Five comforting promises for the troubled church

 Posted at Reformation Scotland:

With the church in a period of decline, it is hard to know whether the bigger threat comes from within or without. The short and often overlooked prophecy of Obadiah seems to focus largely on external threats. As George Hutcheson notes in his commentary on Obadiah’s prophecy, the first part of the prophecy exposes the futile self-confidence of those who were hostile to the Lord and explains what severe consequences will follow their opposition and violence against the Lord’s people. But even while surrounded by problems and enemies, the Lord’s people are sustained by the faithfulness of the Lord. Hutcheson identifies five comforting promises which Obadiah announces for the troubled church. Whatever partial fulfilments of these promises we may identify in the experience of the church so far, Hutcheson is looking ahead to a comprehensive fulfilment in times to come.

A promise of restoration

From verse 17 to the end, this prophecy contains comforting promises to the church now in trouble. Although Judah had some taste of the fulfilment of these promises at their return from captivity and afterwards, and although the New Testament church has a continual fulfilment of them in a spiritual way, yet at least some of these promises seem to point more especially at the time of the conversion and saving of “all Israel,” as the apostle calls it in Romans 11.

In verse 17 the church is promised three kinds of things — deliverance and relief from her troubles; holiness and the privileges she had previously enjoyed; and the restitution of their previous possessions. This is promised not only to the Jews, in reference to what they were deprived of by the captivity, but to the whole “house of Jacob,” in reference to what was given them by the covenant, made with their fathers, which is yet unaccomplished.

Although in the time of the church’s trouble, the Lord withholds from her the possession of her pleasant things, yet His thoughts and purposes of love are still as large and sure to her as ever. She may read this from the Word, even though she does not see it in providence. That is why the time of Judah’s trouble is a time when He makes many promises.

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