“It’s the LORD’s Doing!” – FBC Morning Light (8/30/2024)

Well, good Friday morning to you. We're looking forward to the weekend, looking forward to the end of the month of August, beginning of the month of September, Labor Day weekend, you have a holiday coming Monday, I trust, so a long weekend ahead.

But I hope that you are especially prioritizing the gathering together with God's people on Sunday, going to church, hearing God's Word as it's taught and preached, and worshiping God together in song and prayer and in response to the Word, in the reading of the Word.

Yeah, make that make that your priority on the Lord's Day, and it's the Lord's Day, make that a priority. All right, well today in our Bible reading we're in Ezekiel chapter 30, beginning in verse 20, and then reading through chapter 31, and then also Jeremiah chapters 48 and 49.

The Lord Breaks Pharaoh’s Power in Ezekiel 30

I want to focus on this last section of Ezekiel chapter 30, and emphasize what's going on here, what's behind what's going on, okay? So in chapter 30, Ezekiel 30 verse 20, it says, It came to pass in the 11th year, in the first month, in the seventh day of the month, that the word of the Lord came to me, Ezekiel says, saying, here's what the Word of the Lord says, Son of man, I have broken the arm of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.

Remember we talked about how, you know, the Lord was going to bring destruction on Egypt. I have broken the arm of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and see, it has not been bandaged for healing, nor a splint put on to bind it, to make it strong enough to hold a sword.

All right, so obviously this is a metaphorical description of how the Lord has crippled the military power of the nation of Egypt. He goes on to say, Therefore, thus says the Lord God, surely I am against Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and will break his arms, both the strong, the strong one, and the one that was broken, and I will make the sword fall out of his hand.

I will completely, I will completely render his military force utterly impotent. I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations, and disperse them throughout the countries. I will strengthen the arms of the king of Babylon, and put my sword in his hand, but I will break Pharaoh's arms, and he will groan before him with the groanings of a mortally wounded man.

Thus, I will strengthen the arms of the king of Babylon, but the arms of Pharaoh shall fall down. They shall know that I am the Lord when I put my sword into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he stretches it out against the land of Egypt.

I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations, and disperse them throughout the countries. Then they shall know that I am the Lord. All right, so clearly what's going on here is Egypt, as a once great superpower, is going to lose all that power, is going to be defeated, utterly defeated, and the people, the Egyptians, are going to be taken captive and taken into exile.

And the Babylonians are going to rise to power, they are going to become the next superpower, overthrowing the superpower that was the Egyptians. But here's what we must never lose sight of. This is the Lord's doing, and he makes it very clear here.

The Lord says, I am against Pharaoh, I will break his arms. And then later on he says, I, I, the Lord says, I will strengthen the arms of the king of Babylon, but the arms of Pharaoh shall fall down. I'm going to do this.

Now here's the thing, who are the Babylonians? Are they some great godly, pious, God-fearing, God-worshiping people? Not in the least bit. They're utter pagans, and they're brutal. But God says, I'm going to use them, the Babylonians, to overthrow the Egyptians.

God’s Hidden Providence Over the Nations

Now, this is hidden reality that God gives us some insight into. He pulls back the veil a little bit for us, and helps us to see the operations of the world. Now, we don't know all that's going on in our world, we can't see behind a veil that is, you know, doing what's being done in the nations of the Earth, but what we have to realize is that God works in the nations of this world to accomplish his purposes, to do as he will.

So when we faced world wars, you know, what was behind that? We don't know all the reasons why stuff was going on, but we know that God used these military powers to accomplish his purposes in the world.

What's going on in our world today, with war in Russia, Ukraine, with war in the Middle East, with saber-rattling in China, Taiwan, you know, what's going on? Where is God in all of this? God is in all of this.

The sovereign God over the nations is the one who breaks the arms of one nation, and strengthens the arms of another. And I want to end with this observation, at the end of chapter 31, where the Lord says to which of the, speaking of, you know, metaphorically again, picturesquely, of Egypt, to which of the trees of Eden will you then be likened in glory and greatness, you who once were so filled with glory and greatness?

Yet you shall be brought down with the trees of Eden to the depths of the earth. You shall lie in the midst of the uncircumcised with the slain, with those slain by the sword. This is Pharaoh and all his multitude, says the Lord God.

The Humbling of the Greatest Nations and Our Confidence in God

Here's the thing, the greatest, most powerful nation of the earth can be brought to its knees and brought to utter ruin, should the Lord determine it to be so. That should humble every leader of every nation on the planet, and it should cause those of us who know Christ as our Savior and worship this sovereign God, it should cause us to be at peace and to move ahead in this life with confidence, knowing that our God is in control.

And Father, we thank you for that confidence today. We thank you for just knowing that you, our God, are in control of our nation and every other nation on this planet. Thank you for that confidence today, in Jesus' name we pray, amen.

All right, listen, have a good weekend, gather with God's people, worship the Lord, may it be a spiritually fruitful weekend for you. God bless.