We'll be looking in the book
of Obadiah tonight, if you'd like to turn there. Obadiah is
right after, right before Jonah, and it's only one chapter, so
it may be a little difficult to find, but we can go ahead
and be turning there, Obadiah. Although Obadiah is one short
21 verse book, the message is very clear and the message is
very plain. The message is the destruction
of Edom and the salvation of Israel. The destruction of Edom
and the salvation of Israel. Now, not the physical destruction.
Certainly, Edom was physically destroyed, but the ideals behind
Edom is still alive and well. But it's talking about the spiritual
Edom. It's talking about the spiritual
Israel. The Lord never came to save physical
Israel. He came to save his people, his
spiritual seed, his spiritual Israel. God's promises are always
for spiritual needs. Now, yes, he meets our carnal
needs. And he says, my father, Jesus said, my father knows that
you have needs and the Lord provides those needs, doesn't he? Whatever
it may be. Christ Jesus gives us the one
thing needful. He shows us that we have a true
need, not just a need for physical things, but a spiritual need,
a need for a substitute, a need for a Savior, and gives us a
desire for Christ. Otherwise, we would have no desire
for Christ. We would be happy with ourselves going through
this life. We would be, of all men, most
miserable, not knowing that we were going through life fooling
ourselves, deceiving ourselves. He gives us a need for a Savior
by showing us we're a sinner that needs to be saved by grace,
as we just sang. Now, I hope this hour that I'm
able to see, able for us, I'm begging the Lord that he would
cause us to see this distinction, this difference between Edom
and Israel. And I wanna ask this question tonight, whom does the
Lord love? Whom does the Lord love? We're
in Obadiah, it's a single chapter, and we find that Edom is mentioned
as going to be destroyed. Now, Edom represents all the
house of Esau. It's mentioned here in verse
6 by the name just that. Esau is named Edom, just like
Jacob was named Israel. We know this took place back
in Genesis chapter 6 and verse 25, whenever Esau came in. and was hungry, he was famished,
he was desiring food. And he saw Jacob's pottage, it
was red. The scripture says it was red
pottage that he had. He said, give me some of that
pottage. Give me some of that food lest
I die. So in terms of, if you want to
use the proper term, he was starving to death. Now, the ideology behind
Jacob was, is I got to have Esau's birthright. And you can bet there
had been every day him trying to figure out how to get it in
some way, shape, or form. But he found his opportunity
that day. And he said, sell me your birthright for a bowl of
this pottage, a bowl of this soup. And what did Esau say? He said, well, I'm going to die
anyways. It's not going to do me any good. You can have it.
And so he discredited the need of the birthright. And in turn,
he discredited the need of the promise that came with that birthright,
the promise of a Messiah, a promise of a Redeemer. That's what the
birthright represented, and that's what he discredited, was Christ
himself. Now, he wanted to fend for himself.
He no longer needed a Redeemer. On the other hand, I just said
this already, but Israel, the figure of Israel represents the
whole house of Jacob, just as Edom represents the whole house
of Esau, Israel represents the whole house of Jacob. Jacob needed
a redeemer. Jacob wanted the birthright more
than anything. Jacob valued the Messiah. He had to have it. He
wanted it. And he supplanted his way into
getting the birthright. He tricked his father by his
own mother's help, tricked his father into getting that very
birthright. And the father gave it to him. And we see that when
Esau found that Jacob had taken this birthright, When Esau saw
it, when Edom saw it, he hated him. He hated Jacob. He hated
Israel. And he says, I'm going to kill him. I'm going to kill
him for taking that birthright. He hated him. Now in this chapter,
we see the result. of judgment that has come upon
Edom, the result of him hating Jacob, the result of him mistreating
Jacob and even his descendants, the ones that he placed in positions
of power, the nations themselves, they disagreed with each other.
And Edom was ugly to Israel, if I can put ugly, if that's
the right term, treated them badly. And we can see that here.
So Obadiah chapter one, verse one says, The vision of Obadiah
thus saith the Lord God concerning Edom. We have heard a rumor from
the Lord, and an ambassador is sent among the heathen. Arise
ye, and let us rise up against her in battle. Behold, I have
made thee small among the heathen, thou art greatly despised. The
pride of thine heart hath deceived thee, thou that dwellest in the
cleft of the rock, whose habitation is high, that saith in his heart,
Who shall bring me down to the ground? Though thou exalt thyself
as the eagle, though thou set thy nest among the stars, thence
will I bring thee down, saith the Lord. If thieves came to
thee, if robbers by night, how art thou cut off? Would they
not have stolen till they had enough? If the grape-gatherers
came to thee, would they not leave some grapes? How are the
things of Esau searched out? How are his hidden things sought
up? All men of thy confederacy have
brought thee even to the border. The men that were at peace with
thee have deceived thee and prevailed against thee. They have eaten
thy bread and have laid a wound under thee. There is none understanding
in him. Shall I not find in that day?
Now he's asking questions. He's saying, how can you cover
up everything that you've done? The Lord's saying here, shall
I not in that day, saith the Lord, even destroy the wise men
out of Edom and understand the understanding out of the Mount
of Esau? Thy mighty men, O Teman. Now
Teman is the grandson of Esau. O demons shall be dismayed to
the end that every one of the Mount of Esau may be cut off
by slaughter. For thy violence against thy
brother Jacob, shame shall cover thee, and thou shalt be cut off
forever. Edom shall be cut off forever,
is what the Lord just said. Cut off means to destroy, to
permit, to perish. To be cut off means to be permitted
to perish. All the Lord has to do to permit
you and I to perish is leave us to ourselves. And that's what
he's saying he's going to do to Edom. He says, I'm going to
cut you off. Cut off means to cut down. It
means to behead. He said, I'm going to behead
you. Everything you thought was right is wrong. And see, these
two nations were warring in the womb, the scripture says. Rebecca
says, if I'm supposed to have the blessing of the Lord and
have the one that's going to come, the lineage of Christ is
going to come through me, why am I thus? Why am I thus? And
the Lord gave an answer, said, because two nations are warring
in you, two people. And we see that the elder, it
was promised there that the elder shall serve the younger even
then, which is a picture of our new and old man, isn't it? It's
a picture of the new man in Christ Jesus that's called in time.
But this old man that we have strapped to our back that we
can physically see, we have from birth, don't we? This is what
this represents. Now he says, Edom's going to
be cut off. And he tells us why. For violence? against Jacob,
his brother, for violence. It means cruelty. It means wrong. It means injustice. This is what
the word violence means. Esau is enmity against Jacob.
We just heard me mention about how that Esau hated Jacob because
Jacob got the birthright. But there's two ideologies behind
this, two primary issues involved. And it's always been this way
all the way back from the garden. It's the same two ideals from
the beginning. It started all the way back in the garden. Turn
with me to Genesis chapter three. Genesis chapter three. Look at verse 14. After Adam
and Eve had sinned in the garden, they sewed together fig leaves
and they tried to cover themselves. And when they heard the voice
of the Lord walking in the cool of the evening, the Lord calls
out to him, says, Adam, where art thou? And he says, we're
here. And he says, why are you hiding? And the Lord, and he
says, because we're naked. He said, who told you where you
were naked? Have you eaten of the tree that I forbid you to
eat? Have you taken of that fruit, which I told you not to take?
And Adam says, well, it was the woman that you gave me that gave
me the fruit. Isn't that what we do by nature?
We blame somebody else for the sin that we've committed. It
doesn't matter whose fault it is. We're as guilty as they are.
Is that not true? This is what the gospel does is it show us
that we're the sinner. We're the sinner that needs saving.
It's not my brother or my sister, Lord, it's me. I need to be saved.
I need you to call me. I need you to put away my sin.
And so here's the consequence as he's speaking to the serpent
in Genesis chapter three, verse 14. And the Lord God said unto
the serpent, because thou hast done this. Adam said, it was
the woman that you gave me. The woman said, it was the serpent.
And the Lord says in verse 14, the Lord God said unto the serpent,
because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle
and above every beast of the field and upon thy belly shall
thou go and thus shall thou eat all the days of thy life. And
I will put enmity between thee and the woman and between thy
seed and her seed. It shall bruise thy head. and
thou shalt bruise his heel. enmity from the very beginning
of time between the old serpent and the seed of the woman. Enmity.
That word enmity means hatred. It's the same enmity between
Esau and Jacob. Esau not valuing the birthright,
not valuing the Lord. We see that the Lord, the promise
of the Messiah comes to Eve right here when the Lord just, when
he just said to him that your seed's going to bruise his head.
That means to crush, to crush. I'm going to do away I'm going
to do away with the sin that you have done. Your seed, it's
talking about the Lord Jesus Christ. He's the one that was
going to, and he crushed his head on the cross of Calvary, didn't
he? He crushed the head of the serpent
on the cross of Calvary. Now this word seed is very important.
We preached a message. a few weeks back about the seed.
His seed cannot sin was the title of the message. And it's so true,
isn't it? We found out why in that message. I'm not gonna focus
too much on that particular side of the word seed tonight. It
is his offspring. It is his offspring. That's what
the word seed means. But you know what also it means?
The translation. The second translation means
a practicer, a practitioner of righteousness. A practitioner
of righteousness. He says the seed of Satan. The
practices of his righteousness will not stand, but the practices
of the seed of the woman that's gonna come through Christ, his
practices of righteousness will stand. See, this is the two ideologies
that we're seeing, two ideals, two ways, the way of man and
the way of God. What I think and what God thinks.
And there's good news to the believer is it doesn't matter
what we think, does it? It's all what God says. Whatever
God says, his purpose, whatever his purpose is going to come
to pass. These two ideals, the two seeds, the two different
righteousness, a self-righteousness or a need for Christ's righteousness,
having no righteousness of our own. This is the two ideals that
started here in Genesis chapter three. This is what he's talking
about. It's the two ideals of do and done. Work or it is finished. Rest. This is the two ideals.
It's the lie. The lie is not that we transgress
God's law. We know that we transgress God's
law. The lie is that we can fix it. We can do something to fix it
because we cannot. That's the lie. What is the truth?
Well, that is the truth, isn't it? We cannot fix it. We need
a substitute. We need to be found in his righteousness,
not having our own righteousness, which is of the law, but the
righteousness of Christ Jesus, which he hath purpose before
the foundation of the world, which we just read in Ephesians
chapter one. We see the two differences of the seat of man, which is
the seat of sin. And we see the seat of God, which
is the seat of righteousness. It's his truth, isn't it? Now,
either we have this self-righteousness about us in some way, shape,
or form, and we think that we can offer ourself unto God to
fix the sin that we are, or we realize that we're dead dog sinners
in need of a Savior. And it's that simple. Jacob had
a need for a Savior, didn't he? He had a need for a substitute.
He had a need for a Redeemer. Esau did not value that birthright,
and he sold it. He sold it, sold it for a bowl
of soup, didn't he? A bowl of soup. And that is what
men will do, is they'll sell out Christ for a little bit of
pleasure. They'll sell out Christ for a
little bit of power or a little bit of popularity. And that's
how it's been from the very beginning. That was the temptation of Eve.
You're going to be like gods if you eat the fruit. And when
she saw that it looked good to eat, and she saw that it would
make one wise, she saw that it was good for power, it was good
for pleasure, and it was good for popularity. She took the
fruit, and she ate, and then she gave to her husband, and
he did eat as well. Shortly after this account took
place, Adam and Eve has two children, Cain and Abel. They had two ideologies,
didn't they? They had two different ideas.
Now Adam would have no doubt, because at the end of chapter
three, Adam would have had no doubt that what had to happen
was a lamb had to be killed in order for them to have a covering.
He would have taught his sons that, there's no doubt. It tells
us at the end, they had sown fig leaves together, which is
a type of us having our own righteousness, having our own covering before
God that won't stand. It's something that's gonna wither
up and dry and fade away, but God slew a lamb and covered them
with that skin, didn't he? And that's a picture of the Lord
Jesus Christ's righteousness for his people that covers them.
Now Cain and Abel, Cain was a farmer and Abel was a herder of the
sheep. Hayne would have been a really good farmer. That was
his job. That was his livelihood. That's
what he did. That was his, uh, it would have been his credibility.
It would have been, I know as, uh, whenever I was doing, I was
in trades and different things, people say, well, what, what's
your best trade? And I w I might've told him or
whatever else. And being around other people, I'm like, well,
I don't know near as much as I thought I knew about that, but he was the first
one. He's the first, he's the best ever. Right. I mean, so
far there was only so many people alive upon the earth at the face
of that time. He was the. firstborn son to Adam and Eve,
he was a farmer. And so I don't know how old they
were at that time. The scripture is not clear on
that, but you understand what I'm saying. He would have had
just about as much practice as anybody else. He'd have been
good at it. Rather than offering up a lamb,
he had confidence in his hands. Boy, I sometimes find myself
confident in my hands, only to find myself to fall upon my face
and say, Lord, I, I repent. I'm wrong. I should not have
had confidence in these hands. But what's your hands accomplished?
What's your, the scars that are in your hands, what they accomplished?
Not, not what my hands do. What did Cain do? He brought
his best fruit unto the Lord, the very best. He didn't bring
the fruit that had spots in it, that had blemishes in it. He
brought the very best of the best of his crops. I was speaking
to someone recently here after service, and we were talking
about just that. And the Lord gave me insight on this thought.
During the fall time, they have festivals. They have different
fall festivals and everybody get together and they have different
competitions. And some of the competitions
are, is who has the biggest pumpkin? You ever seen those before? Boy,
Cain was like, I got the biggest pumpkin. Look at my pumpkin.
And that's what he gave unto the Lord. And it might sound
silly, but it's true. He thought, I have the biggest, I have the
best, I'm going to earn favor with God. And God said, I have
no respect, no respect to you and no respect to the works of
your hands, the fruit that you've brought. See, we've been made
to know that no matter what we bring, our very best is not good
enough for God. No matter what we do, our very
best is not good enough for God. But what did Abel bring? He brought
a lamb without spot and without blemish. And he shed that lamb's
blood as a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ, us needing our
sin to be washed away by the lamb of God. That's what John
the Baptist said, wasn't it? Whenever Christ was coming toward
him, he said, behold the lamb of God, which taketh away the
sin of the world. That's what the Lord Jesus Christ
did for his people. He took away their sin, nailing
them to his own cross. Cain knew that God had no respect
for anything that we do, but yet he did it anyways. Why? Because
Cain, just like Esau, from the very beginning, men believe that
they can do something that pleases God. It takes the act of God,
the grace of God, repentance and faith given for us to realize,
I can't do anything to please God, but Christ did. Christ did
everything necessary for the salvation of his people. Christ
successfully redeemed them and put away their sin. This is what
Abel believed. I can't do anything, but I can bring this lamb that
the Lord demanded, this lamb that he demands a blood sacrifice. And that's exactly what Abel
did. Why did he need a lamb? Why do
we need a lamb? I begin to ask that question
and studying and The scripture is very clear, without the shedding
of blood, there is no remission of sin. So whose blood are you
going to offer? Your own blood? Or the blood
of the lamb? That's the question. Men believe
that they can offer up their own works. In turn, they're offering
up their own blood. They're offering up their own
doings. But Abel said, no, my blood is polluted. My blood is
sinful. I need a substitute lamb that
has perfect blood. See, the blood represents life,
doesn't it? It's the life blood. You ever
heard that term before? It's our life's blood. And if
it's taken out of us, we die. Can't live without blood. And
that's what the law demands, is death. It demands that blood
be spilled and death come. And it's only by the grace of
God that Jesus Christ took our sin unto himself, and the Lord
Jesus Christ bled for his people, died for his people, was buried
for his people, was resurrected for his people, and therefore
all those that were in Christ at that time, their sin's gone. The Father doesn't see their
sin any longer. That's our hope, isn't it? It's not to bring what
we have done unto him, but to look to Christ. Lord, show me
that you put away my sin. Show me that you nailed my sin
to your cross. Show me that your blood was emptied and you died
for me in my stead. Now these two ideals that we're
speaking on that go back this far, the same ideals when Christ
was upon the earth, the same thing that happened here when
God showed no respect unto Cain. Cain hated his brother and Cain
killed his brother. Now, as I was studying, in Obadiah,
I was concerned because there were 24 verses and I began praying. I said, Lord, that's a really
short book and I'm concerned I might not get a message from
this book. And I wasn't looking unto the Lord in that. I was
looking to myself. I was doubting him is what I was doing. That
was wrong. But he's given me three messages from Obadiah.
So Sunday, we're going to be looking a little more at Cain
and Abel. But as for tonight, I want us to understand that
Men hated Christ just like they hated Abel. It was the same hatred. We won't have this man reign
over us if God won't accept us. If you're saying God won't accept
us, away with this man. If you're saying I'm not good
enough for God, away with this man. And Christ was truth. Christ was God talking to them.
And they said, kill him. Let his blood be upon us and
on our children. We don't want nothing to do with this man.
Crucify him. Crucify him. And they did. They
certainly did. So we have to ask ourself this
question, is it by works, as Cain, or is it all by grace? Scripture's clear, isn't it?
Go by grace or you say through faith, in that not of yourself.
Now that does one of two things when someone hears it. It makes
the sinner rejoice and say, it's not of myself. Thank God it's
not of myself, but it makes someone else angry and saying, you're
telling me I can't do anything to please God? Yes, I'm telling
you, God says flesh is enmity against God. God hates all workers
of iniquity. The Lord does not pardon the
guilty. If there's one sin upon a person, death is the consequence.
And the Lord said, the only way for that sin to be paid for is
by my precious blood. Thank God he put away the sin
of his people. The Lord's seed does not look to law keeping,
do we? Don't look to law keeping. We
don't look to righteous living. We don't look to our works at
all. We don't look to our possessions or the lack thereof. You remember
when David said, Lord, don't give me so much where I won't
look at you, I won't desire you anymore, but Lord, don't give
me so less that I'll go and steal. Well, there's a spiritual application
to that. Men will look at their possessions
as thinking that there's favoritism from the Lord, and it's not true.
But they'll look and think that they have favoritism towards
God as their righteousness. And on the flip side of that,
if some people don't have enough, they'll think that God will reward
them Christ for their little bit that they have. They think,
well, I didn't have much in life, so that means God's going to
reward me with Christ. And they're both a lie, aren't
they? No, Christ is all. Christ is all to his people.
We don't look to our possessions a little bit or a lot, do we?
Christ is what we desire to possess, isn't it? Christ is what we have
to have the most. That's what our heart has to
have. Lord's people know that we must
be looking to Christ. Turn with me to Titus chapter
two. Lord's people are made to know
that we must be looking to the Lord Jesus Christ. Scripture says, looking unto
Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. Of faith. Titus gives us a good hope in
Titus chapter two, verse 13. Looking for that blessed
hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior,
Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us, that he might redeem
us from all iniquity and purify unto himself a peculiar people,
zealous of good works. Do you know what that word zealous
means? It means to have acquired, to defend, or to uphold. Now,
how do we defend and uphold what we believe? We preach Christ. We preach Christ. We don't have
debates. We don't have arguments. We don't try to prove anything.
We preach the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ to men as they are.
That's how we uphold it. So what else is he saying here?
We preach that we have acquired the good works required in order
for the Father to be satisfied with us in Christ Jesus. That's
what that word zealous literally means. That we have acquired
good works. Not that we've done them, but
that the Lord Jesus Christ did them and then he bestowed it
upon his people. That's what the word zealous means there.
How he did that is one of my favorite words. It's called substitution. Substitution. I think I gave
this analogy recently, but I want to give it again. My wife was
teaching the children in the back and she asked, does anybody
know what a substitute is? And one of them raised their
hand and said, yes, I have a substitute teacher at school. And she said,
well, what's the substitute teacher's job? And the kid said, everything
that the teacher does. And she said, that's exactly
right. See, we have a substitute before
the Father, Jesus Christ, who whenever he died, I died. That's
our hope, isn't it? When he died, we died. Whenever
he was buried, we were buried. When he was resurrected, we were
resurrected. He was our substitute in giving us his righteousness
and taking our sin and death unto him. That's what a substitute
does. He did it in our stead. Peter tells us that this was
because of a covenant. He said we were chosen generation,
a royal priesthood, a holy nation. Now you remember, we're still
talking about the destruction of Edom. and we're talking about
the salvation of Israel. And he says, but you are a chosen
generation, a royal priesthood and holy nation, a peculiar people,
that you should show forth the praises of him who hath called
you out of darkness into his marvelous light. And do you know
how he did that? Well, look at verse 14 again.
Who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity
and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.
That's how he did it. Christ gave himself for us. Who's
us? Those that he loved. The title
of the message is, Whom Does God Love? Us? Well, who's us? For all those that he lived for
and died for and was buried and resurrected for. For those that
he shed his blood for. Those are the us that he's speaking
of. Those that he loves. the redeemed Israel, the elect,
the beloved of God, the one that are born of his incorruptible
seed, purified unto himself. He purified unto himself a peculiar
people and gave them his good works. Now, on the other hand,
you have Edom. Edom is not thus, are they? They
are the opposite of the us that he's speaking of here. Now, we
come gathered here hoping that the Lord will show us that we
are an us, don't we? The us that Peter is talking
about. Lord, make us an us, part of this particular group that's
here. Make us one of those, the elect,
one of the ones that believe on you, calls me to believe.
Edom is not one of those that is described as us here. This
is everyone else. This is Satan's seed that we
mentioned from the very beginning in Genesis chapter three. This
is the ones that says that men have a will that can surpass
God's will. Now I will tell us this, men
do have a will. Did you know that? We certainly
do. And man will not come to God. Man will not come to God. Our
will is our problem. We need a new will, don't we?
We need a new heart. We need a new desire because
if it's left up to our will, we'll never come to him. We'll
say away with this man. I have this, this great pumpkin
that I've grown and it's beautiful and the Lord's going to accept
it, but he won't really. He said, I'm going to disannoy
your covenant. He said, it must be by Christ alone. It must be
by Christ alone. Our will hates God. Our will
is the problem. We need a new will. That's why
David said, creating me a clean heart, oh God, renewing me a
right spirit. David saw that his will wasn't going to save
him. Lord, if you don't give me a new heart, I'm never going
to come to you. I'm dead in trespasses and in sin. I must be born again.
I must be raised from the dead. You're going to have to literally
raise my new man from the dead. I'm dead, dead, dead dog center. You're going to have to make
me alive, alive in Christ. He must do it all. Now, Edom
didn't need God just as Cain didn't need God or God's ways.
It's the devaluing and it's the despising of the birthright.
It's the devaluing and the despising of Christ. And we see so much
of that today where men believe that they have a righteousness
of their own. I can do something. in myself. This is the two ideals
that I keep mentioning about. One is I can do something good
for myself, but it's not that we can do good. It's that he
did good. There's none good. No, not one. None good but God.
Well, Christ Jesus was God. He is God, isn't he? And he did
good. It's not our works. It's his
works. It's not our righteousness. It's his righteousness. It can't
be our blood. It's polluted. It's his perfect
blood, isn't it? That's our hope. question that has to be asked
is which one of these two ideals are we following? Because if
we follow the ideals of Edom, believing that we're good enough,
the ideals of Edom will lead us straight to hell, straight
to hell. But the ideals of Jacob, the
ideals of the trickster and the supplanter, I'm getting ahead
of myself a little bit, but There's nothing good in Jacob that would
merit God's favor. He was a liar. He was a thief. He was all kinds
of things. And yet God had mercy on him.
Why? Because God delights in showing
mercy and grace. This is our hope, isn't it? Either
we're following Edom to hell or we're looking and fleeing
to Christ, the Christ of Jacob. And we cry just like David, Lord
created me a new heart, a clean heart, a clean heart. And if
the Lord does it, it's God's doing. Turn with me to Malachi
chapter one. Malachi chapter one, verse one. It's the last book in the Old
Testament. It says the burden of the word of the Lord to Israel
by Malachi. I have loved you, saith the Lord.
Yet you say, wherein hast thou loved us? Was not Esau Jacob's
brother, saith the Lord? Yet I loved Jacob, and I hated
Esau, and laid his mountain and his heritage waste for the dragons
of the wilderness. Whereas Edom saith, we are impoverished,
but we will return and build the desolate places. Thus saith
the Lord of hosts, they shall build, but I will throw down.
And they shall call them the border of wickedness, and the
people against whom the Lord hath indignation forever. And
your eyes shall see, and ye shall say, the Lord will be magnified
from the border of Israel. Now this ideology of Edom is
still alive and well today. He just said here, Edom speaks
and says, well, we're gonna build these desolate places that the
Lord's tore down, we're gonna build them back up just like
the Tower of Babel. You remember the story of the Tower of Babel?
The ideology is that we can do something, something to fix our
transgression. We can build these desolate places
back up. That's the ideology. That's man's
ideology when it comes to God, that they can do something. But
the Lord said, no, I'm gonna tear it down as soon as you do.
And at the end of it all, he tells us the Lord will be magnified.
That's what your confession is going to be. That's what our
confession is going to be. The Lord literally says, I hate
Esau. I hate Esau. Now, when men hear
that, they'll do one of two things. They'll change the meaning of
the word hate, or they'll change the meaning of the word love.
They'll change the meaning of the word hate. When they hear
Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated, they'll either say,
well, he meant that to a nation. He didn't mean that, he meant
that to a person, but he definitely didn't mean that to certain people.
They'll change the meaning of the word love. They'll change
the meaning of the word hate. But when he said, I love, Jacob,
it was an affectionate type of love, a perfect love, an everlasting
love. See, God only loves one way.
If he loves you, he's always loved you and he's never not
loved you. That's the glorious news of the gospel. And if he
hates you or me, he has always hated you and I, and he always
will. God cannot change. God cannot
change. So what is the good news? That
he hated Esau? No, we can see why he would hate
Esau. That's not good news, because I can identify with him. If I
get hungry enough, and the Lord leave me to myself, Lord, I would
sell out for just a bowl of soup. I would. If the Lord leave me
to myself, that's what would happen. Lord, don't leave us to ourself.
We'll be like Peter and take our eyes right off of you. We'll
deny you. We'll even betray you if you leave us to ourself. So
it doesn't give me hope that he hated Esau, but it gives me
hope that he loved Jacob. It gives me hope that he loved
Jacob because of what Jacob was. Regardless of what Israel did,
regardless of what Jacob did, God kept him. Do you know why? It's who the Lord loved. It's who the Lord loved. Jacob
represents all of Israel. God's chosen people. And we still
have, even though we still or we have a new man, we still have
this old man, our old man will rear its ugly head up this ideology
of Edom and we'll be tempted to doubt and tempted to, and
we do, we have so much unbelief in us, don't we? We see it so
clearly. And we're tempted with the spirit that looks and says,
everything is out of control. You remember, that's what happened
to Peter. He was on the water walking. And then he took his
eyes off of Christ. He become concerned with everything
around him because everything was out of control, right? No,
Christ did that. So Peter would take his eyes
off of him. That's exactly what happened. We live in this society
right now. We look around, we look at the world, we think everything's
out of control. But I would remind you, I'm not
preaching of the God that controls things. I'm preaching of the
God that's purposed every single thing. He's not moving things
around on a chessboard. He's not playing checkers with
the devil. God has purposed all things and it's going to come
to pass. Nothing is out of control in His eyes. It's ordained, it's
been established, it's been determined before the foundation of the
world. And you know what else has been? The salvation of His people. the salvation of his people.
Everything he does is eternally. He does it eternally, everlastingly,
permanently. And he successfully redeemed
his people. He promised to never leave us.
He promised never to forsake us, but to go with us all the
way, even to the end. So to think something is out of control is
to deny the Lord's sovereignty. Everything is right on time,
whether we like it or not. There's some things we don't
like, isn't it? But it's for our good. We've been made to
know it's for our good in his glory. We know that deep down.
Lord, I know it's for your good, but it hurts sometimes, doesn't
it? Lord, give me eyes to believe. Give me the faith to look to
you, deny myself, cry out for mercy, cry out for Christ. That's the difference between
Jacob and Edom, isn't it? Jacob cried out for mercy. Edom
wanted to do what he wanted to do. Now he's gonna have his term,
but I'm just gonna read this from Romans 9. It says, for the
children, Jacob and Esau, not being born yet, neither having
done any good or evil that the purpose of God according to election
might stand. Not of works. It was not of works. It was according to election.
It was according to him that calleth. It was said unto her,
Rebecca, the elder shall serve the younger. As it is written,
Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated. Now I mentioned this
a while ago, but I failed to elaborate properly on it. But
this word hate, In this word, love has definitive meanings. Hate means to detest. Hate means
to reject. Hate means to cast off. Love
means to adore. Adore. I adore my wife as much
as I can. In my heart, I adore. It's nothing
compared to the love that God has for his people. He adores.
Jacob, he adores Israel. He hates Esau, but he adores
Israel. He prizes, prizes Israel with
the apple of his eye, he says. The prize, the one possession
that he holds dearly and he delights in his people. Everyone that is not an Israelite
is an Edomite and God hates every single Edomite. So what is our
hope? Well, who does the Lord love?
We know who he hates. Who does he love? He loves Israel.
Well, tell me about Israel then. Can I be an Israelite? Well,
if you are, he's made you one before the foundation of the
world. He did the choosing. He did the electing. He did the
saving. He does the calling. He does it all for his people
so that it's not of him that willeth nor of him that runneth.
Aren't you glad it's not of him that willeth nor of him that
runneth, but it's God that showeth mercy? It's God that chose to
show mercy. It's God that made a vessel of
honor and dishonor. And the good news we hear in
Lamentations is that the punishment of thine iniquity, the punishment
of thine iniquity is accomplished, O Zion. The punishment of thine
iniquity is accomplished, O daughter of Zion. He will no more carry
thee away into captivity. Then he says, he will visit the
iniquity of the daughter of Edom. He will discover their sins.
He's made a vessel of honor and a vessel of dishonor according
to his will and according to his good pleasure, as we just
read in Ephesians chapter one. And the good news is, is I can't
mess it up. I can't get in it. I can't get
out of it. I can't mess it up. The Lord chose Jacob unto himself.
He chose Israel for his particular treasure. This is who God loves.
He calls us his particular treasure. Is that precious to you? You're
his particular treasure. You know what that definition
is? I like looking up the definition of these words. I love it. The
definition is a valued property, a purchased possession. What did he purchase us with?
His own blood, his own blood. He owns his people, owns us. Does that offend you? that God
owns you. Well, he owns everything, doesn't
he? I mean, that'd be silly for me
to say anything further than that. He owns everything. He
owns everything. Purchased it all. Now in closing,
I want to be very clear and very certain on what I'm about to
say. Nothing. And I mean nothing that Jacob
did deserved grace, nothing. There is nothing in his life
that you can look at and say, there it is, that's why he got
grace. That's why grace was bestowed
upon him. As a matter of fact, deserving grace, deserving grace
is the disqualification for receiving grace. You will not receive grace
if you deserve it. That's exactly what grace means
is that you don't deserve it and God gives it to you. And
then mercy is that you deserve something, but you don't get
it, such as wrath, such as death, such as damnation. So we need
grace and mercy, don't we? And that's exactly what Jacob
received. And that's what his people received. That's what
all of Israel received. Jacob spent his life scheming.
Christ never planned anything. He purposed. Jacob was deceitful
all the time, having a deceitful heart, yet Christ was openly
sincere in everything that he did. Jacob was manipulative all
the time, but Christ was obedient unto the Father. Jacob was vindictive,
vindictive, but Christ said, Father, forgive them. Jacob was
a liar. Christ was truth. Jacob was a
trickster. Christ was honest in all things. Jacob was a supplanter. Christ
never attempted to replace the Father in any way. He purposed
to honor the Father. Jacob was a thief. Christ was
a giver, giver of his own body and a giver of his own blood.
Jacob was a sinner. Christ was the Holy One of Israel.
Now, can you relate with Jacob at all? Manipulative, deceitful,
vindictive, a liar, a trickster? The good news of the gospel.
is that Christ traded places with Jacob on the cross of Calvary. Christ traded places so that
Jacob's no longer seen as scheming, as deceitful, as manipulative,
as vindictive, as a liar, as a trickster, as a supplanter,
or as a thief, or even as a sinner. Jacob God's chosen people are
seen as perfectly righteous and holy as Christ Jesus is. That's the gospel. Christ did
that for his people. He took his people's place and
became sin for them that we might be made the righteousness of
God in him so that everything that we do, he did for us in
God's eyes. He traded places. He's our substitute,
isn't he? Who does God love? Those whom
Christ traded places with. Jacob, his Israel, his chosen
people, his Zion. That's who Christ loves. That's who God loves. That's
who he died for. That's who's been redeemed by
his own blood. Amen.