Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2136
“But upon Mount Zion shall be deliverance, and there shall be holiness; and the house of Jacob shall possess their possessions.” Obadiah 1:17.
THIS is a remarkable passage. Its wording is singular. It begins with a, “but,” because the previous verses have been denouncing judgments upon Edom. When God comes forth to punish His enemies He also comes forth to bless His friends. When Pharaoh is overthrown in the Red Sea, it is that Israel may pass onward to Canaan. When Amalek is overcome, it is that Israel may be at peace. There is a black cloud as well as the silvery rain. The acceptable year of the Lord is the day of vengeance of our God. This combination so constantly occurs that the Psalmist said, “I will sing of mercy and judgment.”
The sword of vengeance is displayed at the same time as the scepter of Divine Grace. In that Last Great Day—that coming of the Lord which is the joy and expectation of His people—there will be confusion to His adversaries. To the ungodly, “the day of the Lord will be darkness and not light.” When He comes forth there will as surely be a curse to the left hand as a blessing to the right—and both will be everlasting. Hell is as deep as Heaven is high, for God, who delights in mercy, also hates iniquity and will put away the wicked of the earth like dross. God grant to you and to me that we may know on which side we stand and may be found in Christ, wearing His righteousness and accepted in the Beloved so that whenever the Lord comes forth with plagues for His adversaries, He may have favor towards us.
When, in the words of verse 16, His foes, “shall be as though they had not been,” may the full force of the present text be revealed in our case—“But upon Mount Zion shall be deliverance, and there shall be holiness; and the house of Jacob shall possess their possessions.” I have no doubt that this promise has been fulfilled already and that there was a time when the house of Israel, restored from captivity, came back to Zion and Edom was utterly consumed. “The house of Jacob shall be a fire and the house of Joseph a flame, and the house of Esau for stubble and they shall kindle in them, and devour them; and there shall not be any remaining of the house of Esau; for the Lord has spoken it.”
But the former fulfillment of a promise does not make it useless like a cashed check—the promise may be presented again—and it will again be honored. God’s rules of action are immutable and therefore what He did to one company of His people He will do to others of them. God is Sovereign but yet He acts according to His unchanging Nature so that from one of His proceedings we may infer the rest. The temporary restoration of the captives to Jerusalem can only have fulfilled the promise upon a very small scale—it has a wider meaning than such an event could exhaust. The Lord is prepared to do the same on a larger scale for all those who put their trust in Him.
Taking the text as containing a general principle, I shall use it for our own encouragement and edification, praying God the Holy Spirit to make it truly useful. I notice, in the text, first, a privilege to be desired—“The house of Jacob shall possess their possessions.” Secondly, a favor to be remembered—“Upon Mount Zion shall be deliverance.” And, thirdly, a character to be conspicuous—“And there shall be holiness.”
I. First of all, consider A PRIVILEGE TO BE DESIRED. The land of Canaan had been granted to Israel by the Lord of All. Each family had a lot and portion which belonged to it forever, being entailed upon it by a Covenant of salt. Through their sins the tribes were carried into captivity—the land was taken from them by their conquerors and they could no longer possess their possessions. Now, the promise comes to them by the prophet Obadiah: “The house of Jacob shall possess their possessions.”
A property may be my lawful possession and yet, for different reasons, I may not be able to get at it—it may be in the hands of one who defrauded me of it, or I may be far away and unable to reach it. The words are singular, but their meaning is distinct—“They shall possess their possessions.” Let us use the words as applicable to souls who shall be led to
take what is promised to Believers. “The house of Jacob shall possess their possessions.” We set before many of you, every Lord’s-Day, the great possessions of eternal life, of pardon, of justification, of the new birth, sanctification and all the other treasures of the Covenant of Grace. But though they are set before you and you long after them, many of you feel unable to grasp them as your own.
You know that the tenure of these possessions is faith, but either you do not understand what faith is, or you, for some other reason, fail to exercise it and so you do not appropriate what the Gospel freely gives to you. You are either confused by ignorance, dazed by fear as to your sin or held back by the temptations of the devil. I pray that you may be granted Divine Grace speedily to take what Jesus freely gives so that you may come to possess your possessions. If you have the power given you today, by faith, to take the Lord Jesus Christ as yours—and if you now trust in His most precious blood—you need not be afraid that you will be taking possession of what does not belong to you, for every believing soul may know that what he takes by faith was bestowed upon him in the Covenant of Grace from before the foundation of the world!