Song: Psalms 90

Who you reject when you reject God as your king.

The God who is to be worshipped and feared for his power to destroy.

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction” (Proverbs 1:7) 

There was a great port city of Tyre, described in Ezekiel 27 and God tells Ezekiel to write a lament (a song of mourning and grief) for the great city because of the destruction that God had planned for it (Ezekiel 26:7-14; Ezekiel 26:19-21). God asks Ezekiel to write this song so that people will remember the city that he was planning to turn into ancient ruins (Ezekiel 26:20). 

God says, first, the people need to remember how ideal, beautiful and perfect the city of Tyre was (Ezekiel 26:17-18). Begin the song by describing her beauty, how perfect people saw her as and Ezekiel describes Tyre as having the seas as her domain, she ruled the seas and everyone traded in her ports (Ezekiel 27:1-4). She was not a fisherman town but a wealthy port city with boats that sat at her docks that rivaled all modern shipping of the day. The most costly and sought after materials were brought to build her, the port city of Tyre and only the most skilled sailors and craftsmen were aboard the ships of Tyre (Ezekiel 27:8-9). 

The most celebrated soldiers served in her army and brought the city fame for the skill in their ability to shield, wall and protect Tyre (Ezekiel 27:10-11). Her ports were filled with everything valuable with only the most valuable merchandise traded from nations across the region, the finest materials; a wealth of goods (Ezekiel 27:12). 

But Ezekiel’s song is not a song of praise but of lament, of mourning, for the city of Tyre because in the day of God’s judgement for Tyre Ezekiel 27:26 says that “as your oarsmen take you out to the high seas and your ships are filled with heavy cargo as you sail” meaning you will be doing business as usual, in the prime of your splendor, in fact you will be wealthier than you have ever been, you will be weighed down with wealth when suddenly God’s judgement strikes, “the east wind will break you to pieces…far out to sea” in a place too distant to rescue (Ezekiel 27:26). “Your wealth, merchandise and wares, your mariners, sailors and shipwrights, your merchants and all your soldiers, and everyone else on board will sink into the heart of the sea, on the day of your shipwreck” (Ezekiel 27:27). 

Everyone who invested in you will go down with you and everyone who survives will weep over you with bitter mourning (Ezekiel 27:32) and say, who would have ever thought that this kind of demise could come to the great port city of Tyre (Ezekiel 27:32) you were so wealthy that your wealth enriched kings and you satisfied many nations with your merchandise (Ezekiel 27:33). “Now you are shattered by the sea, in the depths of the waters; your wares and all your company have gone down with you. You have come to a horrible end and will be no more” (Ezekiel 27:34-36). 

God fulfilled his word of prophesy against the city Tyre and the account continues to be a word of caution to nations and people who rise up in pride against God and his chosen people. Ezekiel describes why this judgement of complete erasure is given to the city of Tyre, why God’s judgement is so complete and his mercy so distant. Why they are destroyed and not rescued. “Son of Man, because Tyre has said of Jerusalem, ‘Aha! The gate to the nations is broken, and its doors have swung open to me; now that she lies in ruins I will prosper,’ therefore, this is what the Sovereign Lord says: I am against you, Tyre, and I will bring many nations against you” (Ezekiel 26:2-3). 

If God is for you who can be against you? but if God is against you, how can you prosper? Your destruction is certain. The protection of God is with people who put their faith in God the Lord, to fight their battles for them, to cause them to have victory over their enemies even enemies who are stronger than them. 

Ezekiel chapters 26 and 27 tells the account of the city of Tyre whose wickedness against the people of God incited the judgement of the God of justice. A wealthy city who prospered because of its geography and access to many markets. God is saying in this account that he is a God who will defend his kingdom, the place and the people where he dwells against any city, any nation and any people. In this account God allows complete destruction to come to the city of Tyre. Suddenly, all the nations that Tyre was a trades partner with became enemies of Tyre and declared war with them. Because the earth is the Lord’s and everything and everyone in it, God has the power to turn the wealth of nations into ancient ruins. 

From this account God reserves this judgement for people and nations who are against God and his people. He allows them to become very rich and very proud and arrogant and in their arrogance to despise God on account of their wealth so that when they fall and are destroyed all nations will remember that “God, he is the Lord over all kingdoms” (Ezekiel 26:6) and that their destruction was prepared because they were against God and the people of God and that this God is able to bring even powerful nations to a complete end. 

The God who is ruler over all the earth. 

“All the trees of the forest will know that I the Lord bring down the tall tree and make the low tree grow tall. I dry up the green tree and make the dry tree flourish. I the Lord have spoken, and I will do it” (Ezekiel 17:24) 

To obey God’s word and follow his commandments requires knowing who God is, what kind of God he is. Daniel 4:17 God says who he is, he says, “I am the Most High God. The ruler over all kingdoms.” He says this to the king at the time of Babylon whose kingdom touched every known part of the earth. God told this king, I am ruler over you, your kingdom and all kingdoms of the earth. 

God’s word says to obey him requires knowing who he is, and God’s word says that he is the one who builds nations and the one that makes them nothing and scatters their people across the globe. To obey God is to believe that Jesus is the only one God accepts, that he is the gift of God to the world through whom God will bless the earth, reveal himself as good and save.

The God who is to be worshipped and feared for his power to deliver.

“The word of the Lord came to Jonah, son of Amittai: Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me” (Jonah 1:1-2). 

There was another great city with another prophet named Jonah who God told to send a message of warning against the great city of Ninevah, but Jonah ran away from God and tried to hide by heading in the opposite direction to another city. Running away from God sent him into a storm that nearly drowned him and all of the people on the boat he was travelling on heading away from what God commanded, and eventually, Jonah, ended up being swallowed by a great whale and sat alive in the stomach of the whale for several days. When he repented to God from inside of the whale, the fish spat him on shore and God said again, ‘Go to the great city of Nineveh and tell them what I have told you (Jonah 3:1). 

This time Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went and prophesied against the city saying, ‘forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown’ (Jonah 3:4) as judgement by God for its wickedness. When the people of Nineveh heard Jonah’s message from God and what Jonah had been through, they “believed God, from the greatest of them to the least” (Jonah 3:5). 

Even the king of Nineveh issued a proclamation for all the people of Nineveh to repent and turn to God that said, “Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence. Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish” (Jonah 3:8-9). “When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened” (Jonah 3:10).

But Jonah was angry at God for being so compassionate. Jonah knew that God is a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity (Jonah 4:2). This is the reason Jonah ran away, he knew God would forgive him, but for a city and people worthy of judgement and wrath Jonah figured, if he had to go through what he went through, surely God is also just and would overthrow the city as he had said to him that he would. So, Jonah built a shelter outside of the city, sat in the shade and waited to see what would happen (Jonah 4:5). But God said to Jonah, “should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals” (Jonah 4:11). 

Jonah waited for the God you fear for his power to destroy. “But as for me, I watch in hope for the Lord, I wait for God my Savior” the God who is to be worshipped and feared for his power to deliver and “my God will hear me” (Micah 7:7).

Prayer: “Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations. Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the whole world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God. You turn people back to dust, saying, “Return to dust, you mortals.” A thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night. Yet you sweep people away in the sleep of death—they are like the new grass of the morning: In the morning it springs up new but by evening it is dry and withered. We are consumed by your anger and terrified by your indignation. You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence. All our days pass away under your wrath; we finish our years with a moan. Our days may come to seventy years or eighty, if our strength endures; yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away. If only we knew the power of your anger! Your wrath is as great as the fear that is your due. Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. Relent, Lord! How long will it be? Have compassion on your servants. Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days. Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us, for as many years as we have seen trouble. May your deeds be shown to your servants, your splendor to their children. May the favor of the Lord our God rest on us; establish the work of our hands for us—yes, establish the work of our hands.” Psalms 90:1-17