two or three different occasions, depending on how you look at it. And according to the Jews, he's mentioned clearly as a servant of Ahab that was literally paid good money to protect all of God's prophets from Jezebel. And so you'll see that in the Book of Kings, that that was Obadiah there. And then Obadiah also shows up in the story, according to the Jews, of when Elijah was going to go to talk to Ahab. And he sent, you know, the captains of 50, which Obadiah clearly was, according to the Book of Kings, a captain of 50.

And he sent the first captain of 50, right, and he got turned into a crispy critter, and the second one did the same. But the third time, according to the Jews, it was Obadiah that showed up, and Obadiah knew Elijah from the whole incident, you know, previously where he had hit the prophets. And so as he begged for his life, you know, clearly he was the one that God wanted to send Ahab, I mean, excuse me, Elijah, to go talk to Ahab about the rain. And to further the Obadiah story, he was also, according to Jewish Talmud sources, the Obadiah, or the husband of the widow, of the oil story and the son that was raised from the dead by Elisha, that that too is connected to Obadiah. And so all that to tell us, what it tells me, is even though Obadiah came from a fairly infamous group of people, since his name means a servant of God, he clearly converted and he feared the Lord, which was the secret to much of what he was able to talk about in his prophecy.

But his prophecy is very much, and the more I have studied, the more I see this, it is so clearly for Robbie Dilmore, and I bet it's for you too, okay? Because I'm afraid that all of us, like Edom, have sold our birthright for a bowl of red pottage, as the case may be, because the idea of Edom, it is the word Adam in Hebrew, so when you see, like, and interestingly at the NRB, I interviewed people from the Mogandavad Adam, and that Mogandavad means the shield of David that's red, that's their red cross. Well, the idea of red is very much connected to the word Adam, because the ground was red, and Adam was made from the ground. And interestingly, what was the curse that Adam got was that he was going to work by the sweat of his brow, and work, work, work, work, work. And when you think about what the older brother did throughout, you know, all the stories of the older brother, and clearly in the story of the prodigal son, the older brother was all about working for acceptance, right?

And so the unfortunate story from Cain, the older brother in that case, on into Jacob and all these older brothers, and since I'm one, I get it. We have this idea that we need to work for acceptance. In other words, we're going to sell our birthright for the red soup, the red soup being literally working for our acceptance. In other words, that somehow you are going to earn what it is that you're looking for from God, or from your father, or from wherever that may be. And unfortunately, even to the vision that God gave me last night, I had another dream, another bad dream.

And I often have nightmares about being in the car business, and having to sell cars, and having to prove myself, and it all goes back to the years and years and years that I was under that curse, that I had sold my birthright essentially, which was just to be the son of the king. In other words, does the bride of Christ have to work for acceptance? I feel like a foolish Galatian, right?

In so many different ways, I'm constantly working for acceptance. Well, it's very much connected to that idea of Edom, of red, okay? And the further, the wonders of all this, the Jews go on to teach that the tribe of Edom, the people of Edom, were connected, and this prophecy is miraculous, because here it was, three or four hundred years before Nebuchadnezzar, that he's talking about that the Edomites would join with Nebuchadnezzar in plundering the first temple.

But even more scary is that the Jews can show you through the lineage that's shown of Edom's family how, and believe me, they have it all documented completely, how that last tribe in the tribe of Edom were the settlers of Rome. And if you look at Rome, you can't help but note that their flag is red, okay? And then secondly, it has these letters on it, which are like S-P-Q-R, which means essentially the senate of the populace of Rome. In other words, this was the senate of the people and by the people, which is kind of scary, because the people, when you put them in charge, they are going to have you work for your acceptance, okay?

Every single time. And so, you know, you can't help but think that Rome was all about works in so many different ways, and unfortunately, they were the ones that clearly plundered the second temple. And obviously, in 70 AD, it was unbelievable the things that they did to the Jews, for which God is pointing out in this prophecy, eventually, it is the people of Zion, it is his people that are going to occupy his mountain in Jerusalem and occupy Zion. And the beautiful thing is, what will those people be? Those are the people that live by faith in God, not in what they do, right? The righteous will live by faith.

We've talked about that. And so, it's a really remarkable thing, and you can't help but see how America is connected to this, because the eagle that's talked about in this prophecy that you'll see down, I think it's in the 7th or 8th verse, might be further down than that, they talk about the eagle. Well, you can't help but see the eagle on the Roman flag, believe me, if you take a look at it. And it was certainly a standard of edom, and now, here it is, the standard of the United States of America. Not that the eagle itself is evil in any way, shape, or form, you're going to see it throughout prophecy. But interestingly, it was a symbol to Rome, and it certainly is a symbol to the United States of America.

And a lot of the principles that Rome was founded under are still the principles that we found today, and we're going to find this throughout prophecy. So I really don't claim to have a great understanding of any kind of what all that necessarily means. What I do have an understanding, what God pointed out to me clearly, is that the curse that was put on Adam, which was red, was that he was going to write, his work was going to be all confounded, and that he was going to grow up briars and thorns. And I don't know about you, but if you try to work for acceptance, it is a very painful experience, right? But through the blood of Christ, we realize that we are the kings, we are the princes. In other words, we are the bride of Christ, and the bride does not have to work for acceptance. The bride has grace, and has grace for other people because of who she is. And so like the younger brother in the book of the prodigal son, right, we've had a chance to taste what it's like in the depravity of our souls, especially if we've been trying to work for our acceptance, especially if you're the older brother like I am.

And I watched my little brother, in fact I talked to him this morning, and he has always been more about family than he was about work. And it's very interesting that I needed that piece of information from Obadiah. And again, I can't say complete surety of all these things I've talked about, who Obadiah was, but what I am certainly sure about is the curse of Adam and the curse of working for acceptance. And it's my belief that this book is a great example if you read through with this idea, if you just read those 21 verses, shortest book in the Old Testament, if you read through it with this new piece of insight and think about it in your own life.

In other words, it's surely prophecy, okay? But what does this mean to me? Well, here's what it meant to me at the end of the day was, Robbie, you don't have to work for it.

You don't have to earn it. You just have to love God and grow closer to him like the younger brother, like Jacob was a homebody and a cook and all those things. But what he really was was a wrestler. In other words, he clung on to God with all he had. And if we can cling on to God with all we have, then I think, in my opinion, it's a lot different than working for my acceptance. And that's more like what Mary did, not what Martha did. And it's a lot more what Mr. Banks did in the movie Mary Poppins. He learned that he needed to go fly a kite with his kids. So with that, I hope we all today will think about going and flying a kite. Thanks for listening.