Theological Commentary: Click Here
Discipleship Focus: Provision
- Provision: God gives us what we truly need. God knows our needs better than we can know them. We learn to trust God to provide for us.
Unless you
are an expert on this chapter or you’ve already read my commentary from three
years ago, I am willing to be that the idea of provision is not a topic that
you saw coming after reading this chapter.
After all, isn’t this a chapter about all of the Mediterranean Sea
mourning over the loss of Tyre – the Phoenicians?
Yes, Tyre
will fall. Syria fell. Arabia fell.
Israel fell. Canaan fell. Jerusalem will eventually fall. Egypt won’t fall, but they will be beaten
back. Assyria will wreak havoc across
the land. The whole of the Middle East
is falling under judgment.
So how is
this a chapter on provision? Do you
notice at the end of this chapter that we are told that this will result in
glory? Eventually, all of these nations
will be freed from captivity and they will trickle back to their homes. The Hebrew people will come home and they
will want to rebuild. What they will
discover when they do this is that the Phoenicians – the people of Tyre – will also
be reestablishing themselves. They will
be reconstructing their lines of trade across the Mediterranean. They will need partners who have something to
sell and partners who are looking to buy.
Just as
God orchestrated this moment of judgment, God will also orchestrate the return
to glory. God will provide a way to
restoration for the Hebrew people. God
provides.
Of
course, God provides the way to restoration in a very spiritual sense, too. He provides the way for us to go from
captivity to freedom in Christ. This
chapter is a literal analogy for the same provision that God will bring to us
after judgment falls upon us as well.
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