Isaiah, Chapters 21-22

Today's scripture reading is quite long, so I just ask that you would read along with your eyeballs and follow along with your ears. Thus says the Lord God of hosts, come, go to this steward, to Shebna, who is in charge of the royal household. What right do you have here, and whom do you have here, that you have hewn a tomb for yourself here? You who hew a tomb on the height, you who carve a resting place for yourself in the rock, Behold, the Lord is about to hurl you headlong, O man, and he is about to grasp you firmly and roll you tightly like a ball, to be cast into a vast country. There you will die, and there your splendid chariots will be, you shame of your master's house. I will depose you from our office, and I will pull you down from your station.

Then it will come about in that day that I will summon my servant Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah, and I will clothe him with your tunic and tie your sash securely about him. I will trust him with your authority, and he will become a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah. Then I will set the key of the house of David on his shoulder.

When he opens, no one will shut. When he shuts, no one will open. I will drive him like a peg in a firm place, and he will become a throne of glory to his father's house. so they will hang on him all the glory of his father's house offspring and issue all the least of vessels from bowls to all the jars in that day declares the Lord of hosts the peg driven in a firm place will give way it will even break off and fall in the load hanging on it will be cut off for the Lord has spoken We're going to be flying through Isaiah 21 and 22.

As we usually do, we summarize the chapters that we're working through and then zero in on a specific passage. And so we'll summarize the first 10 verses of Isaiah 21. These are prophecies about the fall of Babylon. It was a nation yet to rise to the greatness of power a century later, and then some decades after that, before it fell. And yet here, almost two centuries ahead of time, Isaiah tells of the fall of this country that hasn't even come to power yet. Amazing. Alright?

Verses 11-17 pronounce judgments against the neighboring nations of Edom and Arabia. And so here's another neighboring nation and what's going to happen to those nations. In Isaiah 22, the first 14 verses talk about rejoicing and then agony. It's like sometimes These people here in the nation of Judah will rejoice over the things that they've gotten done only shortly thereafter to fall into grief and agony.

And then finally, we have verses 15 through 25 we'll be looking at here this morning and kind of zeroing in on as our focal point passage. It's about two men, no, not Adam and Christ, but two other men. And we'll be looking at that passage here this morning that Randy read for us.

Here's the passage, and you may have listened to what Randy said, and aside from the bowels and bowls confusion, you may have said to yourself, what's Isaiah talking about? Is that what you thought? Did you read that or listen to Randy and think, what's that all about? Is that what you thought? Well, if you did, good for you, okay?

Because that's what we're going to try to answer here this morning. No flying moose. No flying rams, no funny weird animals, just this passage. We'll divide it up into three sections. The first fairly long section, the first part's about this self-seeking guy named Shebna. The next part there is about this reliable guy named Eliakim. And the third part is about placing too much trust in this reliable guy named Eliakim. Those are the three parts.

The key to understanding this passage, so if you want to look at this and say, what is this about? It's about the principle of stewardship. That's what it's about. That's the common thread. It is a thread from one end of Scripture to another. In a sense, Adam had a stewardship in the garden.

As you get towards the end, there is a stewardship in the first parts of Revelation chapters 2 and 3. There is a stewardship among the churches. There is the principle of stewardship. These two men represent a stewardship in Jerusalem and Judah in Isaiah's day.

And we'll see what the lessons are there. Stewardship is not a gift as if here's the gift, just do with it what you want. It is a gift about which we have to remember. It is something entrusted to our care for which there is an answering and an accountability. Salvation is a gift, for example, received only by faith. Each of us is entrusted with various stewardships for which we have responsibility.

Our salvation is entirely a gift received by faith. And there is certainly some stewardships that follow on to it, but the salvation itself is not something that we can do anything more about. We can't enhance it. We can't do anything to assure it any further. It is what it is.

Now, in this passage here, we're going to first start off with this section on Shebna. Remember, Shebna is this fellow who is unreliable. And we'll see what the problem is. So here's verses 15 through 19. about Shebna. And it goes like this, starting here, thus says the Lord of hosts, go to the steward to Shebna, who's in charge of the royal household. Isaiah had been going on for a long time talking about this nation and that nation and this other nation. We saw that even in the first part of chapters 21 and 22 here. But here as we get to This passage, all of a sudden things turn to Shebna and we have a turn from nations to individuals, zeroing in, zooming in to this individual Shebna.

Now Shebna is a man who is in power. He is probably second in power. is the status there. He has the ability, while not the king, to pull a lot of strings. He can make things happen or not happen and has a lot of influence regarding shifting staff around, money and goods, things of that sort. Interesting, Isaiah's first point here on this agenda is not about how are you doing with your job. It's not about that.

He zeroes in right away with this issue with the tomb. Isn't that curious? He doesn't say, now Shabna, you need to work on your job and get points A, B, and C down, and let's talk about 1, 2, and 3. No. He says, we've got this tomb issue. Here's what's happening. Or we might ask the question, what is happening? What's going on here that Isaiah's zeroing in on this guy Shabna and talking about his tomb. So we want to look at that, answer that question. We're not talking about tombstone territory, but in a way we are. We'll talk about that here in a minute.

Here's a map of Jerusalem, the old city. That is the area where Jerusalem in an earlier era, Isaiah's day, would have been centered in this general vicinity. And right down here in this location, are the tombs of Silwan. There are about 50 tombs that are down there from the time of David into the time about a century after Isaiah's day. And so in those tombs, there is this one location here, and see this little niche above the door right there? Okay, got that? Everybody oriented to that? Okay, right in that niche, They took away a stone lintel piece over the top, looks like this.

And it has a chunk that's been chipped away in the middle of it. And on this end, I'm gonna zero in on that one end so you can see, there's some writing in it. And it's writing of a kind that dates from Isaiah's day. And real interesting, this is what it says.

This is the burial place, and then you have the area chipped out. of Shebna Yahu, who is over the house. There is no silver, no gold here, but his bones and the bones of his handmaiden, his slave wife, are with him. Cursed is the ones who opened this tomb.

So the ones in blue are fill-in, believed to be a significant or reliable estimate of what was likely there. And one little clue is Shebna is the nickname for Shebna Yahu. Everything seems to fit, even to the point where people who don't believe that the Bible is a reliable book think that this is Shebna's tomb that is being written about here in Isaiah 22. Okay, now we get into the next passage there.

Behold, the Lord is about to hurl you headlong, O man, O man. By Isaiah's graphic language, this Shebna is about to go from being the man in charge to being a human cannonball. God himself will take Shebna completely offline. He's going to curl him up and hurl him. Curl and hurl. Shebna is this human cannibal.

He may be thinking something like this, and that's probably a good start. Or maybe something like this, which is probably not a real good start. By the way, have you seen what kind of camera Norm has? You ought to look at that real carefully. And incidentally, if he says to sit down and smile, you better sit down and smile. All right, enough of that cannon stuff. Probably Isaiah got curled up kind of like this baseball player. I don't know if he's on the Rangers or not, but anyway. likely what Isaiah is making reference to in those days, they would have sling stones.

And the sling stones were typically made of pieces of stone that they'd rounded into a ball and some sort of ball shape. Here's a pile of them from Ai when Joshua went in in chapters seven and eight. And when the Israelites made the attack into Ai, here's some sling stones from that excavation site. And you can see that they're rounded and fairly substantial stone balls. And the slings were used to hurl rounded stones.

The diagram you have here is one where in this fashion, and there are a number of ways they would do it overhead. They would do it sometimes slanted. And so there were different styles that they used. This is one that would be used this kind of straight underhand for a long shot when you wanted to get a good lengthy trajectory. The other thing is going this way, you could wind it up as fast as you could and then let go and get maximum trajectory distance using that method. Doing that, they would hurl these stones up to a quarter of a mile by getting maximum trajectory with the wind up until you had maximum speed, and get the speeds over 60 miles an hour. That was not something you wanted to have hit you. But this is the picture that is being used by Isaiah. With practice, they were also very accurate. Example would be David and Goliath. Or Goliath had the stone come at him, such a thing had never entered his head. Okay.

Shebna held a place of responsibility in Judah, but he was too absorbed with where his body would be placed and what others would think of him when he died. He wasn't real interested in doing his job and getting involved with that, but he was sidetracked, and boy, I'm an important guy. And not only that, this area where he appears to have put his tombs, that's where the kings got laid. So he put his level in the kingdom higher than he ought to have, and that is also a part of the issue.

Shabna, you think too much of who you are and what your position is. I can tell you, you know, having gone through business school, that is a big problem. Huge problem. As a matter of fact, you don't have to go through business school. You've probably been in enough situations that if you work for somebody that's in that place, thinking too much of who they are, it's awful.

That's the problem with Shebna. Thinking too much of who he is, but focused on what it's going to be like after he's dead. Weird. In Shebna's mind, what matters, what it was like when he was in a tomb. What's it going to be like when I die? Boy, it'll be great. I'll have a place with the kings when I'm dead. Isn't that wonderful? Won't people be impressed?

Believers would be wise to keep focused on things that matter spiritually. One way to say it, and this sounds like almost oversimplification, it is very important that we keep the main thing the main thing, right? It is real easy to get distracted from what really counts, what really matters.

In the end, what's going to make a difference? In the end, what's going to matter is what the Lord thinks. How do we stand with Him? The fact that we're in Christ, that's what's going to matter. So we have the Shebna principle here. Glory is not measured by the tomb you're in. but by the whom you're in. Okay? We're either in Adam or in Christ. Glory is not measured by the tomb you're in, Shabna, but by the whom you're in. You're in Christ. Shabna was all worried about, what are they going to do with my body and are people going to like it where my body is placed? And really absorbed with that, instead of, what really matters? What really counts?

Ah, now we've got the next section here. Then it will come about on that day that I will summon my servant Eliakim, now that the Shebna has been hurled like a cannonball. Here are four seals with the name Eliakim from during the time of Isaiah. Some of them appear to have been actually from the Eliakim that Isaiah is talking about. Some of them we're not quite as sure.

Nonetheless, What's interesting is many of the seals with this name here are found on pottery jar handles, and that is also what the passage itself mentions. It's the jar handles and the bowls. And here's the reason why we find so many of these, because by the way, I just picked a sampling. There are a whole bunch of them.

One of the reasons why they find so many of them is it appears that the king appointed this guy, Eliakim, to make preparations for an attack in the various cities throughout Judea, And so what they would do is they would have special jars for holding water and food supplies during an attack. And Eliakim's name like this was stamped on the jar handle to indicate that those are ones that he had purchased and approved for use for that purpose. And that meant that they were set aside to be used for that specific purpose. So that's why we keep finding his name on all these jar handles all over Judah during Isaiah's time.

So we've said before in that day, and we see it here in this passage, it's a future time. In this case, it's going to happen pretty close within the lifetime of Isaiah. As a matter of fact, we're going to see Shebna once more in chapters 37 and 38 and by then he will be demoted and after that never hear from him again. So we'll see it come to pass. We'll see this situation again.

Shebna and Eliakim, with Shebna will be out of his position and Eliakim will take his place entirely. We have multiple jar handles stamped with Eliakim's name. We have none with Shebna's name, just the tomb. And even that, his name was chiseled out except for the end part of his nickname. Eliakim won't just take the title, but you see there, he's going to have the sash and the robe, everything about the position that Shebna had will be replaced by this faithful man, Eliakim.

Eliakim will take on the duties full on, in the full spirit of the duties set before him. Then, now we come into this interesting part of it, Isaiah 22, 22. Then I will set the key of the house of David on his shoulder, and when he opens, no one will shut, and when he shuts, no one will open. Now, one thing to remember, in our era, we have, I'll get some out here because we've got to have some. We have keys, and this is even a fairly large one for a car.

Keys were fairly small in our lifetime and throughout our lifetime, but in those days, you had your keys made at a blacksmith shop. And if the keys were made at a blacksmith shop, so was the lock. So to have a set of keys in your pocket, you're not gonna even wanna carry that thing around.

It's gonna be massive. Keys were big, locks were bigger because the keys had to fit in the locks. This is one that's fairly well preserved from Roman times. And while it's centuries later, it's still a good indication because they really had no improvements on keys even by New Testament times. So locks were big, keys were big. So to have a key set on your shoulder, it's not this little thing. It's big. It's very visible.

This is a way of saying that he would have authority over the house of David. Just in the same way that we talk about having something on our shoulders being something we're responsible for and carrying, the same figure of speech was used there. Only the idea of having a key on your shoulder is the one having special access, the one who locks it and opens and has that authority, and that is something he is responsible for. That's the figure of speech that Isaiah is using here.

Eliakim's authority will be total in his domain. And that's why he puts it, when he opens, no one will shut. When he shuts, no one will open. Completely opened or locked by Eliakim's decision. He will be the one who has authority. He will carry that authority upon his shoulder. Same figure of speech we would use in our culture. This verse is repeated in the New Testament only once. Let's take a look at that. Back in the fall of 2001, of course you all remember that, right?

When we studied the book of Revelation, we gave you this summary of the messages to the seven churches as a handout. And right there on this line, let's take a look at it a little closer, we had the addresses to the seven churches, and now we have this opening, similar to what we see here, and what Christ knows. Well, on this line here, under Philadelphia, let's make it a little bigger, We said there that that particular part of the message to the church at Philadelphia talked about Christ being holy and true, and He holds the keys and opens and shuts. It comes this way in our study of Revelation in 3.7.

We read, and to the angel, that is the messenger, of the church in Philadelphia write, He, Christ, who is holy and who is true, who has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut, who shuts and no one opens, says this, Christ, who has ultimate authority, and also the key of David.

Here's the key of David principle for believers. Jesus Christ will take upon himself all authority and all responsibility for all of eternity. How's that for some superlatives? Not unreliable like Shabna, nor limited in duration like faithful Eliakim. So our being in Christ forever is perfectly reliable, completely forever.

Okay, now let's get back to this Isaiah 22 passage. Now we see reference to this peg and holding up something, a vessel from a peg. Let's see what that's about. You can look at Ezekiel 15.3 if you want to check that out to see a further reference to that idea. It would be Possibly like this, where you have a shelf. A shelf is attached firmly to a wall, and that could be one possibility, and the things sitting on the shelf depend on that attachment. Or it could be like this. We're now in lesson 22, back at lesson 11, so halfway to the point where we are now.

We showed you this picture from a Harvard University Museum. We mentioned this picture here because this is a model based on archeologist findings from Isaiah's day of what a typical house would be in Jerusalem, where of course Isaiah lived. So that's very interesting. It's very fitting to the time. And one of the things you see over there is things hung on the wall from a peg, very similar. It'd be very typical of the time.

Okay, so we have these verses speaking directly about the character of Eliakim in the position that he would take over from Shebna in God's direction. He will be like a peg hung loosely on the wall? Hung unreliably on the wall? No, hung firmly on the wall. He will be worthy of the trust placed in him.

Carrying out his duties faithfully down to the smallest item, even to the point he puts here, down to the bowls and all the jars. Everything just like we find in the archeological record, his name stamped on all the jar handles. So Isaiah has spoken very fitly according to what the archeologists have found.

But in these verses, as they do verse 22, which followed John the Apostle as writing from Jesus Christ, they also describe the character of the reign of Christ the Messiah during the coming millennial kingdom. You look at the words that he uses in verses 23 and 24, reference to a throne and glory. And we have Christ saying that when the son of man will sit on his glorious throne. You have reference to the house of the father, and here's reference to Christ, his father's house, and then finally vessels and several references in the New Testament epistles by Paul to our being vessels.

So much of what Isaiah writes about here fits also our situation here in the church. Now, these seals that we mentioned had Eliakim's name on them. In the same way that Eliakim's seals were made on numerous vessels of that day, the seal of the Holy Spirit has been made on us as vessels of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is also responsible for us. faithful and responsible, he put his seal of the Holy Spirit on us, all those who are in the church, all those who believe. We're told that in these three passages, 2 Corinthians and twice in Ephesians. We have the seal of the Holy Spirit marking our ownership and responsibility by Jesus Christ, just like Eliakim had his seal on all the jars for which he had responsibility. Now, taking a look at this next section here, what's the lesson of Eliakim? How do we take this and take it home?

Eliakim was a reliable guy. We don't see any indication that when he took over from Shebna that he somehow blew it too. Everything seems like he did everything right. Matter of fact, he had the authority, he was faithful, everything he was responsible for he did. Matter of fact, we have archeological record he did it. He had everything marked, everything he was responsible for, he put his name on it, he sealed it, did it all quite well. His reliability and discernment of what mattered. He didn't go chasing fancy tombs. His reliability in pursuing what mattered made him suitable for the role of father of the nation.

What does that tell us about what a father is to be? A lesson for fathers, right? What a father is about to be. I think we have a few of those in the congregation here. So for the role of father, here is a lesson. You look at that passage. What is Eliakim like? There's a good description of what a godly father is like. Take a look at that, fathers.

Take that to heart. Something else. The authority we are granted at any time is an entrusting by God. God has entrusted things into our hands, whatever it is. It may change over time. It may be large. It may be small. That's fine. Whatever authority we have, whatever that is, the Lord has entrusted it into our hands. Here's the Eliakim principle.

Authority is more about the one who grants it than the one who receives it. Shebna got off track because he lost track of, oh, it's the authority that has been given to me by somebody else. It's the somebody else that matters first, not me. He was not given his position so he could chase having a fancy tomb. He was given his position to do his job.

In that day, declares the Lord of hosts, and here is the last verse, one that you first look at and say, wait a minute, I thought Eliakim was a good guy. What's the matter with him? What's the matter with this verse here? In that day, declares the Lord of hosts, the peg driven in a firm place will give way, will even break off and fall. What? And the load hanging on it will be cut off, for the Lord has spoken.

Even though Eliakim was, there's no question about it, he was a faithful man. He would do what he was assigned to do. He would do what was granted to him. He would take on the duty in the full spirit of the assignment. So what's the problem? Eliakim was a human being. Was he going to last forever? As faithful as he was, and we have no evidence that he was not, not the slightest, as faithful as he was, he was not going to live forever in that position. He wasn't going to stay there. Human mortality would overtake him.

This aspect will certainly not be true of the ways in which Jesus Christ does and will fulfill these verses, but it is true of Eliakim. Eliakim himself could not hold that role, even if he desired to do so beyond his lifetime, the time assigned to him. So what's this lesson of the failed peg? There's no assignment that we're going to have here on planet Earth, spiritual, of any kind, even if we are faithful in everything that we're assigned to do, that we're going to be able to keep on doing forever. In fact, at one point some years back, and Nancy even reminded me of this not too long ago, I was really stressing over a lot of pressure on my job. And my brother called up and he said, Vern, if the Lord took you home, who would do your job? Would your job get done? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, there is a mortality. And as much as I am called to be faithful to my task, I also need to remember I'm not going to be there forever. Life on Earth has its time limits. It simply does. It's the nature of it.

No human being, no human institution, no matter how faithful or responsible, even if extremely reliable as Eliakim appears to have been, is intended by God to replace our confidence in Him. Our confidence in the Lord is where we need to keep our confidence fixed.

Did the nation of Judah need a responsible man like Eliakim to take on the role that he did? Yep, no question about it. And it appears to have been God that took Shebna out and put Eliakim in that place. And at the same time, this last verse saying, but remember, keep your trust in Me, not in the faithful Eliakim, however faithful.

Always trust in Me. The peg principle. Better to hang on to the Lord than to be left hanging. Okay? We can get ourselves really hung out by not recognizing that even though, yes, I want certain things in my life reliable, ultimately there is nothing that is to be trusted more than the Lord. There is nothing to take that confidence that is due Him to be placed anywhere else. Now we have in our culture various battle cries. We have battle cries like, remember the Alamo.

Remember Pearl Harbor. My dad went and visited this memorial here not too long ago. This is September, five years. Remember the Twin Towers may end up being a classical battle cry. But this morning I'm saying, remember the stewardship. Remember the stewardship.

Our salvation is not a stewardship. It's a gift received only by grace. It's only by God's amazing grace. We talked about in the Romans elective this morning. And by the way, we need to talk about what must one believe in order to be saved just flat out. 1 Corinthians 15, 3 and 4, For I deliver to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures. Believe that and you're saved. It's as simple as that. Nothing more, nothing less. That saves us and there is nothing that we can do to enhance it or add to it. Our blessings in Christ are given to us entirely by grace.

They are not a stewardship. However, we are certainly well to understand them and to see what Scripture has revealed so that we walk in our position. But the blessings themselves are not a stewardship. They can't be enhanced. We can't fail at having them. They're God's to give and to keep. But we have been given various stewardships on earth. We have a responsibility with, alongside that, an accountability and an opportunity for eternal reward. That reward will be given by Christ himself. How we handle those stewardships doesn't impact our salvation. It doesn't impact our blessings in Christ. Those can't be diminished, tarnished, or enhanced in any way.

Now, there are, however, stewardships that we have, and the various aspects of our physical lives here on earth, our bodies, minds, health, things that are used for God's purposes, those are stewardships. Physical and financial resources that the Lord gives us, those are stewardships. He's given those into our hands, entrusted them to us. They're His. 1 Corinthians 6, 19 and 20, Paul reminds the Corinthians, he says, Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. You're not your own. You've been bought with a price.

Stewardships could include our family relationships that are stewardships. A wife is given as a stewardship into the husband's care. A husband is given as a stewardship to the wife. There is an accountability and a responsibility there. It's not just a free gift to do as we please. Our children are not our children as if it's an outright ownership. They're stewardship given as a trust for a time.

There are even stewardships among extended family members. Some of us here have had to deal with extended family member issues, helping out. A stewardship, could include the spiritual gift that you have or gifts that you have in the church body. Those within the church here are a stewardship. You know, we don't just come here and sit and then just leave and then that's it. There is a mutual stewardship amongst those with whom you're sitting.

There's an accountability and responsibility for each other. Church leaders and teachers have a stewardship in their ministry of the church body. They're reminded of that repeatedly in Scripture. A couple of references here in 1 Corinthians 3 and Hebrews 13. Stewardships are given to us. They don't put our salvation or our blessings at issue. We can't impact those.

But there will come a time of final accountability before the Lord. So what do you do with that? Should I cower and quiver in fear? put forth every bit of my very best effort, how do I deal with those stewardships? How concerned should I be about those stewardships?

The Lord's desire, believe it or not, is to reward us fully. That's what he wants. If you say, okay, Lord, what do you think about rewards? He says, I want to reward you fully. That's what he has in mind. He wants to reward you fully. That's how he's motivated. He's not eager to sit there and say, aha, gotcha on that one, sorry, it's gone. No, he is eager to reward us fully.

We're encouraged to look to the Lord for our motivations, for those stewardships. Paul says everything unto the Lord. Whatever you do, you go into work, unto the Lord. You're washing dishes, unto the Lord. Tying your shoes, unto the Lord. How does the Lord want us to carry these out?

Here's Philippians 4.13, I can do all things through Him who strengthens me. He strengthens from within. The ability from within is received from Him.

Philippians 4.13, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me, is not God's offer to turn every Christian into a superhero. Okay? Okay.

Ephesians 3.20 and 21 that we looked at here. Now, who's able?

Him. He has the ability to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think according to the power that works within us. Energeo, His energizing. He has the ability. He energizes. That is what He has in mind. You're driving to work? That's what He has in mind. You're throwing some clothes into the washing machine? That's a perfect time. His ability. There are rewards. There's three of them.

You have them on page four of your handout. I won't go into the detail on them that are listed. There are also, in addition to that, five crowns that are listed. These are Stephanos or Victor's crowns, not diadem royalty crowns. This is a kind of a closeup, if you will, of a Stephanos crown, a Victor's crown, as if in an athletic event. But think about these crowns. Imagine we stand before the Lord, and I'll kind of speak in an imaginary way. We stand before the Lord and the Lord rewards us. And we said, Lord, what are you rewarding me for that for?

All I was doing was changing diapers. And the Lord says, yeah, but you trusted Me while you were doing it. You did it in My strength. Lord, I was just playing soccer. Yeah, but you did it by My power and not your own. I was just with the kids in Sunday school. Ah, yes, but you did it by my strength and not your own. I just held my wife's hand. Yeah, but you did it by my strength and energizing and not your own.

I just had that accident. You're going to reward me for that accident? He said, yeah, but you trusted me through it. The accident happened and you entrusted it into my hands. I'll reward you for that." I just made some copies. He says, yeah, but all the while you were depending upon me. I'll reward that.

I was just driving down the road. I wasn't particularly doing anything all that spiritual. He says, you were trusting in me during that time. You were entrusting things into my care. I'll reward that. That's rewardable. I just called up for some counseling because I was concerned about the relationship that my wife and I had. Yeah, but you were trusting me to deal with that. I'll reward that.

I was in the hospital. I was sick. I could hardly do anything. He says, I'll reward that too. You trusted me all through that time. I was just working, just swatting some nails in and getting all the construction pieces in place. He says, yeah, but that was by my strength that you did that. I'll reward that because you depended upon me. Some folks are bothered by the idea of getting a crown. I would say, don't worry about that. It's not a matter of piling up bricks in your personal mansion. It's just pavement anyway.

Look at this Revelation 4 passage, and here are the 24 elders who, as we said several years ago, represent the church. They will fall down before Him who sits on the throne and will worship Him who lives forever and will cast their crowns, same words, stefanos crowns, before the throne. What is the crown? A capacity to glorify the Lord. So your crown is not selfishly piling up gold bricks in your mansion. It's a capacity to glorify the Lord forever. So what happens now determines the quality of your eternity, the capacity to glorify the Lord for eternity. How do you do that? Not by your best effort. Not by being impressive. Not by doing anything just because it looks spiritual or is on the list of good things to do. But trusting in Him, even if it's tying your shoes. Let's pray.

Lord, as we look at these things, how wonderful that You reward us for depending upon You. We look at the faithfulness of Eliakim and the unfaithfulness of Shebna. We look at the transient authority that each of them had, and yet recognize that there is an eternity factor here. And that's how we are rewarded. And Lord, it's all in dependence upon You. You reward us for You doing it. That is amazing. That is amazing grace all over again. In Jesus' name, Amen.