“For the day of the Lord is near upon all the nations.”
– Obadiah 1:15
So what’s interesting about this Bible book, it’s really only one chapter. It is specifically focused on God’s judgment coming upon Edom, the nation made up of the descendants of Esau. They were distant cousins of the Israelites. We see Edom mentioned at many different points and prophetic books in the Old Testament. But here in Obadiah, the focus is pretty much entirely devoted to God’s coming judgment upon Edom. And we get to this verse in verse 15 where it says, the day of the Lord is near. But listen to the phrase, not just upon Edom. The day of the Lord is near upon all the nations.
Obadiah 1:15 Reminds us of God’s Coming Judgement
This verse, this Bible book is a reminder to us that all the nations, all the tribes, all the people groups of the world with all the languages in the world, will one day stand before God as judge, including our people group, whoever we are, whoever you are listening to this right now. The day of the Lord is coming. Every type of person from every place in the world will stand before God to give an account as judge.
This is one of the reasons why we pray continually on this podcast for specific nations. We know when the Bible talks about nations like this, it’s not talking about just geopolitical entities like we might think of countries today. It’s talking about ethnic groups and languages and tribes and peoples, all these different words that we see in different places in the Bible. And it’s why we pray for specific people groups.
Obadiah 1:15 Encourages Us to Pray for the Unrepentant
It’s why in just a minute we’re going to pray for the Tem Kotokoli people of Togo and Ghana and Benin, this small people group. I say small, relatively small, hundreds of thousands of people in West Africa. And we’re going to pray for them like we pray most every day on this podcast because the Kotokoli people of Togo and Ghana and Benin are going to stand before God as judge. And specifically we pray for them and others like them because they’ve not heard the good news about Jesus. He’s the only one who can save them from the judgment that we all deserve because of our sin. But they can’t be saved from their sin if they don’t hear about the Savior from sin and believe in him, but they can’t believe in him if nobody tells them about him.
This is Romans 10:13-15. This is the Great Commission that we have been given and it should drive our praying on a daily basis. We pray, we give and we live for the spread of Jesus’ name and Jesus’ love and Jesus’ fame among all the nations. Why? Obadiah 1:15. For the day of the Lord is near upon all the nations. This is what it means to be a Christian, to be a follower of Jesus is to live every day, pray every day, give every day, go right where we live and wherever God leads, every day, knowing that in the end on a day that’s coming, all the nations will stand before God as judge.
Praying for the Kotokoli People of Togo, Ghana and Benin
So we pray, God, we pray for the Kotokoli people of Togo and Ghana and Benin, this Muslim people group. God, we pray, knowing that your judgment is coming. We pray for their salvation. God, we pray for the spread of your grace and your mercy in Jesus to them. Please God, hear our cries today and cause laborers to go to the Kotokoli people. Cause people who are near them and far from them, to go to them to share the gospel. And God, we pray that you had opened their eyes to believe. Show your power to save the Kotokoli people of Ghana and Togo and Benin. We pray for the spread of the gospel, especially amidst so much persecution that’s happening in West Africa of Christians.
We pray that through our prayers, through our giving, through our going today, God, help us make disciples of the nations. Help us make disciples of all kinds of different people right around us. And God, we pray that you would lead and guide and direct our steps, each one of us by your Spirit to any ways you might be leading us to go short term to places that are unreached in the world. Maybe longer than that, maybe for a month or two, for a year or two, to the extent of which we have opportunities. And God, we all say our lives are yours to spend.
So if you desire for us to spend extended time up to our entire lives, spreading the gospel in other nations among people where the gospel has not gone, we say we will do it. We trust you with our lives. You’re Lord of our lives. Spend us today through our praying and our giving, our going today right around us, right where we live and in the days to come, wherever you might lead. Always cognizant of the fact that the day of the Lord is near upon all the nations, Obadiah 1:15. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
