Your Brother’s Keeper
Obadiah 10–15
Do not gloat over the day of your brother in the day of his misfortune. Obadiah 12
The sin of unbrotherliness has small beginnings but it grows. First, there is the sin of standing aloof when your brother stumbles. This first offense leads to a second one—looking down on your brother in the day of his misfortune. The third stage is rejoicing over fellow Christians who have fallen. Christians talk about other Christians and can even be happy that the other one has sinned. Somehow it makes them appear better. The fourth state is boasting. This grows from pride. If we saw ourselves on the same level as others, we would mourn with them and turn to God in humble thanksgiving that we have been spared, though our sins are also many.
What we think inevitably issues in actions. The Edomites actually caught Jews who were escaping from Jerusalem and delivered them back into the hands of their enemies. It sounds terrible and it is. But this is something of which Christians are sometimes also guilty through their treatment of Christians who have sinned or erred in some doctrine. I may be wrong in this but I believe that there are some Christians who spend more time serving the enemy by delivering fellow believers into the hands of unbelievers than they do serving God. Our duty to other believers is to build them up (Eph. 5:12) and restore them if they have sinned (Gal. 6:1).
But there is this to add. There was a day when two kings confronted one another for the first time. One was an earthly king. His name was Herod Antipas. The motto of his reign was: “What will it profit me?”
The other king was Jesus. He was the King of Kings, who, according to his divine nature, was the supreme King over all the kings of this earth. But he did not want the throne until you and I could share it with him. To make that possible he would die.
Herod said, “What does it profit me?”
Jesus said, “What can I do that will be the greatest possible benefit to my brethren?” God vindicated Jesus! Jesus went to the cross. He died. But his death was followed by a resurrection, and today he lives to enable those who believe on him to behave as he did and bring a true, supernatural brotherhood to this world. For his part, Herod went on with his revelry but soon was banished to Lyons, France, where he died in misery.
This is the choice before you: to go Herod’s way or Jesus’s way. You cannot do both. If you drift, the way will be Herod’s. You will live for self. You will end up thinking yourself better than others and mistreating them. If your life is to be different from that—and your end as well—you must follow Jesus.
Taken from Come to the Waters by James Boice ISBN 9798887790954 used with permission from P&R Publishing, Phillipsburg NJ 08865
Scripture quotations are from the ESV (the Holy Bible English Standard Version) copyright 2001 by Crossway a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. All rights reserved.