Obadiah 1:3-4 The pride of your heart has deceived you, you who live in the clefts of the rocks and make your home on the heights, you who say to yourself, ’Who can bring me down to the ground?’ Though you soar like the eagle and make your nest among the stars, from there I will bring you down," declares the LORD.
Pride is one of
Satan's tool that will allow one to deceive themselves and compare oneself with
other people, to make them look better than they are. Here in the first and
only chapter of the Book of Obadiah, we find Edom saying: "Who can bring
me down to the ground?" A hypothetical question that indicates Edom's
pride believed that their worldly location would protect them from all
danger. Edom inhabited the mountainous country southeast of Judah. Satan
deceived them into believing that it would be impossible for any foe or enemy
to invade and defeat them between their military prowess and impenetrable
geographic location.
However, listen to what God told them as recorded in verse 4: "Though you soar like the eagle and make your nest among the stars, from there I will bring you down," declares the LORD. "Pride had deceived them into believing they were safe, sheltered, self-sufficient, clever, intelligent, and strong enough to resist and survive any attack on their stronghold.
This error of the Edomites is a clear lesson from God about how Satan's tool of pride will cause us to deceive ourselves into relying on our self-sufficiency instead of placing our faith and trust in our Lord and Savior, Christ Jesus. This deception can be dangerous in our day-to-day relationships with other people. However, when this self-deception involves our relationship with God, it becomes an extreme danger that can have eternal consequences. The people of Edom lived in Petra in Edom. Although the word "Petra" is not in the Bible, it is known by its Hebrew name, "Sela." (2 Kings 14:7).:
Petra and Sela both
mean "rock," which is an appropriate name since most of the city was
carved out of the mountains' rocks.
The Edomites placed their faith and trust in the rocks of the world when they should have put it in the "Rock of Ages." This assessment and calculation was a dangerous and life-threatening error because they had left God out of the equation. This misstep is a perfect picture and illustration of the problem of pride in our lives today. To Whom do we compare ourselves and our lives? Pride will have us compare ourselves to other people that we might look at as inferior to ourselves. For pride to work, as Satan designs it to operate, it must compare itself to others to maintain its sense of worth. If, by chance, pride were to compare itself to a superior being, the result of that evaluation would be much different. When this occurs, pride will often attempt to compete with the superior being to prove their preeminence and supremacy. Pride will try to defeat the foremost being to preserve its false status. When one attempts to defeat God, one is in a senseless and losing battle and is hostile towards God (Romans 8:7).
The power of pride is deep-seated in its deceit, and in its wake, it leaves a path of evil in its flawed assessment. Satan will use all means at his disposal to draw us into this trap. He used the pride trap on Adam and Eve in the Garden, and it worked so well that he is still using it today (Genesis 3:5).
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