The CEO God Text: Ezekiel 28:1-10
Introduction: The Primordial Lie
The first lie, the one that wrecked the world, was not complicated. It was a simple suggestion, a whisper in the garden that has echoed down through every generation of men. The serpent did not need a complex philosophical system to undo our first parents. He just needed five little words: "you will be like God."
That is the root of every sin. It is the taproot of all rebellion, the foundational desire of the fallen human heart. We do not want to be creatures. We want to be the Creator. We do not want to live under authority; we want to be the authority. We want to sit in the big chair, make the rules, and define reality according to our own appetites. This is the original sin, and it is the terminal sin. Every man who has ever lived, apart from one, has been born with this rebellious deification project running in his blood. We are all born wanting to be little gods.
Most of us are not bold enough to say it out loud. We do it subtly. We do it when we declare our own sexual autonomy. We do it when we trust in our 401k as our ultimate security. We do it when we refuse to forgive, setting ourselves up as the final judge. But every now and then, history produces a man who is so successful, so powerful, and so blinded by his own splendor that he drops the subtlety and says the quiet part out loud. He declares, "I am a god."
This is what we have here in Ezekiel 28. The prophet is directed by God to confront the ruler of Tyre. Tyre was a commercial superpower, an island fortress city that dominated maritime trade. It was the Manhattan of the ancient world, a center of immense wealth, sophistication, and power. And its ruler, puffed up on the fumes of his own success, had come to believe the primordial lie. He thought he was a god. What follows is God's response. And we must pay close attention, because God's response to this ancient CEO is His response to every man, every nation, and every system that dares to usurp His throne.
The Text
The word of Yahweh came again to me, saying, "Son of man, say to the ruler of Tyre, 'Thus says Lord Yahweh, "Because your heart is lofty And you have said, 'I am a god; I sit enthroned in the seat of gods In the heart of the seas'; Yet you are a man and not God, Although you make your heart like the heart of God, behold, you are wiser than Daniel; There is no secret that is a match for you. By your wisdom and understanding You have acquired wealth for yourself And have acquired gold and silver for your treasuries. By your great wisdom, by your trade You have increased your wealth, And your heart is lofty because of your wealth, therefore thus says Lord Yahweh, 'Because you have made your heart Like the heart of God, Therefore, behold, I will bring strangers upon you, The most ruthless of the nations. And they will draw their swords Against the beauty of your wisdom And defile your splendor. They will bring you down to the pit, And you will die the death of those who are slain In the heart of the seas. Will you still say, "I am a god," In the presence of the one who kills you, Though you are a man and not God, In the hands of those who slay you? You will die the death of the uncircumcised By the hand of strangers, For I have spoken!' declares Lord Yahweh!"'"
(Ezekiel 28:1-10 LSB)
The Indictment: A Divinity Complex (vv. 1-2)
The charge is laid out immediately.
"Because your heart is lofty And you have said, 'I am a god; I sit enthroned in the seat of gods In the heart of the seas'; Yet you are a man and not God, Although you make your heart like the heart of God" (Ezekiel 28:2 LSB)
The problem begins in the heart. It is "lofty," lifted up. Pride is the issue. But this is not just a case of simple arrogance. The pride has metastasized into a full blown claim of divinity. "I am a god." He believed he was self-sufficient, untouchable, sovereign. His throne was in "the heart of the seas," a place of security and power. He saw himself as the unmoved mover of his commercial empire.
This is the central insanity of godless man. He breathes God's air, stands on God's earth, uses a mind that God gave him, and uses it all to declare his independence from God. It is the ultimate folly. God's response is not a complex argument. It is a simple, brutal statement of fact: "Yet you are a man and not God."
This is the Creator/creature distinction. It is the most fundamental truth of the universe. There are two kinds of beings: God, and everything else. To confuse the two is the essence of idolatry and the definition of madness. The ruler of Tyre had spent so much time making his heart "like the heart of God," setting his own will and wisdom up as the ultimate standard, that he had forgotten this basic reality. He was a creature, a mere man, cosplaying as the Creator.
The Source of the Sickness (vv. 3-5)
Where did this madness come from? God identifies two sources: wisdom and wealth.
"Behold, you are wiser than Daniel; There is no secret that is a match for you. By your wisdom and understanding You have acquired wealth for yourself... And your heart is lofty because of your wealth" (Ezekiel 28:3-5 LSB)
God speaks with a divine sarcasm here. "You are wiser than Daniel." Daniel was a contemporary of Ezekiel, and his fame for God-given wisdom was already legendary. But Daniel's wisdom was characterized by humility; he always gave the credit to God. The king of Tyre's wisdom was the opposite. He was a shrewd businessman. He knew how to read the markets, how to negotiate a deal, how to turn a profit. And his success was undeniable. He had the gold and silver in his treasuries to prove it.
And that was the problem. His wisdom worked. His plans succeeded. His portfolio grew. And with every successful trade, every influx of wealth, his heart became loftier. The text is explicit: "your heart is lofty because of your wealth." Wealth is a gift from God, but it is a heavy one. It carries with it the immense temptation to forget the Giver. When your barns are full, it is easy to think that your own hand filled them. Success is a powerful anesthetic that can numb us to our utter dependence on God for our every breath.
This man's wisdom and wealth became an echo chamber, confirming his own greatness to himself. He looked at his accomplishments and concluded that he must be divine. He made the classic mistake of the successful pagan: he began to worship his own resume.
The Sentence: A Hostile Takeover (vv. 6-8)
Because the diagnosis is pride, the sentence is humiliation. The logic is covenantal and inescapable.
"Therefore, behold, I will bring strangers upon you, The most ruthless of the nations. And they will draw their swords Against the beauty of your wisdom And defile your splendor." (Ezekiel 28:6-7 LSB)
Notice the "therefore." God's judgments are not arbitrary fits of pique. They are righteous and logical responses to sin. "Because you have made your heart like the heart of God, therefore I will unmake you." God is sovereign over all nations, even the "most ruthless" ones like Babylon. He will use them as His chisel to chip away at the pride of Tyre.
And the judgment is perfectly tailored to the sin. The king's pride was in his wisdom and splendor. So the Babylonians will draw their swords specifically "against the beauty of your wisdom." All his clever strategies and economic models will be useless against cold steel. All the splendor his wealth has built will be defiled. The very things he trusted in will be proven to be worthless idols. God will demonstrate that the wisdom of Tyre is no match for the sword of Babylon, because God is the one who wields the sword of Babylon.
"They will bring you down to the pit, And you will die the death of those who are slain In the heart of the seas." (Ezekiel 28:8 LSB)
The man who sat enthroned "in the heart of the seas" will be brought down to the pit of death "in the heart of the seas." His place of supposed security will become his grave. The sea that brought him his wealth will be the place of his demise. God's judgments are always shot through with this kind of biting, poetic justice.
The Final Reality Check (vv. 9-10)
God concludes with a final, mocking question that exposes the utter absurdity of the king's claim.
"Will you still say, 'I am a god,' In the presence of the one who kills you, Though you are a man and not God, In the hands of those who slay you?" (Ezekiel 28:9 LSB)
This is the ultimate test. You can maintain your delusions of divinity in the boardroom, on your yacht, or in your palace. But can you maintain them at the point of a sword? When a ruthless soldier has you cornered, will your claims of godhood stop the blade? The answer is no. Mortality is the great debunker of all human pride. Your own death is the final, irrefutable proof that you are a man and not God.
His end will be one of shame. "You will die the death of the uncircumcised." For a Semitic ruler, this was the ultimate disgrace. It meant dying as a pagan, an outsider, cut off from all covenant blessing, a spiritual nobody. For all his wealth, wisdom, and power, his end is a shameful death at the hands of foreigners. And why is this certain? "For I have spoken! declares Lord Yahweh." God's Word creates the reality. When He speaks a judgment, it is as good as done.
The Man Who Was God
This story is a stark and bloody illustration of the first and great sin. A man, a creature, puffed up with his own success, says in his heart, "I am a god." And God, the true God, brings him down to the dust and reminds him of what he truly is: a man, and a dying one at that.
This story is our story. The temptation to deify ourselves is ever-present. We trust our own wisdom. We find our security in our wealth. We declare ourselves sovereign over our own lives. We sit on our little thrones and pretend that we are in charge. This passage is God's warning to us. He opposes the proud, and He gives grace to the humble. He will bring every lofty heart down to the pit.
But the story of the Bible does not end with proud men being brought low. It climaxes with the story of the one Man who had every right to say "I am God," because He was. Jesus Christ did not grasp at equality with God, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a man (Phil. 2:6-7). The ruler of Tyre was a man who tried to ascend to godhood and was cast down to death. Jesus was God who descended to manhood and was obedient even to death on a cross.
The king of Tyre was slain by ruthless strangers. Jesus, the King of kings, allowed Himself to be slain by ruthless strangers. The king of Tyre died the death of the uncircumcised, a death of shame. Jesus died the death of a criminal, the cursed death of the cross, taking all our shame upon Himself.
And because of His humility, God exalted Him to the highest place. The only way to be lifted up is to first come low. The only way to be saved from the pit is to trust in the one who went down into the pit for us. We must abandon our own pathetic deification projects. We must confess that we are men and not God. We must repent of our lofty hearts and bow the knee to the true God-man, the Lord Jesus Christ. For He alone is God, and all who trust in Him will be saved from the pit and raised to everlasting life. All who refuse will share the fate of the king of Tyre, learning too late that they are only men.