FBC Morning Light – September 29, 2022

Faith Baptist Church

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Well a good Thursday morning to you. So here we are closing in on the end of September.

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Boy it's coming quickly, very quickly is it not? Well today we're reading in Ezekiel chapters 29 and 30 and we are actually taken behind the curtain in the providences of God.

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Let me explain what I mean. Do you ever feel perplexed when you think about, you know, world history and even global events right now as to, you know, why one nation ends up overtaking another nation and how nations come and go and, you know, why?

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How does that happen? What's the purpose for it? What's the purpose behind it? I will not be so bold as to provide an explanation for all of those things.

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I don't have the answers to those things. But what I do know is what is given to us in the

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Scripture to help us realize that it's not all happenstance and that the affairs of this world, the the saber -rattling and even the execution of those warfares are not at the whim of the leaders, the military leaders.

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So for example, you know, whatever it is that's going on with the war in Russia and Ukraine right now is not simply a result of the whim of an evil man in Moscow by the name of Vladimir Putin.

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There's more to it. There's more going on behind the scenes than you and I know.

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And that's revealed to us in Ezekiel chapter 29. And let me show you what

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I mean. Remember the other day I mentioned to you the city of Tyre and how

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Tyre had become so proud of itself because it accumulated their wealth by their trade in the sea and so forth.

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And God said to Tyre that he was gonna bring them down, gonna wipe them out. Well, the method that God chose to use to do that is the

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Babylonians. Now in Ezekiel 29, the

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Lord gives us some insight here into some further conflict. Listen to what he says in verse 17.

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He says, It came to pass in the twenty -seventh year and the first of the month, on the first day of the month, that the word of the

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Lord came to me saying, this is Ezekiel speaking, this is what the Lord told me. He said, Son of man,

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Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon caused his army to labor strenuously against Tyre.

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Every head was made bald and every shoulder rubbed raw, yet neither he nor his army received wages from Tyre for the labor which they expended on it.

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So what the Lord is saying here is that I quote hired the

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Babylonians to go and execute this judgment against Tyre that I said would come upon Tyre.

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So notice what we learn from a look behind the scenes. Why was

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Tyre destroyed a few thousand years ago? Why? Because God pronounced judgment against Tyre for its pride and he used another kingdom and another empire, the

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Babylonians, to execute that judgment. But, God says, they didn't get any higher for their, they didn't get any wages for their hire.

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So he says in verse 19, surely I will give the land of Egypt to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon.

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He shall take away her wealth, carry off her spoil, and remove her pillage, and that will be the wages of his army.

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All right, you see now what else is happening? You're looking behind the veil. God is giving you some insight into global affairs.

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He's saying, I used Babylon to execute my judgment against Tyre.

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Babylon didn't get any, quote, wages for that execution of my will. So the wages that I'm going to give

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Babylon, they're going to receive by destroying, overtaking, and plundering Egypt.

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So if you didn't have this behind -the -scenes look, you would just be looking at world history and you would see that there was this terrible war in the ancient world where, you know, this

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Babylonian Empire came and decimated Tyre, and then they, you know, then they came to Egypt, came against Egypt, and they decimated

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Egypt, and, you know, man, what a terrible thing. Look at how bad and terrible these

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Babylonians were. They so terribly mistreated the people of Tyre. They mistreated the

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Egyptians. What wicked, wicked, wicked people the Babylonians were. But we're given a behind -the -scenes look, and we realize that God used the

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Babylonians to execute his judgment against Tyre, and really also against Egypt.

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Now, Babylon doesn't exist anymore. Why? Because of what we learned from behind the scenes, that God was going to use another rising

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Empire, the Medo -Persians, to bring judgment upon Babylon. Now, what does all that have to do with our day in which we live?

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God hasn't given us another book of Ezekiel today. He hasn't.

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We don't have a modern version of the book of Ezekiel. But what we do know from what

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God has given to us is that there are things going on behind the veil.

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There are reasons that God has in his purposes for what's transpiring on our planet today.

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So, for example, I was talking with a missionary just recently, a missionary from Southeast Asia, and we had

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FaceTimed, if you will, and he was telling me, he was talking to me about the influence, the controlling influence that China is exercising in some of the nations all around him.

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His perspective is that China is behind the civil conflict, civil war in Myanmar. China has taken over Cambodia and its controlling interests in Cambodia.

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Singapore, he says, has capitulated to China's will, and on and on he went through some of the countries and nations surrounding where he is in Southeast Asia.

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And so that's looking at it from our perspective. You see this controlling influence of China going on in these countries.

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Why? Well, behind the veil, God has his purposes that he's working out, and he's accomplishing them, and they will indeed be accomplished, just as they were with the

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Babylonians, using the Babylonians against Tyre, using the Babylonians to plunder

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Egypt, and so forth, to fulfill his purposes. What a perspective to be able to have, that we can watch the news, we can read our newspapers, we can hear the events of this world, and we can know that there's more going on behind the scenes than what's appearing in the print in front of me or on the video screen in front of my face.

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And what's going on is that there is a sovereign God who is providentially directing the affairs of this world to accomplish his purposes.

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I think we can find great comfort and confidence and security in that.

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So Father, we do thank you for revealing yourself to us and giving us some insight into a behind -the -scenes look of global affairs.

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And we pray that we would move from here with confidence, looking even at the affairs of our life today, knowing that you are working your purposes for your good, for your glory.

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