Dennis Tuuri

As we look at the closing of one year and the opening of another, God in his providence has brought us to Revelation 3, chapter 3, to the letter to the church at Philadelphia, beginning in verse 7 of Revelation 3. We’ll read that entire letter. Revelation 3, beginning at verse 7 to Philadelphia. And we’ll also read Isaiah 22:15-25. Let’s start with Revelation chapter 3, beginning at verse 7. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia, write these things saith he that is holy, he that is true, he that hath the key of David, he that openeth, and no man shutteth, and shutteth, and no man openeth. I know thy works. Behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it. For thou hast a little strength, and hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name. Behold, I will make them of the synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie.

Behold, I will make them to come and worship before thy feet, and to know that I have loved thee. Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth. Behold, I come quickly. Hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown. Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out.

And I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is New Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God. And I will write upon him my new name. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the spirit saith unto the churches. And now turning your scriptures to Isaiah the 22nd chapter, beginning at verse 15. The reference to the key of David found in the letter to the church at Philadelphia is a direct citation from Isaiah 22.

And we’ll spend most of our time today in this passage. Isaiah 22, beginning at verse 15.

Thus saith the Lord God of hosts, “Go, get thee unto this treasurer, even unto Shebna, which is over the house, and say, What hast thou here? And whom hast thou here, that thou hast hewn thee out a sepulcher here, as he that heweth him out a sepulcher on high, and that graveth out a habitation for himself in a rock? Behold, the Lord will carry thee away with a mighty captivity, and will surely cover thee.

He will surely violently turn and toss thee like a ball into a large country. There shalt thou die, and there the chariots of thy glory shall be the shame of thy lord’s house. And I will drive thee from thy station, and from thy state shall he pull thee down. And it shall come to pass in that day that I will call my servant Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah, and I will clothe him with thy robe, and strengthen him with thy girdle.

And I will commit thy government into his hand. And he shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah. And the key of the house of David will I lay upon his shoulder. So he shall open and none shall shut. And he shall shut and none shall open. And I will fasten him as a nail in a sure place. And he shall be for a glorious throne to his father’s house. And they shall hang upon him all the glory of his father’s house, the offspring, and the issue, all vessels of small quantity, from the vessels of cups, even to all the vessels of flagons.

In that day, sayeth the Lord of hosts, shall the nail that is fastened in the sure place be removed and be cut down and fall, and the burden that was upon it shall be cut off. For the Lord hath spoken it.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your most holy word, that is indeed truth and holiness to us. And we pray that as a result of your Spirit doing his work, we may be more holy, more set apart to do your work, more truthful, that we might indeed exercise the keys of the Lord Jesus Christ correctly. In his name we pray and for the sake of his kingdom. Amen.

There was a medieval tradition. I’m not sure what time it started or what country—I think maybe England, maybe on the continent also—that on Christmas Eve, the hours leading up to midnight, a large single deep-noted bell would peal out solemnly and slowly. And then right at the beginning of Christmas day at midnight, all the church bells would ring out in the town and everybody would ring bells of joy. And the idea was the death toll was sounding for Satan in those loud peeling solemn bells, and then the joy of the birth of the Savior who moves the world from death to life.

We’ve stressed that these last few weeks, and in the providence of God, he has moved us through these last couple of letters to the churches that’s recorded for us in the book of Revelation. Last Sunday, we considered—as we were still on that side of Christmas Day—we considered the letter to the fifth church, Sardis, which was essentially the end result of three churches that failed to exercise discipline. And now it was basically a dead church. A few two left remaining in it that might not die, but essentially the whole church was given over to the death that moved out so far that they not only had to wash themselves, they had to wash their garments as well, using Old Testament imagery. So death was spreading, spreading a little bit remaining. And it’s a picture of the coming of the Savior, of course, because then the world turns and moves now from death into life.

And with this next letter to the church at Philadelphia—the sixth letter—we’ll have one left to go. From this we see this transition from the deadness of Sardis to the tremendous vitality and life of the church at Philadelphia.

So it’s kind of a neat transition that the Lord our God has taken us through, from last Lord’s Day to this Lord’s Day, with Christmas being in between—the symbolic representation of the celebration of the coming of Messiah. I mentioned last week we’re doing not a whole lot, but some stuff with the 12 days of Christmas to take the celebration of Christmas Day into the new year. And the idea liturgically in the liturgical churches was to take the birth of Christ into his work.

So it concludes—the 12th night is January 6th, Epiphany. The wise men coming to him and the presentation of Christ to the world that he has come now as the Savior of the world and as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And so the liturgical church is then moved through that cycle and up to Easter, right? Goes from his circumcision and baptism and service unto his death and resurrection and glorification.

Well, it’s a good thing to remember that Christ came for a particular purpose. He came that in a sense that Sardis might be turned into Philadelphia, that the deadness of the church might come to new life in the Lord Jesus Christ. The Philadelphia church—we’ll get into the details of that letter next week—but it’s a tremendous, exciting epistle, as was the one that we discussed where Christ is giving the rule of his rod of his rule to his people.

So there’s a similar sort of imagery in it, and a very much an open door is given to Philadelphia. Now, what I want to do this week, however, is kind of bring us up to speed with Bible knowledge when we read this citation from Isaiah 22 that we just read. That Christ is the one who describes himself in three ways. He is holy, he is true, and he has the key of David. Okay? The three ways Christ describes himself in the very opening picture.

Remember, each of these pictures has a presentation of Christ. The word actually is holy. “These things saith he that is holy. He that is true. He that hath the key of David.” To be holy means to be set apart. We hear that word a lot in Christian circles. We got our own jargon and we at least ought to know what it means. To be holy means to be totally set apart, consecrated to a standard.

And of course, that standard is God, God’s person himself. So the Lord Jesus is set apart. The citation from Isaiah 22 is from the book of Isaiah where the great theme of Jesus Christ is that he’s the Servant of the Lord, totally set apart and consecrated to the work of his Father in heaven. He’s the Servant of the Lord. Well, if we knew our Bibles well, we’d know what this references to in Isaiah 22.

We’d know about Shebna and we know about Eliakim, and we wouldn’t have to spend maybe as much time as we do today on it. But we don’t know our scriptures very well. And so I want to spend some time today, a couple of minutes, looking at that. But first, by way on your outline now, beginning the first point of general structural and literary observations—as we’ve done before. I’ll leave the primary ways we’ve been reviewing these churches till next week.

But I do want to make some opening comments of the structure of this passage. And the first is that there’s a preponderance of door imagery in this letter. Jesus says he has the key of David. A key opens the door. And he says specifically, as the key of David, so that what he opens no man can shut and what he shuts no man can open. So the key is used in the context of the opening or closing of doors, or a door.

Jesus says that he gives to Philadelphia. He set before them an open door. We’ll talk about that next week. But an open door for evangelism. That’s the way it’s used in the book of Acts—that Paul prays and “we have an open door for evangelism.” So he sets before them an open door. Nobody can shut that door. Jesus has unlocked it and opened it up for the Philadelphia church. And then finally in your outline, I note that he tells them that if they overcome, he’ll make them a pillar in his temple.

You know what’s that have to do with the door? Well, you remember we’ve talked about this before. The temple imagery from Solomon’s temple is that they had two big pillars right at the front of the temple. And those pillars were named Jachin and Boaz. And those pillars—essentially, then, since there’s two of them—constitute a doorway into the temple. And so the church represents the kingdom of God and the temple of God, the house of God.

And the reference to the pillars references the primary pillars in the Old Testament imagery which frame a doorway. Another thing—we’ll talk about this more next week—but remember we say that these letters reprise the history of God’s people from the garden up to the time of the Savior’s coming. Well, this particular epistle, the epistle to the church at Philadelphia, reprises the restoration period. Remember we said that Sardis was the period of the remnant and the judgment.

They were being taken away into captivity. They were almost totally dead. And Jeremiah is preaching to them. Well, in Philadelphia, they’re restored now. This open door of evangelism. They rebuild Jerusalem. And the primary imagery of the restoration period is Ezekiel’s temple—Ezekiel’s prophetic temple, which is never built according to the dimensions he lays out for it. It couldn’t be. But it’s the primary picture of the restoration of God’s people.

And in Ezekiel’s temple, the primary architectural figure that’s used in it and stressed in it are doorways or gates. Now I have in your outlines that if you think of the tabernacle, the thing that God gives most detail to in the construction of the tabernacle are the furnishings inside of it. Great amount of detail given to all the stuff that the Levitical ministers will use inside the tabernacle. In the building of the Solomon’s temple and the description of it in the Old Testament, the primary thing that gets most emphasis are the walls, the construction of the walls. Great amount of detail. But with Ezekiel’s temple—and you just, we won’t turn to it now, but if you want to later on in your Lord’s Day meditations on the scriptures, you could turn to Ezekiel chapters 40 and 41—and see repeatedly all these references to gates, which are doorways. Okay? So there’s a big imagery in Philadelphia involving doorways.

Now, I’ve listed a name of a book there, “Hallowed Be This House,” written by a fellow named Thomas Howard. Now, Thomas Howard had converted from Protestantism to Roman Catholicism a dozen or so years ago, and I do not recommend all of his works. I certainly don’t recommend that drift or how he ended up. However, this particular book—not a big book—is a wonderful little book. It simply takes you through the various rooms of a typical house and tries to, I guess you could say, resacralize them—make you think of doorways and kitchens and bedrooms and living rooms and entryways from more of a biblical perspective.

God lays out his house as the great symbol of all houses, including our bodies, because that’s how Jesus correlates his body to the temple. And the temple provides us an understanding of why we have houses the way God lives in his house. We live in our house, and we’re supposed to think of this stuff. But today, growing up in modern materialistic, secular humanistic America, we don’t think about doorways as anything. They’re just doors. We walk through them. We don’t give them a glance. We don’t know why some doors are framed in an ornate fashion and others aren’t. We don’t think about it much. And when you walk into your house, you just don’t think about it.

Well, sometimes it’s good to think about it. One of the great things I’ve tried to stress to men—as they enter through the doorway of their house, they are transitioning at the end of the day from being involved in the workplace and that sort of activity, and now you’re coming into a new realm as it were, the realm of your home. And you take off one hat and you put on another hat. And now you’re the lord of the house. And we’re lords through service, and we’re going to serve in the context of this home now. So it’s different. We’re in a different place now. And we don’t want to bring a lot of the work home with us. I’m not saying you shouldn’t talk about work, but you’re now there at home. You see? You transition. And there are things that we do every day in our homes that are very significant—the death of the meat, the cutting of it up, et cetera.

Well, anyway, Thomas Howard’s book is a wonderful little book for doing that. And I want us to think of those things. I want us to look as we enter this new year at doorways a little differently. We’ll see the importance of the doorway as we continue on in this study of Isaiah 22.

Another very significant imagery here is key imagery—not just in this particular text, but earlier as well. In Revelation 1:18, remember we have the beginning of the word “worship service,” the Lord’s Day. The voice of God comes to John, and he turns to see the voice, and he sees this image of Christ. And he’s clothed in a particular way, and then he describes his body, his appearance. And John falls down as a dead man. And then Christ raises him back up in the assurance of his forgiveness and salvation. Jesus says that he has the keys of death and of Hades. He’s got the keys. He’s got the power. He’s got the door—the keys not just to heaven but also of hell.

And he opens and closes. Later on in the book of Revelation, in chapter 9 and in chapter 20, you see this great angel coming down with the key. And he opens the bottomless pit, and things come out of it for a little while. Then in chapter 20, he opens the pit and he throws Satan and his host into this pit for a thousand years. He closes them up, locks them in. So you have this key imagery. And of course, this is transferred also to the church in Matthew 16, verse 19. Peter and the church are given the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and they can loose and they can shut. They can open the kingdom, as it were, and close the kingdom.

That comes through instruction, but it also comes through the liturgical actions of the church. And God shows this correlation then between the keys that are so prominent in the doorways of heaven and hell—exercised ultimately by our Savior—but then also the church has exercised those keys as an institutional body in the context of earth.

So keys and doorways. And then third, still looking at the general structural stuff before we get to the specifics of Isaiah 22: there is this citation of Isaiah 22. And I correlate this as well to chapter 1, verse 13 and 18—the key that Jesus exercised. But do you remember before Jesus is portrayed in his various personages, the whiteness of his head, et cetera? You remember first John recorded some clothing. Do you remember what that clothing was from chapter 1, verse 13?

Two things he’s got on. Do you remember what they are? Well, there’s a robe and there’s a girdle or a sash or a belt. And remember when we talked about that, we correlated that to the high priest—Aaron and his sons were given a tunic or a robe and then a girdle. And particularly the golden girdle around the breast of our Savior correlates to that golden girdle with golden thread in it the high priest wore.

So Jesus’s clothing of the robe and the sash, or the tunic and the belt—whatever you want to call it, you get the idea—is intended in chapter 1, verse 13 to remind us, to bring us the imagery of the high priest, because Jesus is the greater Aaron. But that imagery also was intended to give us a connotation, a citation back to Isaiah 22. Because Shebna and Eliakim, their garment is also said to be two things: there’s a robe and there’s a belt.

And so if we’re really good students of our scriptures and we came to that verse 13, we wouldn’t even need to get to chapter 3 where we read about the key of David. We’d already begin to think about not just the imagery of Aaron in the temple, but the imagery of the king’s servant in the king’s palace, which is what Shebna and Eliakim were. Those things would have come to mind in Isaiah 22. But probably for most of us, it’s an obscure text of scripture.

So let’s turn now to Isaiah chapter 22. And you know, if you don’t buy the “two pieces of clothing” argument, well, clearly in chapter 3, we have a direct citation from Isaiah chapter 22: the key of David. You get to the key of David. It sounds neat? We sing about it every Christmas time in that great song, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel—Come, O key of David.” What does it mean? We’re going to find out today.

Turn to Isaiah 22, and we’ll begin to work our way through this particular passage of scripture as an excursus, a sidetrack, a deviation from the main text, but it will help us come back next week and understand it more fully. Okay? And given you on your outline, it’s kind of an outline of this passage as well, under the excursus portion, that has that shaded box to help you find it very easily.

And before we actually talk about the text, one more piece of Bible—I was going to say Bible trivia, but it’s so important. Understanding this text in the Hebrew language: well, there’s a singer named Leonard Cohen, who I happen to like somewhat. He’s an interesting fellow. I’m not necessarily recommending him. But when you hear “Sammy Khan,” for instance, was another musician. “Khan” was a derivation from “Cohen.”

And you have a lot of Jewish people named Cohen. Cohen means priest. That’s what the word means. That’s what the Hebrew word means in the Old Testament. But it also means servant. The priest who ministers in the temple and the servant or steward who ministers to the king—both are “Cohen.” There’s not like a word for priest and a word for servant. There’s one Hebrew word that may be translated sometimes as priest and other times as servant, but it’s the same word.

Okay? So the chief servant to the king—you could call him a high priest. The high priest is over the other priests. And the high priest essentially guards the temple of God. You know, the high priest and then the Levites under him—if you were going to go give your sacrifice at the temple and you had this big blotch of pure white skin on you, they’d say, “Whoa, hey, stop right there. Can’t come in the gate yet. Have you had that checked out by your doctor, by the Levite? What’s going on with this thing?” If it’s leprosy, if it’s this kind of skin condition, and the priest says it is, you can’t come in here. You’re excluded. We’re going to shut the door, and nobody can open it. And if you try to get in anyway, we’re going to kill you because we have these spears here ready to throw you, run you through. Okay?

And so, or if they knew something was going on with you or you had an issue or whatever it was, they’d check that out. And they—the Levites and the priests, particularly at the temple—would guard the entrance to the temple from those who sought to come into it who were not clean ceremonially. Okay. So that’s what the high priest does. He’s over the other priests, and in the course of those priests, they guard the door.

Well, in the same way, Shebna and Eliakim, who were the chief servants, the high priests, the stewards over the other servants to Hezekiah—that’s the particular king they served—but always the chief servant of the king. He was over the other servants of the house. So they all reported to him, and he reported to the king. But he would also guard entrance to the king. You know, kids, maybe some of your dads have a chief servant called a secretary. And the secretary guards access to your father.

Maybe your dad’s a manager, and you know, some managers have a lot of people reporting to them. One of the most important things is to have a good secretary who will guard your door. And you go up there, you say, “Well, I want to talk to so and so.” “No, you can’t. He’s on the phone right now. Sorry. Go away.” Or, “Yeah, he really wants to see you. Come on in now.” And you get to talk to him now. Or, “No, he’s busy now. He’s in there.”

I had to, for my family this last week, there came a time in which I said, “No, I’m studying. Cannot come in. Don’t have a secretary, but I got myself to be my secretary. Guard my door.” Well, the king was the same way. A lot of people want to see the king for various reasons. And he needs people to say to people, “No, the door’s closed now, or the door is open now, and it’s open for you, maybe, but it’s not opened for you.”

Doorkeepers. Okay? And this chief steward would guard access to the king the same way the high priest guarded access to God in the context of the temple. Now, another correlation between those two is that just like there’s only one word for priest or servant, there’s only one word for temple and palace.

And we know the king had a palace. Solomon had a palace right next to—by way of imagery, God’s temple. And the king is always subservient. The king’s palace is subservient to the temple. But it’s the same word. It’s one word: “hekál.” So there’s one word that means either temple or palace, depending if you’re talking about God’s temple, where worship goes on, or the palace of the king. So you see the correlations here, don’t you?

And hopefully you see that what we’re going to end up at is that Jesus Christ comes as the greater Aaron, but he also comes as the greater Eliakim. And we’re going to see that this text in Philadelphia, as well as the rest of scriptures, strongly stress not simply the liturgical religious aspects of Christ’s ministry, but that they extend to the civil arena—pictured through the temple of the king, where the high priest guards access to the king and lets people in.

Okay, that’s a little bit of background. Now, let’s look specifically at the text, and what we see first of all in the context of Isaiah 22 is the debasement of Shebna. This goes on from verses 15 to 19. So here comes the prophecy:

“Thus saith the Lord God of hosts, ‘Go get thee unto this treasurer, even unto Shebna, who is over the house.’ See, he’s over the house of the king. He’s the chief servant. He guards access, and he’s also the treasurer.

And say, ‘What hast thou here? And whom hast thou here, that thou hast hewn thee out a sepulcher here, as he that heweth him out a sepulcher on high, and that graveth out a habitation for himself in a rock.’”

He says, first of all, go to Shebna and remind him of his sin. Well, what’s his sin? Well, Shebna didn’t want to be buried down in the earth. He wanted to be buried up in a high place in the hills. He wanted, after he died, to be remembered among people. He wanted a glorious place of burial up on the hills. And so he cut him out a sepulcher up there.

Now, it’s interesting that Shebna also is chastised in another place of scripture for counseling Hezekiah to enter into a prohibited alliance with Egypt. Okay. So Shebna has this affinity for the Egyptians. And you remember, the Egyptians—in their pagan culture, you only had significance in Egypt as you were part of the god who is the state, who is Pharaoh himself. The pharaohs would employ everybody in the land. They’d enslave them to build them a burial place and make out a mountain in which they would be buried. Okay? So she is kind of like the Egyptians, isn’t he?

He’s going to now use his office and function not just to serve the king, but he’s going to—as we say—feather his own nest. He’s going to build a burial place for himself in the rock. And he is there, not serving God, but there by way of self-interest. Okay? He’s a picture to us of self-interest. And the keys of David are going to be taken away from Shebna, who is there as a picture of self-interest, and given to Eliakim, as a picture of a true servant to God.

Okay? So first he tells him, “What do you have here? Who do you have here?” Probably a reference to the Egyptians that he learned this stuff from. You’ve done this stuff. And okay, here comes his debasement.

“Behold, the Lord will carry thee away with a mighty captivity. Will surely cover thee. He will surely violently turn and toss thee like a ball into a large country.”

Guess what, Shebna? You’re out of here. The time will come—and it will come gradually, but it will come—when you’re going to be, you know how at home you have maybe I got a big waste can and I wad up pieces of paper that I don’t want to use anymore and I throw him in there like you’re playing basketball. Well, Shebna is going to be wadded up by God, cast into captivity, and thrown like a ball into another country. And he ain’t just going to go there and then kind of recover.

“It says that you shall die and there the chariots of thy glory shall be the shame of thy lord’s house.”

See, we have another picture of Shebna’s self-interest. He had chariots of glory. He liked to get in those chariots and ride around. Everybody, look at Shebna. Look who he is. Look at this great place he’s going to bury himself in. And God said, you know, you’re going to go into captivity. You’re going to die. And not only that, but your name is going to be a shameful thing even to the lord of the place in which you end up in captivity.

So instead of the glory that he wanted, Shebna is given over to disgrace and shame. And then verse 19:

“How is this going to happen? What’s going to be the beginning of this process that ends so terribly for Shebna? Well, I’ll drive thee from thy state. That’s the office that he holds—being head steward to the king. And from thy state shall he pull thee down.”

Okay. So Shebna is debased, and his beginning of his debasement begins with his being pulled out of the office of being the king’s chief steward or servant. And the end of it’s going to be that he’s going to end up being thrown into captivity, dying there ignominiously with great pain. But the text goes on to tell us not simply the debasement of Shebna, the bad guy, but it gives us a good guy, Eliakim, in verse 20.

And now we see Eliakim’s exultation.

“It shall come to pass in that day—okay, in the same period of time. So this draws the whole structure of these verses together. ‘In that day I will call my servant Eliakim, Eliakim the son of Hilkiah.’”

Okay. Well, right away, before we get to what he’s going to do with him, he gives us a designation. What does Eliakim do that is good? Well, it says here that “I will call my servant Eliakim.” Eliakim—we don’t know what he was doing before this—but whatever he was doing, he was doing well. He was doing it as a true servant of Yahweh.

Now, remember, the book of Isaiah is about the Servant of the Lord. So Eliakim here is presented as “my servant.” God says, “He’s a servant of the Lord. I—he’s doing something little. He’s not doing something important like Shebna, but he’s doing it faithfully.” And of course, Jesus tells us this in the Gospels: “If you’re faithful in small things, then you’ll be entrusted with more.”

So we have throughout this story some obvious moral lessons for us: the falseness, the false security of those who think they’re going to continue on in where God has brought them to; the hopefulness of serving the Lord in small matters, being faithful because you know that he’ll exalt you in due time. And maybe that exaltation is just in your own mind. Maybe you’re doing a great thing already and you just don’t know it. Well, God’s going to make that more and more obvious to you.

But in this case, Eliakim actually is promoted to Shebna’s place. So he’s doing something right. And what he’s doing right is he is a holy, set apart servant to the Lord. He’s not serving his self-interest. You say, “Well, Dennis, we’ve got to take care of ourselves.” No, you don’t. No. Jesus says you don’t have to take care of yourselves. He says, “Why do you worry about your clothes? Why do you worry about your food? Why do you worry about your burial place, Shebna? Serve the Lord God. Make as your priority the kingdom of God, and all these things you’ll then get to get later on. No, all these things shall be added unto you. He who loses his life for my sake will find it—not because he finds it, but because God gives it to him.

You die to self. You follow the Lord Jesus Christ. You serve others. And you serve the God who brought you into redemption. And through that service, God will take care of you. You don’t got to take care of yourself. Okay? I’m not, you know, saying you shouldn’t, you know, have savings accounts and all that stuff. But I’m saying whatever you do—whatever you do—it must be as a servant of the Lord. And ultimately you must say, “I’m not taking care of myself. I’m counting. I’m relying upon God, who I’m faithful to, and doing what I need to do for my family, et cetera. I’m faithful to serve God, and I know that he’ll be faithful to maintain me and to give me the things that I need for life.” That was the mindset of Eliakim.

And look at this great exaltation in verse 21:

“I will clothe him with thy robe.”

The robe is the representation of office. Okay? It’s not a small thing. It’s a big thing. We put on clothes and it’s just like going through doors. We don’t think twice about it. But God does. God says clothes are very, very important. Remember Achan’s sin? What was one of the things he stole out of the consecrated to destruction goods of Jericho? A robe of authority. A great heavy robe. It said—we think, well, he just kind of wanted to look nice. No. He was seizing authority prior to patiently waiting for God’s exaltation of his servants to rule and reign.

Eliakim doesn’t achieve this position through putting down Shebna. There’s no indication that there’s any plot going on by Eliakim here. He simply patiently serves his God, knowing that God, in due time, if it is his purpose for Eliakim to serve as chief servant, He’ll get the robe given to him. He doesn’t got a grab at it. You see, we are—it’s a shame, isn’t it, that our political offices are filled with men who cannot wait to grab for the robes of authority. And so they run as soon as the age lets them, as soon as they get some popularity, rather than waiting for maturity, waiting for faithful service. It’s sad. I could throw in other things, too. But it’s certainly sad that, at least as I’ve watched political action for the last fifteen, twenty years, the number of Christians I know of has sought political office without going through the patient acts of service at lower levels. You go right for the big office. Go right for the brass ring. And used to be, running for the United States Senate, as an example, was the result of faithful years of service to the Lord through service in lower levels of political office. But in our day and age, that’s unknown.

Well, hopefully that’s part of the Reformation that God is affecting in church and in state. In our day and age is a recognition that service to God is the way we become exalted. And we don’t grab for positions of authority. We wait for them to be laid upon us. And God, when he gives us the positions of authority, doesn’t stop there. It continues in verse 21:

“And I will strengthen him with thy girdle.”

Remember the girdle? The Savior’s girdle is up high, up here. Why? Because he’s at rest. In the book of Revelation, when he appears to Daniel and Ezekiel, the girdle—see—is not said to be up high. It seems to be down low because he’s still working. He’s still in the process of working. But now that he’s died for the sins of his people, he’s affected salvation. In the book of Revelation, he’s exalted and he’s at rest. But here, the girdle is still a matter of strength and empowerment for servants.

And Shebna’s office is removed and given to Eliakim. But Eliakim gets more than just the robe of office. He gets strength from God on high to perform it. He gets the girdle. He gets the belt. He gets the sash, you see?

In verse 21, continuing:

“And I will commit thy government into his hand. And he shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah.”

Now, this is interesting. So Shebna was self-interested. He wanted his own burial place. He wanted his own glory. And this is what happens to someone who approaches the office as his own. But Eliakim, on the other hand, he’s given government. But what kind of government is it? Well, it’s a government where he is a father to the people. And Jesus tells us, you know, we are so darn prideful today and we don’t want people to help us. But too bad. God says the civil ruler here, in this case, the servant of the king, is a father to those that he ministers to.

This is why we have commendation to him. It’s to contrast him with that wicked Shebna, who saw his own glory and his own ability, was probably relying upon his own strength. But no, Eliakim serves in the power of God and is given government by God. And he serves as a father to those that he ministers in the context of.

Tremendous example here for us men, particularly as we enter into this new year—to see ourselves with given callings by God, strength for those callings, to exercise the government then that involves calling and office, and to do it with the love and the compassion and sometimes the discipline and sternness of the father in heaven. That’s our job, men. We should be good, godly men as we enter this new year. Lord, make a regular man out of me. Make a father out of me to those that I minister in the context of.

In verse 22, then we get to the quoted verse:

“And the key of the house of David will I lay upon his shoulder. So he shall open and none shall shut. And he shall shut and none shall open.”

That’s what our Lord just said. Okay? So our Lord says that I am the greater Eliakim. And whether you knew it or not when you read it in Isaiah 22, I’m telling you now: Eliakim was a type of me. And who does that make Shebna? Well, we could say it makes Shebna Adam. You know, Jesus is the second Adam to replace the sinful, fallen Adam with the new, powerful Adam from on high who leads his people into these sort of acts of service.

So Jesus, the key of David, is the key of the governmental authority that the high servant has to open and close access to the king. And that’s what Eliakim is given here. And then there’s a contrasting.

Now, this last couple of verses are a little confusing. I’ll go over them real quickly. I’ll just read them first.

“I will fasten him as a nail in a sure place.”

Okay? And he shall be for a glorious throne to his father’s house. Notice here that to be a father to the people correctly, you’ve got to recognize you serve in the Father’s house. You have to have an understanding of God’s being your father before you can be a father to others.

But having said that, Eliakim is presented as a sure peg. I’ve got—there’s a coat rack in our hallway, which now, by the way, is an entryway. My wife read that book by Thomas Howard, or I talked to her about it years ago. And then finally, the Providence of God—three or four weeks ago—she completely redid it. We had a piano sitting there, so we finally got that moved into the house. And now the entryway has been completely reworked because my wife is trying to think through this, ten, fifteen years later. Praise God for women like that. This church is full of them.

But anyway, there’s a coat rack in there. Now, she’ll have to fix. Oh, I should fix this. There’s a coat rack, and it’s got some pegs, you know. And you got a heavy coat, you put it on this peg. Well, one of these pegs comes out. It’s just I don’t know what it is. But I go to pull my coat off, and the peg comes out of the hole and falls. It’s like Jimmy Stewart in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” you know? He grabs that banister thing and it always comes off in his hand.

Well, that’s an unsure peg. And Shebna—he thinks he’s dialed in, to use the terminology of our auto mechanic people here with cars and stuff. He isn’t dialed in. He’s a loose peg, and he doesn’t know it. But Eliakim will be a sure peg. That’s superglue that is not coming out. He is a sure peg. And on him he shall be for a glorious throne to his father’s house. And they shall hang upon him all the glory of his father’s house, the offspring, and the issue, all vessels of small quantity, from the vessels of cups, even to all the vessels of flagons.

Okay, now that’s talking about the fact that when you have somebody in office, his family—those that he serves and his direct family, as well—kind of hang on him. You know, he has a position, and their security of position is related to his position. And if you do your job well, fathers, then your whole family has a steady place to hang, as it were, on you as a firm door nail set in the side of this house.

Okay? So the cups and other vessels are pictures of people, ultimately. It’s kind of like the Disney movies, you know, where the little teacups talk and stuff. Well, that’s kind of the idea here: your house is seen as hanging on you.

See? But, and that’s referring to Eliakim, the good servant of the Lord. In verse 25, then, in that day, we’re now looking at a final note:

“In that day, sayeth the Lord of hosts, shall the nail that is fastened in the sure place be removed and be cut down and fall, and the burden that was upon it shall be cut off. For the Lord hath spoken it.”

Now, some people take this to refer to the eventual fall of Eliakim, that he eventually goes bad too. I don’t think so. I think it’s simply returning at the end of this pericope, this section of scripture that hangs as a whole. He’s returning to where he started. He started with Shebna, his being torn down. Then he talked about the exaltation of Eliakim. And then he compares Eliakim to this door peg. And to conclude the section where he began it, he returns to Shebna, who now sits as this—what he thinks is a steady peg, but he’s going to be cut off.

And so we find out that not only is Shebna’s debasement bad for himself, but it’s also bad for all who hang on him—his family, his business associates, those who trusted him for access to the king—are going to have that access cut off. It’s very important that we all try to evaluate who we trust and who we put confidence in, isn’t it? Because God says that they may look like a sure peg, but next time you take the coat off, the little wood peg may fall right to the floor. Next time you get on the banister, you know, you lift it up and it comes right off in your hand. And that’s not a good thing.

Okay. So Christ is represented for us then by this direct citation from Isaiah 22 as the greater Eliakim. And so we have that whole portion of scripture which we bring into the text before us. Okay.

And one final little postscript on this story. We won’t read it now, but in Isaiah 36 and 37, Eliakim—Rabshakeh from the Assyrians come to destroy Jerusalem. And he means, he’s really saying some bad stuff to the men that meet him. And Eliakim, of course, the chief steward of the king’s house, is one of the guys that goes out to meet him. And Eliakim reports back to Hezekiah what’s going on. And Hezekiah prays at the bequest of Eliakim. And God spares Jerusalem from Rabshakeh in a marvelous way.

So we can draw a parallel. Jesus is declaring at the beginning of the book of Revelation that he is the greater Eliakim. Okay? He has the key of David. And no matter what it looks like, authority and direction belong to him. And what’s going to happen is Jerusalem is going to be besieged. The church of Jesus Christ is going to be besieged in the book of Revelation. Jesus is going to take out Shebna, establish Eliakim. He’s going to take out Jerusalem, establish himself in his church. And he’s going to protect that church from the onslaught that’ll come from the Roman troops who are brought into the situation through the false church, the Jews, in the book of Revelation.

And Eliakim and Hezekiah—the greater Hezekiah, the greater Eliakim—will pray to the Father in the book of Revelation. And his people will be protected. His church will be established. When everything’s over in AD 70, the church stands. All other empires and churches fall, but the church of Jesus Christ is established, secure forever. So Jesus is the greater Eliakim.