Overview
Ezekiel: The Lord instructs Ezekiel with a lament for Tyre, the great seaport. He describes Tyre as a ship built from the best material, sailors, and mercenaries available from other nations. The nations and people who trade in Tyre are listed along with the varieties of merchandise including slaves. However, the rowers took the ship onto the sea with all of the sailors, craftsmen, and merchants. There, Tyre sinks. The merchants on land mourn and raise a lamentation for Tyre. They can no longer be satisfied by all the fine merchandise that enriched kings. The people of the coastlands stand in horror and dread for Tyre will be no more.
The Lord tells Ezekiel to prophecy against the king of Tyre. The Lord accuses him of thinking he was a god but is really a man. He was wiser than Daniel and by it made himself exceedingly rich and proud. Because of this, the Lord will bring a ruthless nation against him. They will kill him and he will die in the sea. Will he still say he is a god before those who kill him?
Ezekiel was given a lament for the king of Tyre. The Lord says he was perfect in wisdom and beauty. He was in the Garden of Eden bedazzled with jewels. He was created as a guarding Cherub. He was placed on God’s mountain and walked among the stones of fire. He was blameless until unrighteousness was found in him. With all his abundance gained by trade, he used violence and sinned. The Lord removed him from his position on God’s mountain and destroyed him in the stones of fire. He was proud of his beauty, corrupted by his wisdom. The Lord cast him to the ground, burned him and everyone was appalled at his dreadful end forever.
The Lord told Ezekiel to prophecy against Sidon. The Lord’s glory will be seen when he judges Sidon. They will have pestilence and the sword to kill them. Then they will know he is the Lord.
Israel will no longer have enemies among their neighbors and hey will know he is the Lord. He will gather Israel from the nations and show them his holiness. They will live in their own land and be secure when the Lord judges their neighbors who treated them with contempt. The will know that the Lord is their God.
Psalm: The Psalmist praises the Lord and promises to do so openly. He does this because of the Lord’s character and his provision for his people. People who delight in his works ponder them because he has done them to be remembered. His works and character are steadfast forever. The Lord also provides redemption and keeps his covenant forever. Fearing the Lord is the start of wisdom and following his principles displays good understanding.
Proverbs: A wife who wants to continually pick quarrels is as irritating as a constant drip from a leak on a rainy day. Trying to stop her is like trying to stop the wind or pick up oil by grabbing it.
Hebrews: We are provided with a list of examples of faith. Abraham offered Isaac and had faith that God would still keep his promise that his descendants would be named through Isaac by raising him from the dead. In a sense, it did happen because he wasn’t killed. Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau by faith. Jacob blessed Joseph’s sons by faith. And Joseph by faith told of the exodus. Moses was hidden by his mother’s faith. By faith, Moses chose the way of Christ over the pleasures of Egypt and later kept the first Passover. The people crossed the Red Sea by faith, but the Egyptians drowned. The walls of Jericho fell by faith and Rahab was saved because of her faith in hiding the spies.
What Stood Out
Ezekiel: “You were an anointed guardian cherub. I placed you; you were on the holy mountain of God; in the midst of the stones of fire you walked” (Ezek 28:14).
Psalm: “Great are the works of the Lord, studied by all who delight in them” (Ps 111:2).
Proverbs: “To restrain her [a quarrelsome wife] is to restrain the wind or to grasp oil in one's right hand” (Prov 27:16).
Hebrews: “He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back” (Heb 11:19).
Insight
Ezekiel: The Lord compares the king of Tyre to a guardian cherub who was once perfect in beauty and wisdom. The description must be considered to be a comparison to Satan. While some scholars do not want to admit this, it is obvious that the king of Tyre couldn’t live up to this description. It must then apply to Satan. The king’s sins were similar to Satan’s and we can learn a lot about them both as well as the reasons we fall into sin.
Satan was beautiful, and his beauty made him proud. He was basically in love with himself. He must have looked around at all the other angels and thought that his special beauty made him important rather than looking to his creator to find his significance. The king of Tyre must have been a handsome fellow and dressed himself in jewels. He didn’t acknowledge that all he had came from God. We can be proud of our appearance just like these two. We can place our significance on how we look and how we dress instead of seeing ourselves as God’s child and the honor of being his.
Satan was very wise, but he corrupted that wisdom when he focused on his beauty and his exalted position on God’s mountain. He wanted more and that more was to become like God. The king of Tyre also thought he had become a god. Both Satan and the king turned to violence to try to achieve their goals but were humbled. Satan was brought low and the prophecy for him is that he will be thrown into the fire forever. The king of Tyre will face mortal enemies who will kill him and his claims to be a god will be shown absurd. His end is in the same place.
We need to be careful with the wisdom we have. We can use it to serve the Lord or we can use it to get what we want. When our goals are to please ourselves and become our own gods, we become very clever a manipulating other with lies and even violence to get what we want.
Without the cleansing power of the blood of Jesus in our lives, we would succumb to the same unrighteousness that was found in Satan and in the king of Tyre. Our end would be the same place if Jesus hadn’t stepped in to rescue us from our sinfulness.
Psalm: Everything the Lord has done, whether it is in the Old Testament, the New and since the Bible has been written are things what we should remember. If we delight in God then we should delight and ponder or study what he has done. As we do, we will learn about his character, how holy and awesome he is. We will gain understanding about his provision for us, especially in our redemption from sin through the blood of Jesus Christ. Then we should respond in open praise before all people. Then the whole earth will know that Jesus is God and salvation comes from no one else.
Proverbs: Some people just want to quarrel all the time. They can find fault in anything and will make your life miserable. When a spouse it like that, it is even worse because there isn’t really any way to get away from the quarreling. However, the problem works in two ways. There is the initial start of the quarrel, the spouse that just can’t seem to be content or be patient with the other. Then there is his or her partner who wants to fix the other one. He wants to restrain these quarrels.
Fixing another person is as easy as stopping the wind or picking up oil by trying to pinch it. The solution is not in trying to fix the other person but in fixing ourselves. We need to learn how to be patient and not react to the accusations and other things that start the quarrel. Quarreling takes two people. If one rants but the other doesn’t respond in kind, there is no quarrel. Each person needs to look at his or her behavior to see if there is some sin in that causes the other to start a quarrel. Though that doesn’t excuse starting the quarrel. Repentance and godly living will work to resolve the problem.
Hebrews: The description of Abraham’s faith has a key component (Heb 11:19). That component is to believe that God can do anything he wants. Abraham was confident that God’s promise for his descendants would come through Isaac, yet he was willing to sacrifice him and humanly speaking, destroy the possibility of God completing the promise. It would be natural to believe that God would raise Isaac up from the dead in order to complete the promise. But God had other plans.
When we look at the circumstances of our lives and look for a solution from God, we often think we know how God has to do it. We ask for a 100% healing for a person, but he dies. We ask for many things and have faith that God will accomplish what is needed according to our understanding. We even do things to “help God.” We are often amazed when he does answer the way we ask. However, more often than not, he answers in ways we don’t expect. Real faith comes when we respond to the trial the way Abraham did. He said that God would provide the sacrifice (Gen 22:8). Instead of dictating what we think should happen, faith presents the request without telling God how it will be done.
Many people have shipwrecked their faith by going to revival meeting where healings are promised. When the healing doesn’t come, they are told that their faith wasn’t good enough. Real faith looks beyond the current circumstances to the city that God has built rather than the ones we build.
Application
I want my faith to be solidly built upon what God has promised and not what I think he should do. I want my faith to be solid upon knowing that God is good and he can do whatever he wants and whenever he wants it to be done. The outcome will be for my good (to be more like Jesus) and his glory even if I don’t understand it at the time.
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