No Christian today who worships this God and rests in Him by faith should get the jitters that the world is careening out of

control towards some meaningless catastrophe. It isn't. We might feel like

we're being thrown all over the place in a stage coach driven by six wild horses

like I used to see on Westerns bouncing up and down without any springs.

But fear not, sitting over our heads completely serene is Almighty God and the hands who

made the world hold the reins. How should God's absolute sovereignty stabilize

our hearts when the world seems out of control.

That's the question John Piper answers from the book of Obadiah in this episode of Light and Truth.

This sermon was originally preached at Bethlehem Baptist Church on November 7th, 1982.

Old Testament Prophet Obadiah, it's the littlest book in the Old Testament, so you may have trouble finding it.

It comes right after Amos and just before Jonah. Not only is it the littlest book in the Old Testament, but the author is a person about

which we know nothing, except that he wrote this book. There are 11 other people in the Old Testament

named Obadiah, but there's no evidence that this Obadiah is one of those. So we're really in the dark about his background. We only know that

he spoke the word of God as he says. The prophecy was delivered evidently very soon after the captivity of Judah in 587 BC when the Babylonians sacked Jerusalem.

I see it falling into two halves. The first is verses 1 through 16, and these verses are directed

against the nation of Edum, that is the descendants of

E.Saw who lived in the southeast sector of the land just southeast

of the dead sea.

The second half of the prophecy,

verses 17 to 21, focuses on the vindication of Israel

and the establishment of God's final kingdom on the earth.

And my sense of what the main point of this book is,

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