Your riches, your wares, your merchandise, your mariners and your pilots, your caulkers, your dealers in merchandise, and all your men of war who were in you, with all your crew that is in your midst, sink into the heart of the seas on the day of your fall.
– Ezekiel 27:27
What a picture, very similar to what we see in Ezekiel chapter 26, and prayed about according to the previous podcast episode that, all these things in the world, riches, wares, merchandise, mariners, pilots, men of war, the whole crew, just like that one day, in a day, they’re all going to fall. Oh, does this verse not shout to you and me? Don’t be intoxicated by all you see in this world.
I think about children, teenagers who are listening to this, who can be so consumed with what others think about you, with pleasing this person or that person, achieving this or that, living for this or that in the world, don’t do it. Don’t do it. It doesn’t matter in the end. Similarly, college students, as you think about degree and career, and what lies ahead, what are you going to live for that’s going to matter forever?
Ezekiel 27:27 Helps Us to Hold Fast to God
For every adult listening to this, how intoxicated are you right now with the pleasures, or possessions, or pursuits of this world? The prizes of this world. The whole picture here, in Ezekiel 27, is there’s so many riches. There are so much prestige and pride in all these things. And in a day, it’s all going to sink into the heart of the sea.
So God, we pray for each other. Please help us not to be taken in by the things of this world, by the pursuits of this world. God help us to hold fast to you. To seek you, to follow you with radical obedience, going against the grain of this world. God, not just for the sake of going against the grain of this world, but because we want to follow you. We want to live for what you have said is most important. We want to live for that, which will last forever. For that, which will never sink into the heart of the sea.
Ezekiel 27:27 Leads Us to Boldly Proclaim the Gospel
God help us to boldly proclaim the gospel today to people around us. God help us to live in holiness, not to compromise with this world. Not to love the things of this world. First, John too. God keep us from love for the things of this world. Help us to love you. Yes, to enjoy good gifts you give, but to steward those gifts to the full for your glory. God, to live for people who’ve never even heard the good news of your grace in Jesus.
Praying for the Unreached Omani Arabs
God, we pray for Omani Arabs today, almost 2 million of them. 0.0% followers of Jesus. God, two million people, all on a road that leads to an eternal hell right now, who’ve never even heard how they can go to heaven in Jesus. And never heard the truth of your love for them in Jesus.
God, we pray. Use us, use our lives, our resources, to get the gospel to Omani Arabs. We pray for these men, and women, and children, in Oman, who are living for that which will not last. Oh God, they’ve set their hope on that which will fall into the heart of the sea in an instant. God, help us to make the good news of your love known there, right around us, and keep us from being intoxicated by this world, in ways that are foolish, in ways that will one day prove empty in an instant.
God give us that perspective today, and all throughout our days. In Jesus’ name we pray according to Ezekiel 27:27. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
