“Resources Dried Up!” – FBC Morning Light (9/6/2023)

A good Wednesday morning to you in the middle of the first full week of September today, and I hope your week is going well and you're looking forward to a good day ahead.

Today in our Bible reading plan, we're reading in Isaiah 19 and 20, Philippians 4 and Proverbs chapter 7.

Let me ask you this. I want you to think back on what you know of your studies of world history, and what are some of the great, proud, powerful nations that have existed in history, in human history?

You think of some, go as far back as you can, all right? I think of nations or empires like the

Egyptian Empire, and we still see relics today of the heyday of Egypt, the

Sphinx, and the pyramids, and so forth. The Babylonian Empire, the Assyrian Empire, the

Medo -Persian Empire, the Greek Empire under Alexander the Great, the

Roman Empire, the thousand years of the Pax Romana, and the reign of the

Roman Empire. Then we can go on into some smaller nations and empires, right?

France, Great Britain, remember Great Britain used to have possession of so many territories and countries all over the world.

Same with the Netherlands and the Danes, there were Danish or Dutch provinces throughout the world.

Now we can move into the modern day. What are some of the proud, powerful nations today?

Certainly the United States of America, Russia, China, and then there are a bunch of wannabes, of course, who are very proud and rising in power, perhaps.

All right, now I want you to think about this. How many of those still exist, those great, powerful, proud empires from the past?

They're all pretty much gone. Think about the pride and the power of Germany at the rise of, and in the course of,

World War II. Talk about proud, and arrogant, and powerful, and yet gone as a global power and a global empire.

Well, I want us to think about this today and ask ourselves the question, what does the

Lord use to bring a once proud and powerful nation to its knees?

What does he use? I want to look at Isaiah chapter 19. In Isaiah 19, the prophet is prophesying against Egypt, and at the time he prophesied against Egypt, it was considered to be somewhat of a powerhouse of a nation.

But the Lord is prophesying here that he's going to bring Egypt to its knees, and he does so in two ways.

One of them is by drying up the Nile River. So in verses 5 through 10 of Isaiah 19, he says, the waters will fail from the sea and the river will be wasted and dried up.

The rivers will turn foul, and the fishermen won't catch any fish, all the reeds along the banks of the

Nile River are going to dry up, and there won't be papyrus, and so on and so forth. What I want us to get at here is that the

Nile River was to Egypt its most important natural resource, upon which the entire country depended for its economy and its welfare.

So here's the point. The Lord can bring a great, powerful, proud nation to its knees by drying up, so to speak, its

Nile River, the resource or resources upon which it is so dependent and of which it's so proud.

The Lord can remove that or dry it up, and in so doing, the nation, the empire, crumbles.

It's brought to its knees. Another approach that the Lord uses to bring a nation, a proud, arrogant nation, to its knees is to cause the behind -the -scenes counsel to be foolish and stupid so that the leaders end up making foolish and stupid decisions.

For example, in verses 11 through 15, the prophet says, Surely the princes of Zon are fools,

Pharaoh's wise counselors give foolish counsel.

Go down a few verses. Verse 13 says, The princes of Zon have become fools, the princes of Noph are deceived.

They have also deluded Egypt, those who are the mainstay of its tribes. Why? Because, verse 14 says,

The Lord has mingled a perverse spirit in her midst, and they have caused

Egypt to err in all her work as a drunken man staggers in his vomit.

Neither will there be any work for Egypt which the head or tail, palm branch or bulrush, may do.

There is nothing anybody can do to thwart this stupid, foolish counsel and decisions that are made on the basis of foolish and stupid counsel.

So the Lord gives foolish leaders to a nation.

The result is the nation is brought to its knees. I point this out simply because I think it is helpful for us to be aware of some of the ways the

Lord uses, works, in the course of a nation's history.

He works behind the scenes, he doesn't come in the clouds and cause a great pronouncement of this is what

I'm going to do, it just happens, and then before you know it the nation begins to crumble.

You need to be aware of these things. I think it's helpful to be so. So Father, I pray that we would be sensitive to an understanding of the ways in which you work.

This is helpful to us as your people to know you and to know your works.

Give us that wisdom, we pray, in Jesus' name. All right, well listen, have a good rest of your