Reading
SAA Notes
God has already told Ezekiel that He doesn’t take delight in the death of the wicked, but in their repentance. (18:23) Ezekiel brings God’s lament at the shattering of Tyre. The real problem is our hardness, not God’s.
SJA Notes
* Dear Lord God, please help us understand Your word today, please plant it deep within us and grow it, that we might be good soil and bear much fruit.
“The merchants among the peoples hiss at you; you have come to a dreadful end and shall be no more forever.”
It can be a helpful process when thinking through what we read here of Tyre, God’s judgement upon the city-nation seen through Ezekiel’s words – And in turn think about the powers in our world today.
Big companies, warlike nations, world-wide initiatives growing in power.
In the end, the Lord will call us to raise a lamentation over them.
They are not of Him. They reject Him. Regardless of the skill that lies in them, the power and the splendour – They reject the All-Powerful God.
They cannot last. Their end is the same for any who reject the Lord.
And what have we? When it all ends, what will be truth?
We read in 1 Corinthians 15,
“Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”
Praise God for Jesus, who irrevocably takes away the sting of death!
* Father God,
Thank You that in Jesus there is no sting of death, no victory of the grave.
Thank You that instead of that we have the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Please help us be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in Your work, knowing that in You our labour is not in vain.
Amen.