As I’ve said in the past, I’m studying Ezekiel this year for my personal studies (though, let’s be real, I’ll end up teaching it if ever I can convince the powers that be to let me spend three straight quarters covering it.
I recently came to this text, which mostly is about God’s judgment against Tyre. The city had set itself up as a major trading hub for the region and had grown quite powerful and geopolitically influential as a result. Unfortunately, fame and power went to Tyre’s head and the rulers of the city began to think of themselves more highly than they ought. God tasks Ezekiel with writing His judgment against them. In the midst of that is this text…
Son of man, say unto the prince of Tyre, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Because thine heart is lifted up, and thou hast said, I am a God, I sit in the seat of God, in the midst of the seas; yet thou art a man, and not God, though thou set thine heart as the heart of God:
(Ezekiel 28:2)
Basically, Tyre looked in the mirror and said “I am a god and sit in the seat of (a) god in the middle of the Sea.” The Lord, however, sees something else when He looks at Tyre. He doesn’t see a god. He says “you’re just a man.” The last line—“you set your heart as the heart of God”—is interesting: God basically says “the only thing god-sized about you is your ego.”
There are numerous examples of people propping themselves up in one way or another as Divine or equal to it and then being supremely smacked down by the one true God in response. In the beginning, Eve was tempted to eat a fruit that she thought would make her “be as Elohim” (Genesis 3:5). Herod soaked in the adulation of the people who said he was “not a man but a god” and God promptly struck him dead merely for taking the praise and not correcting them (Acts 12:22-23). There’s also the fact that not one but the first two commandments in the Old Law were prohibitions against idolatry. Along those lines, recall also that God gave up the Gentiles to condemnation because they chose to worship creation over Creator (Romans 1:24-25).
As God says of Himself, “I am a jealous God” (Exodus 20:5); He hates all sin, yes, but He seems to have an especially sensitive spot for any sin that diminishes His unique standing in the universe in the eyes of the sinner. Tyre saying “I am a god” (a form of self-idolatry) certainly qualifies…but (in terms of application) so would James’ warning against making plans that don’t consider what the Lord’s will might be (James 4:13-17), as that shows the heart of a person who thinks his own will is as important (if not moreso) than the Lord’s.
God is God and there is none like Him (Deuteronomy 33:16). A failure to forget that always leads to tragedy.
~ Matthew