Today's Readings and Stuff -- Sunday, 13 December 2020

 

Good Sunday (evening) to all.  

Wife showed me a video earlier, brought back some memories and is also appropriate for these Advent season.  Song is "Mary, Did You Know?".    Timely, certainly.  But, more than 25 years ago, we were sitting in our church, just outside of Knoxville, Tennessee.  Don B. came up to the pulpit.  Don's wife, Janie, had died a couple weeks earlier after an extended illness.  He stood at the pulpit, and sang this.  I'd never heard it before.  There wasn't a dry eye in the place, including the professor from University of Tennessee in the next pew.  It means a lot to me, and to others.

Mary didn't know, of course.  But she was obedient to some confusing instructions.  And the world is the better for it.

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OBADIAH 1

1The vision of Obadiah.

Edom’s Certain Judgment

This is what the Lord God has said about Edom: 

We have heard a message from the Lord; 

a messenger has been sent  among the nations:

“Rise up,  and let us go to war against her.” 

2Look, I will make you insignificant 

among the nations;

you will be deeply despised.

3Your presumptuous heart has deceived you, 

you who live in clefts of the rock   

in your home on the heights,

who say to yourself,

“Who can bring me down to the ground? ” 

4Though 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.

5If thieves came to you, 

if marauders by night —

how ravaged you would be! —

wouldn’t they steal only what they wanted?

If grape pickers came to you,

wouldn’t they leave some grapes? 

6How Esau will be pillaged, 

his hidden treasures searched out! 

7Everyone 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. 

8In 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?

9Teman,   your warriors  will be terrified

so that everyone from the hill country of Esau

will be destroyed by slaughter. 

Edom’s Sins against Judah

10You will be covered with shame

and destroyed forever

because of violence done to your brother Jacob. 

11On the day you stood aloof, 

on the day strangers captured his wealth, 

while foreigners entered his gate

and cast lots for Jerusalem, 

you were just like one of them. 

12Do 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 distress. 

13Do not enter the gate of My people

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.

14Do not stand at the crossroads  

to cut off their fugitives,

and do not hand over their survivors

in the day of distress.

Judgment of the Nations

15For the Day of the Lord  is near,

against all the nations. 

As you have done,  so it will be done to you;

what you deserve will return on your own head. 

16As you have drunk on My holy mountain, 

so all the nations will drink continually. 

They will drink and gulp down

and be as though they had never been.

17But there will be a deliverance on Mount Zion, 

and it will be holy; 

the house of Jacob will dispossess 

those who dispossessed them.  

18Then 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 survivor will remain 

of the house of Esau,

for the Lord has spoken.

Future Blessing for Israel

19People 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.

20The exiles of the Israelites who are in Halah 

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. 

21Saviors  will ascend Mount Zion 

to rule over the hill country of Esau,

but the kingdom will be the Lord’s.