Isaiah, Chapter 23

We're going to be rolling through Isaiah 23 as we typically do. We summarize the chapter or chapters in the larger context just to kind of give you a sense of what's happening and then zero in on the specific passage, which we'll do here this morning.

All of this chapter, Isaiah 23, is about the nation-city of Tyre. I call it a nation-city because it was this city of Tyre, the primary city of the district, and substantially, very much most of the district, that was the nation of Tyre. It's the one that is being addressed here. Tyre was a nation-city that conducted shipping and trade. around the then known world and will be actually, I think, probably a little bit amazed at how widely they carried their trade and their explorations.

In chapter 23, Isaiah talks about the impact of this sort of temporary fall that takes place upon Tyre. And we'll also be looking kind of beyond that to see of the larger fall of Tyre and how that fits into prophecy and scripture. The specific verses we'll be looking at, verses 15 through 18, will talk about this focal point passage for this morning. And we'll end up, as we saw, with a final upstroke, with a hopeful end for Tyre, even though much of what Isaiah has to say has a negative tone to it. He does end up with some hope for them, and hope not only for their good in terms of prosperity, but also spiritually. which is something that they had been and even today are substantially lacking. Now, now that you're tired of my tire puns, we'll take a look at this chart. This is a chart that we kind of presented right at the outset and be looking at again here this morning.

At the beginning, we know that the first dozen verses in, excuse me, chapters in Isaiah were warnings to Judah itself. This was the country that Isaiah had been called specifically to speak to. So the first dozen chapters address that. We're here at the end of the second section, which is chapters 13 through 23, which are warnings to Judah's neighbors, all the neighboring nations and peoples.

And so we've been stepping our way from this first section to the present section that we're just ending today, and we'll then proceed next time into God's warnings to all the nations together. Now, to understand Tyre, we're going to need to look at some history and geography. Now, as soon as I mention those two words, I know some of you are going to be stunned and a little bit worried. Some of you might be thinking, gosh, am I going to have to remember anything?

And just don't worry about it. Not that big a deal. We'll get there. There will be a final exam. But I know that might get you a little concerned. No need to worry. It'll only have one choice. And the final exam choice is this. Put an X in the box, put your pencil down and rest. Trust in the Lord. Okay, that's your final exam. All right. Now, let's get into it, to the heavy stuff here.

Here is a map of Phoenicia. It's just to the north of Israel and Judah. It is an area that was significantly along the coast. It was coastal cities and somewhat inland, but not much. Here is Tyre, located right along the coast. We put a little box around it so you can identify it easily. Here is Tyre, right on the southern part of Phoenicia. Just to give you some sense of scale, it's 30 miles directly from Tyre to the Sea of Galilee.

So here we're looking if the nations, excuse me, the tribes of Israel had gone in seven centuries earlier as Joshua had first led them and taken over the area that they were supposed to, there actually wouldn't be any people in Tyre to talk to that would be from another nation. They would be Jews. But because they didn't do so, because they didn't fill out and fulfill the whole taking over the land that the Lord had given to them, this city of Tyre remained and continued on even with some presence in the New Testament times. So here's Tyre right in the corner, if you will, of the area that had been designated for the Jews to take over and actually drive them out. So here's Phoenicia to the north of Israel and Judah. All right. To understand Tyre, we need to understand Phoenicia. This requires a little perspective.

Phoenicia was the name of a land occupied by a people called Phoenicians. The Greeks gave them that name. That's not what they called themselves. They had this strip of land, you see it here in green in the map there that's above there, and you notice Tyre, which is in a sort of a reddish-brown outline, is at the southern end of that. These shells here are not just there for pretty. These shells are a part of the history of the people of Tyre and of Phoenicia altogether.

How did that happen? Happened like this. The Greeks we mentioned gave the Phoenicians their name because the Phoenicians themselves didn't have a name for themselves. How about that? It'd be kind of like, yeah, we're from Colorado and we're from Kansas and we're from Utah. but we don't have a name for ourselves altogether. So curiously, that was the way that they operated.

They were called Phoenicus from red ones in the Greek, and the reason for that is that the Phoenicians had learned how to make a dye out of these shells that you see here, Murex shells, and they would take the shells and they'd learn the technique to make dye. Now, it was not an easy task.

Up to 10,000 shells required for one gram of dye. That's a lot of shells. You have to collect 10,000. With up to 10,000 shells, here's your gram of dye. What is that going to cost you? About 5 to 10 grams of gold. Here you've got dye that's worth 5 to 10 times by weight. in gold, amazing, really expensive stuff. And that is why in that time and even into the New Testament era, royalty frequently wear purple. It was a color, violet, red, purple, anything in that shade was considered expensive. This is why, extremely labor intensive to get that many, but they also knew the technique.

Phoenicia here was the name of the land, the Greeks giving them the name, The people didn't have a name for themselves. They tended to call themselves from the city nation that they were from. Hence, that's why Isaiah is talking about Tyre here and not all about Phoenicia. They wouldn't have even understood all about Phoenicia. They didn't think of themselves in those terms.

But instead they had a number of these nation cities and they would establish a king over the nation city. Every time they would establish a new city somewhere, and they did that, they would put a king up over that city, and that king was to be in a friendly relationship with the other ones. But again, no name for the whole of them. Tyre was a principal nation city among these, just north of the people of Israel. As we mentioned, about 30 miles just from the Sea of Galilee, roughly the same numbers apply to Tyre, to Nazareth, where Jesus was raised.

Byblos is a city here of paper merchants. It's where we get our word Bible. Because at that city, they handled so much paper and sold it, that that ended up being the word that people think of. So we get their word Bible, bibliography. Those came from that city of Byblos.

Tyre and Sidon, both mentioned in both the Old and the New Testaments, located here and here. Tyre, being in the southern portion of Phoenicia, traded with the Jews of Northern Israel. By New Testament times, that trade was substantially consisting of trading for food. They particularly had to appeal just to get food. They were good at business, not that great at raising food.

Now, they also had shipping that went all over the Mediterranean and even outside of that. We have clear evidence they went up to Britain, even during the time of Isaiah. Some speculation, and I haven't seen anything more than that, they even came to the Americas. They seemed to have gone to other islands, possibly even the Azores, and went certainly up into the Black Sea and places like that. They established colonies, and at various colonies they would make business deals. They were really big on business.

And so during the time of Isaiah, they found a new silver vein. And so there was an abundance of silver coins around Tyre during Isaiah's lifetime because of that finding of new silver veins. And that was over in Spain where they had several colonies established. Here is Carthage that was famous even up into New Testament times and beyond. That was established just several decades before Isaiah's birth. Carthage was a city, well here's a picture of the ruins, that just like they had done in other places, here is a nation city that they found. They establish a king, supposed to maintain friendly relations for the sake of business, for trade.

Guess what? The alphabet that was in use, even that your Bible is founded upon, the Hebrew and the Greek, founded on the Phoenician, and even our own has its roots in the Phoenician language. Because they were big in the business, they needed to communicate, they needed to keep records. here's what I'm going to buy, here's what I'm going to sell. And so they propagated language even in places, written language in places where they didn't have the written language. Now, all this of course goes away if you listen to the father in my big fat Greek wedding who would tell you that every word is based on the Greek, okay? Of course, we're just going to laugh that one off and go on. Okay. Now, To understand Tyre, it helps to understand Phoenicia.

We've said that Solomon built the first temple in Jerusalem. What he did is he went to the king of Tyre, Hiram, and he provided not only materials, but skilled labor. So this is a couple centuries before Isaiah's time. When the second temple was built, a couple centuries after Isaiah's time, guess what happens? Tyre again, along with Sidon, provides the materials. So both the first and the second temples that the Jews had were provided substantially by Tyre's involvement. Friendly business relationships, however, and being able to make successful business deals did not guarantee that Tyre was godly. As a matter of fact, the great summary is it was not, not a godly place.

Here's another interesting tidbit. It was recorded that about a little less than a century after Isaiah's time, the Phoenicians actually circumnavigated, that is, traveled all the way around Africa. In those days, that was quite adventuresome. Amazing accomplishment. The Phoenicians were experts at shipping, trading, materials, skills for building. When it came to business, they knew how to do it. They were good.

Let's look at our focal point passage here this morning, because we'll be zeroing in on verses 12 through 18, excuse me, 15 through 18 of chapter 23. All right, let's do that. What we'll do is we'll divide it, take it one verse at a time. So we'll look at, you know, first one verse, then the next, then we'll even put a divider there between 17 and 18. Let's start here with 15.

It says there, in that day, Tyre will be forgotten for 70 years, like the days of one king. In that day, as we mentioned before, it seems we run into this quite often, is a future time, the exact time in the future determined by context. This points to a time of 70 years, Tyre would be left alone, basically forgotten by Assyria, so that they could kind of build their business back up because Assyria had attacked them and caused them a great deal of trouble. And now they could build their business back up. They would be forgotten by Assyria who had continuously harassed them. And they would be allowed to go back during that time when Assyria would sort of let up on them and give them a chance to rebuild. Then it uses this phrase, like the days of one king. Now this is a Hebrew expression.

In those days, a king would record kind of like a royal diary. Here's my daily log of here's the things that happened. So like the days of one king, now that's two kings, that's not gonna work, okay? One king, all right. The days of one king, they would write down all the events and the decisions of each day that had taken place and they'd record that in the royal logbook. Isaiah was saying that the fulfillment of Isaiah 23, 15 would be literal in one time. Just in the same way a king writes everything down, this is exactly the way it's gonna happen. In the days of one king, this is actually the way it's going to happen. It's going to happen in one block of time. It's really going to happen.

It's not allegorical. It's not a figure of speech to be taken in some wispy, thin, non-structured way. Take it literally, is what he's telling them. There's a similar expression that Isaiah has already used twice, as a hired man would count. Very literally, very directly. I work this day, I work this day. Why do I need to be literal? Because I want to get paid for this day and this day. Very direct. These were Hebrew expressions that indicated literal and sequential time.

The next point there, the Old Testament times, because it ends with this song of the harlot. Harlots would walk the streets. We have our phrase, common phrase, you know, straight walkers in our culture. They'd walk the streets enticing customers with music. and they'd go about oftentimes playing musical instruments and sometimes singing. So interesting appeal.

Tyre would attract interest in herself again, but like the harlot that he expresses there, it would be for self-interest. It would be a desperate sellout. It would be a desperate appeal for the business that they once had. What do we need to do to stir up business again since Assyria has harassed us so badly? We need to get back to where we were. Then the next one here is almost written as a song, as if it were words of the song that Tyre would sing. He wrote sarcastically of this desperately selfish situation of Tyre.

It's doing its best to gain the glory of the business days that it once had. Here's a replica of a harp from times like that. By the way, the Greeks were the ones who made most of the harps. and seem to have that particular skill. So it means how do they get the harps? They bought them. Of course, they're businessmen, right? These would be used sometimes in holy situations. They were used in the temple, but also in this situation with the harlot. Here's verse 17.

Tyre had this 70 years of relief from the Assyrian attack. They could rebuild themselves and reestablish themselves. They could go into their far-flung empire and try to establish all those contacts that they had, make business deals again, get people to pay attention to them.

Now, the rest of the story. Scripture beyond this passage gives other indications of what would happen to the city of Tyre. Even into the first three gospels, not the gospel of John, but Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and the book of Acts, we find reference to Tyre continuing.

Isaiah wasn't the last prophet to foretell what would happen. It turns out like this. Ezekiel and Zechariah, among even a few other Old Testament prophets, said that Tyre's rule of the seas would one day be ended. They would not, like Isaiah just told us, have a time of comeback. They would have a time of decline, never to be returned, never to come back to the glory days, never again.

Here's how that all came about. Let's take a look at it. Tyre had been able to maintain itself against a lot of attacks, because there was an island that was far enough out from the mainland, that people who were established on the mainland, if there was an attack could just move out to the island.

They had plenty of ships and they would move out to the island, and they even expanded the island by bringing out, soil and rocks and things like there to widen the island and make it bigger. So it's a great retreat place because the guys could stand in the island and go, and the guys on the shore couldn't do anything because nothing they had could reach that far. And there was plenty of ships to fight off anybody who tried to come out. So that was Tyre's defense as they continued to hold off a lot of attackers. It was certainly a problem, but at least they would be able to hold off a lot of the less serious attacks.

Tyre's ships, of course, could help with any military retreat, get everybody out there, and it would leave the rest of the mainland city abandoned in the middle of those attacks. Well, about a century after the last Old Testament book was written, it was the time of Malachi, Alexander the Great took the coastal city building materials and see what he first did is he made two attempts to put log bridges out to the island and the people of Tyre went and burned the bridges and tore them apart. They actually had divers, kind of like Navy SEALs, going underneath there and cutting up the bridges. So twice the bridges that Alexander tried to put out there failed.

He said, that's it. He told his soldiers, he said, this is how we're going to get them. See that city there? All their buildings? That's going to make a bridge for us. They're not going to burn them. They're not going to make them fall away. We're going to get out there. We're going to take their city to ruin them, and that's what he did.

He built this land bridge all the way out to the island, and the people of Tyre could not overcome that. Alexander was able to overtake them and they did lose. Since then, there's been a filling in of that area beyond Alexander's original bridge, which is just kind of drifting sand. So now you see sand substantially built up on each side there. They lost their advantage. They lost their ability to defend themselves, and from there they declined to what we see in the New Testament.

The last mention of Tyre is in the book of Acts. And at that point, the last mention is they're appealing just so that they can get food from the area where Jesus and the apostles lived around Galilee. Here's Matthew 15. the one instance we have where there's a spiritual response. 1521-28, Jesus went to the district of Tyre and Sidon. And there He met a woman who appealed, please heal my daughter who is demon-possessed. And in the end there, He said to her, O woman, your faith is great. It shall be done for you as you wish. And her daughter was healed at once.

Here's a woman from that same district So here is Tyre today, called Sour is the common name, looking like this. And now what you saw was once an island, now is a peninsula. And what Alexander first built with great struggle, with just enough rock and stone from the city, that was on the mainland, has now become a significant peninsula, enough to put even skyscrapers on it. So there it lies.

Now we're into verse 18. Now this is the part of the prophecy that goes beyond our present day. Now we're going even to time that hasn't been fulfilled yet. Let's take a look at that. We've been covering 15 through 17, which is a time just after Isaiah's prophecy and fulfilled even to a time beyond his own lifetime.

This is fulfilled ahead in the millennial kingdom when the people of Tyre will be actually in support of the worship of the Lord and involved in it, not in small, tiny ways like the one Seraphim woman who responded to Jesus and even appealed to him, but in a great way.

This is the part where Tyre, just like Egypt and just like Assyria, will one day join and support Judah, those in Israel, and join them in worshipping the Lord. And that's where this verse here fits in. Their ability to provide business-wise will be used to provide for those who are worshipping the Lord. It will be used in support. of those who are coming before the Lord and worshiping Him in that time to come. So that's the fulfillment of verse 18 that we look at. Now, we have a question. How do I take a Tyrian home with me? That's not quite right. How do I take a Tyrian lesson home with me? How about if we do that? You may not want to take one of these guys home. So let's ask this question.

The Lord was not against the people. The Lord wasn't against the people for their business, was he? He didn't say, you guys are really bad for making purple dye. He didn't say, you're really bad for making a business deal to build the first and the second temple.

Was that his problem with them? Wasn't the problem, was it? Business by itself was not the problem. That wasn't it. He wasn't opposed to their skill and they're actually, you have to call it excellence in their business conduct. The problem though, was that they were proud. They were idolatrous. There was chronic spiritual compromise. That was a problem.

They had this business. Everything they did in a sense was good. They did good business. They conducted shipping and trade and bought and sold things. It was all fine, but for the spiritual problem. And as good as those things were, it didn't justify or make good the deficiency they had in the spiritual realm.

One of the points we can bring home from this is that the sin nature feels like what it wants to do. It wants to do a certain thing. That's what the sin nature does. That's what the sin nature will stand on. That's what the sin nature will press the unbeliever to do. Here's Tyre's theme song, I did it my way.

They certainly did and they did it in a big way. There's no contesting that. What they did was impressive from a worldly standpoint. To be able to trade the places they did and to go the places they did, haul things, they were incredibly mobile and adventuresome and aggressive. The pursuit of life apart from God, however, is the sin nature's constant way of doing things. Aggressively pursuing, oh, good things to do, but it's trying to find life apart from the Lord. That's the problem.

God's eternal purpose, the reason that we were created, is to reveal and declare and to share His glory. And what does that end up doing? So that we might glorify Him in all that we do. That's our part. That he might be glorified in the end. That doesn't happen by pursuing life on our own. That's the Tyrian problem. That's the problem of Tyre. Do everything that's on the list of good things to do, and boy, do it excellently. Do a great job of it. But in the end, it's all self. It's all pursuit of what the self feels like doing.

The same way that Tyre was later put out of business, that's what we saw prophesied by Ezekiel and Zechariah, and a century after the Old Testament was finished, it was fulfilled. Here's Alexander comes along and uses the mainland city of Tyre, shoves it out into the ocean. Tyre's out of business. They can no longer have that special defense of putting everybody else out on the island.

In the same way, the sin nature is put out of business for those who are believers. Having been identified with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection, ascension, and seeding, we've been joined to the Lord, and He is our life. Scripture makes that clear.

Colossians 3.4. Doing by itself isn't living, not spiritually speaking. Doing isn't living.

Nancy, as I've shared before, put up with the first 15 years of my marriage. I had not learned this lesson yet. I was a human doing, not a human being. And it was a little bit like, hi Vern, while I'm going out the door. I've got things to do. I've got business connections to make.

Business, was it good? Oh yeah, it was all good valid stuff. Nothing wrong with what we were buying and selling. Nothing wrong with what we're making. High-level connections? Oh yeah, we were selling internationally. Selling in every continent. I was making trips all over the world, but doing isn't living, not spiritually speaking.

There's lots of things we can do to impress the world, just like the Phoenicians. They were frankly pretty impressive. We might even be able to impress other people. Oh wow, that's cool. Maybe we might even think we're impressive ourselves. A lot of it might be something that people count as admirable.

But no matter how good it looks to the world, the source is the issue, isn't it? The sin nature is the roots. The sins are the fruits. If that's Where all the nutrition comes from is that's where you're trying to get life. That's all you got. You've got what the sin nature can produce. That's the fruit. That's the fruit that comes out in life. That's the fruit that comes out at home. That's the fruit that comes out in marriages. It's the fruit that comes out in our kids. It's the fruit that comes out everywhere we are.

If the sin nature is what we're depending upon, We as believers have been separated from the sin nature as a source. It's not wiped out of existence, but we've been separated from it. It's not to be our source. There is no basis. It has been put out of commission, just like Tyre was put out of commission. Spiritually speaking, everything that the sin nature produces, no matter how impressive, just like the Phoenicians' business production, is rust and dust. It's all for naught. From where we've been seated with Christ, where we've been seated with Him, God's eternal purpose will be fulfilled in you. We've been seated with Him in the heavenlies.

The best thing is just stay there. The best thing is just stay there. Now, I'm not suggesting that we could ever be moved from our position in Christ. No, I'm not talking about that. But day to day, moment by moment, that position is where the Lord is calling us to remain in our daily conditions. So your body is here. That's right. Your bodies are all here sitting in the pews.

God doesn't intend for you to do anything with them at all. That's right. God doesn't intend for you to do anything with them at all. Doesn't that sound amazing? When the creator of the universe has seated you with Christ in the heavenlies, you probably ought to just stay there, don't you think? We can't really recommend doing anything at all with the bodies that we've got. We're just not qualified for that. You're not supposed to. That's not what God had in mind.

Christ, with whom you've been seated, will live His life in your body. That's what He had in mind. Not my living it out. His. Here's Ephesians 2, 4-7, specifically mentioning in verse 6, He raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. That's our position. That's where He intends us to be.

Don't be tire-headed. Okay? You don't need to be tire-headed. Uh-oh. Don't do that either. Okay. Don't be tire-headed. Okay? Don't misunderstand me. It's okay to take your tires to the Lord. It's alright. You can do that. But don't be tire-headed. Tyre had a whole world, and even themselves pretty impressed by what they knew how to buy and ship and sell and get things done. Yeah, they could do a lot of stuff. All of Tyre's activity fell short in one area, one very critical area that they fell short.

God's eternal purpose is to reveal, declare, and share his glory and so glorify him. That's God's eternal purpose. All the imperatives in the New Testament epistles, everything, do this, don't do that, that you see repeatedly in New Testament letters, are written descriptions of what His life looks like. Not a command for you to do it. His life, not yours. His life, not yours.

That's why I shared earlier, Nancy spent 15 years enduring my living like a streak. Okay? Constantly just gone. Constantly running. I can remember one point, and it's funny, it's hard to come up with some memories sometimes, where Nancy's in the house, I'm at home, here I'm studying for my MBA while I've got three kids crawling all over me. Got to get the accounting done, you know?

There's no way, there's no way that you can live out life on your own doing. God never intended it. It's His life. It's his life. And it didn't matter how fast I tried to go, or how much I got accomplished, or how much anybody was impressed. If the Lord's not impressed, it doesn't make any difference at all. Because it's not his life, unless he's living it. Oh, wait a minute. Be heavenly minded instead. Okay? All right. You can play your flutes, but still be heavenly minded. Okay.

God doesn't really want us, or even anybody else, to be impressed by how well we do things for Him. How about that? Oh, that guy's really a good servant to the Lord. Oh man, that guy, he just really is great spiritually. That's not what God has in mind. It's the Lord that they need to see. It's His life. God doesn't want to jump down your throat either. God's not sitting there waiting to, boy, I can't wait to catch a burn because I know he really blew it and boy, am I going to sting him good.

He's going to get a zinger. No, that's not God's intent either. We don't get a holiness and humility and self-effort award, but there's no self-condemnation award either. You don't get any award for that. He loves us for no humanly understandable reason at all.

He desires to fulfill His eternal purpose in us by having us remain where we're seated with Christ in the heavenlies. There. Positionally, it's not a question. We're there. You can't touch it. You can't impact it. You can't affect it. You can't diminish it. But day by day, where do we sit? Where do we live? His intent is that we live there. He lives here. Here's Colossians 3, 1 through 4, when the key verse that rolls out there is Christ, who is our life.

His life here, not mine. It doesn't matter. When I had finally gone through, I'd gotten all kinds of degrees and certificates and MBAs, and I could have all sorts of certifications listed after my name and fill two or three lines on a resume. And when I got all done, The Lord says, I'm not impressed. It's not my life. It's not what I was looking for. So I actually had to slow down and look Nancy in the face.

His life. Offering, setting our minds on Christ. So, is it time for retirement? Am I done? Well, in a certain sense. Each of us is seated there in the heavenlies. with the creator of the universe so that he can live out his life in our body. That way, he is glorified as he designed. That's what he has in mind.

And the kind of life described in the New Testament for believers is his job to live out, not mine. When he says, do this or don't do that, When he says, for example, husbands, you must love your wives. As a matter of fact, he said it four times. And the last one, each of you, husbands, individually, you must love your wife unconditionally. He does not intend for you to do that. Not out of yourself. By his life. His empowering. His energizing. His doing. Not by mine. Besides that, I wouldn't slow down enough. He's glorified when we're done here, even if it looks like hard work on the outside.

In Colossians 1, 28 and 29, just before the 3 and 4 passage, or chapter 3 passage we had there, Paul talks about, he says, we proclaim Him, admonishing every man, teaching every man with all wisdom, so that we may present every man complete in Christ. To this purpose I also labor. And that word labor, kapiao, it means to labor to the point of exhaustion. Striving, and this striving is an athletic level effort, according to His power which mightily works within me. So here I'm on the outside, I'm working to the point of exhaustion. Here on the outside, I'm working with an athletic effort towards this carrying out of the mission.

But how is it done? Is it done because in the end Paul's going to say, God will be so impressed at how well I did things out of my own strength? No. It will be because God was the one energizing and doing and accomplishing it. That's the difference, a huge difference. Resting in him on the inside might look like hard work on the outside.

Here's Galatians 2.20, I've been crucified with Christ, it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. Christ is the one who does the living, not me.

Yesterday I saw this t-shirt, he died for me, I live for him. And looking that up on the net, I came across some variations on the same theme. But I had a question, is that exactly what he has in mind? Is it he died for me and I live for him? I would suggest to you what this is saying, no. It's no longer I who live. It's not only He died for me, I died with Him. Christ is the one living in me. It's not He died for me, I'll live for Him. He died for me, I died with Him. He lives through me. He lives instead of my best efforts. It doesn't matter how much anybody is impressed. I told you about Nancy living through 15 years of my being a blue streak.

I came even to the elders at the church and I said, guys, I got to resign. I have a serious problem and they couldn't understand. But Vern, you do so many impressive things. But Vern, you do all this stuff. How are we going to replace that? I don't know, but I shouldn't be doing it. I need to slow down and really let the Lord do this here instead of me. My best efforts, no matter how impressive, are not good enough. Nowhere near good enough. It has to be His life. One more thing. One more thing. Can you handle that? There are lots of good things to do, and boy was I really trying hard to do all the things that were on the list of good things to do.

But what about the spiritual consequences? One of the things as I look back over years, and especially the times I was a streak, the people of Tyre were very industrious. Nothing morally wrong with a lot of their intense business activity, very industrious. Even with Israel nearby, they didn't really look at what's going on spiritually. What are the consequences of what I'm doing? But it's important for us to think, like Tyra didn't, what's the spiritual consequence of all this activity? Well, I am really busy, but how is this going to turn out?

And that's why I had to sit down with Nancy and with Randy and Ed and Becky and say, I am terribly sorry for the way I've been living. I have not been the husband that I ought to be. I am sorry for the father example that I've been to and for the relationship that you've not had. I'm terribly sorry. And I had to slow down and say, Lord, I've had enough doing this on my own.

It's yours to do. Really good at business, but it's not what God had in mind. What are the consequences of what we're doing? No matter how good it looks, no matter if you look at it and say, is that good business? Yeah, might be. Is it what God has in mind? Might not be.

What's the spiritual consequence of what we are doing or what we are about to do? What's going to happen down the road when two or three decades have gone by? What will happen in the lives of those people who are impacted spiritually? What will be the spiritual consequences of what I'm doing and what I'm about to do? How will it impact the spiritual roles and responsibilities the Lord has given me?

The point we had last week, remember the stewardship. The things that we have stewardship for may be small, but they're things that matter. Will it be his life or our life? Will it be his energizing lived out or will it be our doing? Even if it's holding my wife's hand, which is a good thing, is it his life or my life? That accident we just got into, is it his life or mine? Making copies in the office. His life, my life. Driving down the road. Calling up even to ask for counseling. His life, my life. Going through chemo. Working. Whose life is it?

We have, by the Lord's grace, a marvelous answer, his life. Something that the people of Tyre apparently never got. This last week I was emailing with a Christian who had been living in this area near Tyre and was booted out of there by the Muslims about three decades ago.

And I was rather shaken by his story. It was kind of amazing. but it shows on an individual basis, and this is where it comes to each one of us. Each one of us has a choice. Isaiah can write about the people of Tyre in general, but each one of us now has a choice.

Do we come to the Lord and say, Lord, it's your life or my life? Let's pray. Lord, we thank you as we look at this that you have offered everything by your marvelous grace in faith in you and dependence upon you. Your life is not only possible, but that's your design until we see you face to face. May it be your life. In Jesus' name, Amen.