-Transcript-
00:31 Amen. Glory to God. Welcome to the program.
00:36 Welcome to the cafe. Pastor Clark Covington here. Another episode of KJV Cafe.
00:41 I’m pastor of Heartland Community Baptist Church here in Kings Mountain, North Carolina. Just a small congregation here of believers. Also the host of KJV Cafe, which I just absolutely love that the Lord allows me the opportunity to preach and teach His Word really almost, I think, every day of the week or on the air somewhere.
01:00 So I thank God for that. And thank you for listening. If you haven’t, visit kjvcafe.com. Check us out there.
01:07 Subscribe to our newsletter. Okay, enough promotion, enough info about me. Let’s get into God’s Word.
01:13 Today we’re looking at this place in the Bible that has great biblical importance, but also reveals the character of God. And that’s Tyre, T-Y-R-E. I was saying Tyree, but again, I’ve said this before.
01:29 I think it’s Tyre from what I could tell, but you can let me know if I’m wrong. So Tyre is a very famous place. So it was a port city.
01:35 Jesus went there. Paul went there, amen. David, King David, and then his son Solomon, King Solomon, got the Cedars from Lebanon to help build the temple there.
01:47 It was a very influential place. It was a port city. It was very wealthy.
01:51 They were a pagan city. They worshiped a false god named Melchor. The Greeks called him Hercules.
01:57 And Sidon, Tyre is often mentioned next to Sidon. Sidon worshiped Baal, so that gives you an idea. And we see, if you look at modern-day Lebanon, if you look at where Tyre is, it is right there on the water, on the Mediterranean.
02:10 It’s a trading port. And as I’ve mentioned in previous episodes, the reason why this is so significant is in those times, in Bible times, you didn’t have the logistics or like the truck or plane or what have you to get goods around. And so a trading port would be a very good place to be.
02:33 I always kind of think of Charleston, South Carolina. It’s a beautiful place. And it’s just kind of like, if you get beyond the tourism and stuff, it’s like an old little town.
02:39 It’s nothing huge in terms of industrialism, I guess you could say. And I think of Charleston’s heyday, and at one point it was bigger, I think, than New York City, and it’s the same reason, because it’s a trade port, right? And so back then, that was a big deal. Now, not as much.
02:56 But back then, they wielded power because they would trade. They had glass and textiles and wood and spices and pottery and slaves. They had this very lucrative purple dye that came out of the shells.
03:11 They’d harvest these shells. They’re like snail shells. They’d get this purple dye that was, some say, more valuable than gold.
03:17 In fact, Tyre is part of Phoenicia, and I believe that means, or Phoenician, something like means purple people, I think in Greek. So this was very relevant to who they were, and they were educated. As I understand it, they developed the first ever alphabet.
03:34 So they’re educated, and they were kind of like an empire. They controlled things. They did business with the whole world, the whole known world at that time.
03:44 Nebuchadnezzar from Babylon comes along and takes them out. And for 70 years, they were held captive. And then the Persians allows them to rebuild.
03:53 Does that sound familiar? Very similar to what happened to the Jewish people being taken in captivity for that season and then being allowed to go back to their homeland.
04:00 And for a season there, they build back up, and then they are taken out again for the final time. And that’s where our text kind of takes place here, between that second rebuilding and the final take out,
04:19 Isaiah 23:17-18. And it shall come to pass after the end of seventy years, that the LORD will visit Tyre, and she shall turn to her hire, and shall commit fornication with all the kingdoms of the world upon the face of the earth. And her merchandise and her hire shall be holiness to the LORD: it shall not be treasured nor laid up; for her merchandise shall be for them that dwell before the LORD, to eat sufficiently, and for durable clothing.
04:41 And as I read Isaiah 23, in preparing for this message, I said to myself, this is interesting. You have 17 verses talking about how wicked and adulterous this place is. And you got one verse saying their goods are going to be used for God’s people.
04:57 And by the way, the Lord loves to take care of his people. And if you have been saved, amen, and you have the Holy Spirit living within you, you know that that’s the truth, amen.
05:05 Oh, how it’s great to be around other believers and share testimonies of what God’s done for them or to see how God maybe has used you to bless them or use them to bless you.
05:15 God loves to take care of his people. And God was able to take the product from this wicked place and give it to his people, to those that dwell before the Lord, to both eat sufficiently and for durable clothing.
05:26 And so we see here that God’s ways are not our ways, and that this wicked pagan city who worshiped a false God, who did things like sell their products on the Sabbath day to the Jewish people, this wicked group was used by God for a reason.
05:42 And that reason all comes down to Isaiah 23:8-10. Who hath taken this counsel against Tyre, the crowning city, whose merchants are princes and whose traffickers are the honorable of the earth?
05:58 The Lord of hosts hath purposed it to stain the pride of all glory and to bring into contempt all the honorable of the earth. Yeah.
06:04 Think about that. Pride, that is an abomination to God. God hates a proud look.
06:13 Amen. God hates pride. And the proud were brought low and they were brought into contempt.
06:18 You know, you think about in court, who’s brought into contempt of court? The unruly, the really, you know, bad person? No, he says to bring into contempt all the honorable of the earth because, oh, how the honorable of the earth back then, just as it is today, were ungodly, wicked, pagan, self-loving, proud people
06:38 that were saying, we are going to choose our God and we’re going to choose what our God likes and doesn’t like, and we are essentially going to become gods in our own eyes.
06:49 And we’re going to lift ourselves up and our name up and we’re going to be remembered. And that of course is an abomination to a holy God.
06:57 God isn’t mocked. They didn’t trust God. They didn’t look for his plan.
07:04 They didn’t fear God. And hopefully we know better because this city was wiped out completely. You literally can see the ruins.
07:10 You look at pictures online of Tyre, it’s completely wiped out. There’s nothing to it. It’s bygone.
07:17 It won’t ever really be anything again. Amen. They found somewhere else to make their die.
07:24 They found bigger ports to do things. They’ve got planes, trains, and automobiles. Now they don’t need this place.
07:28 People don’t need this place. It is bygone. Amen.
07:33 That’s how God designed it. So think about this. A sovereign God raised this nation up of proud people, knocked them down, raised them back up, and knocked them down for good.
07:37 God is not mocked. Amen. And what God does, there’s a reason for.
07:43 And we as believers need to understand this because maybe we see God allowing some wicked group, a company, an organization, a country, a leader, who knows, being raised up.
07:52 And we’re saying, Lord, how is this for our good? Romans 8:28, and we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to His purpose.
08:02 So we’re seeing them thrive, just like the people in the day and time of Tyre saw that place thrive, not ever thinking that there would be an end.
08:11 But all again, the book of Revelation, an end is coming, friend. An end is near. Oh, the time is at hand.
08:17 I believe it. Amen. Rejoice.
08:23 The time is at hand that we will be called up to be with the Lord. Amen. That we will be with Him in the rapture.
08:28 We believe in a rapture before the tribulation period here on KJV Cafe. That’s called a pre-trib rapture. We believe that the Lord is going to call us up any moment, that everything that needed to happen has happened, and that destruction is nigh or near for those living wickedly.
08:40 We see this time and time again in the Bible, that there was someone living wickedly, a nation, a group of people, and they had a season and they were wiped out. And you know, it’s interesting. Tyre was apparently formed by the Canaanites.
08:55 Think of them. You know, God took His chosen people and said, you go wipe every single one of them out. Not because God was being violent or unreasonable, but because He had given them so much time to repent and so much time to get right with Him.
09:06 And surely He had sent them prophets and messengers, and they wouldn’t do it. And they were stubborn. They were stiff-necked.
09:11 And God said, enough. Wipe them out. And now we don’t go to Canaan.
09:15 We don’t go here or there. Amen. We go to Jerusalem.
09:19 We go to Israel. We go to God’s holy city. Amen.
09:22 And that’s by design. So we see that God’s power is here. We see that man thinks that they can outdo God when they can’t.
09:30 You know, Proverbs 14:12 tells us, there is a way that seems right to man, but the end thereof is death. You know, people here today are living, thinking that they are living life, that they have the best life, that this life is good. But hey, it’s not good.
09:44 Amen. It’s not good if you’re not living for God. It’s not good if you’re seeking the world’s approval.
09:50 It’s not good if you are living in a way that pleases the world and grieves the Holy Spirit. That is not good. We need to trust God, that God is loving.
10:00 You know, God’s mercy is all over this scripture. And again, most of Isaiah 23 is a big rebuke of this place called Tyre. But God’s mercy is all over the scripture.
10:10 He allowed the city to be rebuilt after the invasion. He could have just let it die. He allowed the food and the goods that they made to be used in the ministry.
10:19 You know, he allowed the product to be used in the ministry when he could have clearly said, no, it won’t be right. You have to stick with this other stuff. All these great trades people, you can’t have that.
10:30 But no, he said, you know what? I want durable goods, durable clothing, sufficient food. I want that for my people. And I’m going to give that to my people.
10:39 And today, oh, how we see these companies left, right, and center that are wicked. What can we do? You know, if you were, Paul writes, if you were to depart sin, you’d have to leave the world. Amen.
10:51 We see all these companies living wickedly. And yet God allows us in the ministry to use some of these tools for the ministry. And what we see here, I believe more broadly, is that God put this in his word so people could read about this place that was and now is was not very similar to Sodom and Gomorrah.
11:10 They were and they are no longer. Sodom and Gomorrah, it wasn’t just homosexuality that brought them down. There was idleness and there was too much bread.
11:20 I mean, they just had food and they they were doing well and they weren’t doing anything. They were idle. They were prospering and they were idle.
11:27 And I read an article got emailed to me that I think six million people in America are able bodied and they just said they don’t want to work or whatever it is.
11:35 And you can, you know, look at the sign on any kind of door, really any kind of restaurant door or any kind of retail door. And you’ll see hiring now or we don’t have enough workers.
11:45 We had to close, you know, idleness. You know, you start thinking about it. End days idleness.
11:51 Sodom, there is idleness. They’re whacked out. They’re completely taken away.
11:55 Amen. Again, that’s another place, a real place you can go to. You can.
12:01 There’s videos online. They pick up that that sulfur that fell from the sky, that brimstone, and they can burn it. And you’ll see the fire and so forth.
12:06 It’s a real place. Amen. And so God did this for his mercy to help us understand that a judgment is coming and that now is the time to get right with him.
12:13 Now is the time to seek the Lord with all our heart, mind and soul. You know, the Bible says in the Psalms, I believe it’s Psalm 9, that the Lord wants to be praised with everything we have, that we should praise God with all our heart. Think of our heart as the deepest part of who we are.
12:28 All of our heart. Amen. We are to praise God.
12:33 But are we doing that? All of our heart. We should serve God. All of our heart.
12:38 We should fear God. All of our heart. We should get into his word to understand him.
12:41 How could someone understand an impending judgment coming if they won’t bother to open the word? Is that not the problem here today that people are biblically ignorant that they don’t know what’s happening and if they won’t bother to get into the word, how will they know until it’s too late?
12:53 And that’s why you read about the book of Revelation, people weeping over a fallen Babylon and that Babylon is a picture of modern society and materialism and all the things that are that are big in the world today.
13:04 People are weeping over at the destruction because they’re probably in shock. They didn’t know it was coming.
13:10 They couldn’t see it. The Bible talks about the rapture happening like a thief in the night. Amen.
13:15 And so we need to be about our father’s business and realize that this important historical place in the Bible is real and teaches us much about how God will use even the things the wicked create for his servants because he loves his servants. Psalm 35:27, let them shout for joy and be glad that favor my righteous cause. Yay.
13:34 Let them say continually, let the Lord be magnified, which has pleasure in the prosperity of his servant. God has pleasure in the prosperity of his servant. God has pleasure in the prosperity of his servant.
13:47 God loves you. He desires a relationship with you. He desires all to come to saving knowledge for all to come to repentance.
13:57 He wants all to be saved. Christ died for all if you’ll accept him as savior, but there is a two, two way street there. Christ did it.
14:03 And now you have to accept him, right? And if you’re saved, God gave you the word and now you got to study it, right? God gave you the commandments and now you’ve got to appropriate them and live them out.
14:13 And that’s the lesson we should learn from this biblical place, tired, modern day, Lebanon. I thank you for listening today.
14:19 I thank you so much for listening to this series here on this place. Tune in next time for more great truths from God’s holy word. Thank you so much.
14:28 Take care. God bless. And amen.