Dennis Tuuri

If someone has a match, we can start Advent. Does someone come on, please. Someone come forward with a match or a lighter. Do I have to go get my own? Okay, someone’s coming. Great. The official start of the Advent season with the lighting of the first candle. I wish I could say that was planned. It was not. But that’s okay.

As long as we’re talking about Advent, there are advent booklets on the table in the foyer. I really do have one in my office. It’s a nice one with a long handle, too. But you don’t want a blind guy up here with a lighter. So, I’m going to let somebody else actually do it. Oh, thank you very much. Which one do you want? I guess we should do this one over here. And people say we’re a high liturgical church.

So, as I was saying, there are these Advent booklets on the back table with selections written by C.S. Lewis. We’ve used a Lewis kind of family handout or booklet for Lent in the past. And so, this will suffice for Advent. If you don’t have Doug’s book or other book, this one will get you by if you start up your Advent devotionals.

This is the Advent season and what I want to preach from today is Genesis 11:1-4. And this is an Advent text, not quite of the type that’s envisioned in most places. We’re going to be looking at three different advents as we go through today’s sermon. And the sermon is on work becoming selfish.

Those of you that have been here over the last four or five months know I’m basically following Tim Keller’s book, Every Good Endeavor. And he’s got an excellent chapter called “Work Becomes Selfish.” So this is about work and selfishness and this produces, you know, difficulties in our work. Commonly it’s almost impossible for this sin not to rear its head. So we’ll deal one Sunday talking about that.

So we’ll be reading from Genesis 11:1-4. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. Work becomes selfish when we try to make a name for ourselves.

Genesis 11:1-4: “Now the whole earth had one language and one speech. And it came to pass as they journeyed from the east that they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there. Then they said to one another, ‘Come, let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly.’ They had brick for stone, and they had asphalt for mortar. And they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower whose top is in the heavens. Let us make a name for ourselves lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.’”

Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you for your scriptures. We thank you for this season in which we think about particular times of you coming close and specifically the coming close and redemption of our Lord Jesus Christ 2,000 years ago. Bless us this Advent season that we would properly repent of our sins and prepare for every coming of our Lord. Help us, Father, to see that coming in the text before us as a judgment upon us if we seek to work selfishly. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.

Please be seated.

So, I began our holiday season, got it kicked off 2 days after Thanksgiving. My wife and I went to see Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas, which is just about ready to leave the theaters, by the way. Two weeks and in another couple of days, it’ll probably be gone.

We saw that and then afterwards we went to my daughter Lana brought us—bought us some front row seats for the Singing Christmas Tree which for the first year has been moved from the Keller Auditorium to New Hope right up the freeway from us here. That was excellent. Both events were good. The Cameron movie, I’m not necessarily recommending you see it in the theaters. You know it’s a movie that’s something we can talk about but what he tries to do in the movie is show the Christian basis for many of the symbols that we typically hear are not Christian and are pagan.

So for instance he talks about St. Nicholas and brings the knowledge that most of you have that St. Nicholas is really the historical figure behind Santa Claus—not Santa Claus as some people think. St. Nicholas was a bishop in Myra, Turkey many years ago. And he brings up actually the incident that we’ve talked about in this church a little bit about how he was present at the Council of Nicaea, from which we derive our Nicene Creed. And rumor has it that he actually struck Arius the heretic on the face, slapped him. And he talks about that. So it’s an interesting movie.

At the end of the movie in the credits he actually credits Doug Wilson’s book God Rest Ye Merry and Jim Jordan’s article “The Menace of Chinese Food” which probably most of you have never heard of. But in the early days of this church, we all had read it and thought it was real good. So it’s getting new life now. Kirk Cameron is in there’s also, I think, a YouTube video of him and Doug Wilson. He has friendships, relationships, and so he actually uses the expression “through new eyes” in that movie, kind of an homage to Jim’s book, Through New Eyes. So that was fun.

And it’s a good thing when it comes out on DVD to rent and go over with your kids, help them to sort of see why it’s good to rejoice in this season and even in the things that we tend not to want to—we’ve been told we should not rejoice in. That was good. And then as I said the Singing Christmas Tree was filled with all kinds of great Christian hymns and gospel music as well as some secular stuff. So it was a great way to kick off the Advent season.

And as I said, what we’re going to be doing this first Sunday in Advent is we’ve come to this section of work as selfishness. When work becomes selfish, and we’re going to look at three texts here.

In this text, God, there’s an Advent theme, right? Because what happens after their sin is God comes in judgment upon them. So there’s an Advent, a dramatic Advent of God to change the history of the world. We’re going to look at Shebna from the book of Isaiah—Hezekiah’s kind of controller of his house and financial affairs of the kingdom. And we’ll see the Advent upon Shebna when he misuses his work. And then we’ll conclude with some thoughts about the book of Esther. And it’s a different kind of Advent story, but it is an Advent story nonetheless and a very important one for us.

One of my favorite Christmas plays here—I love them all, but one of my favorite Christmas plays here at RCC, I think it was Roseanne. I’m sorry I don’t remember who else helped her with it or did it with her, but one of our Christmas plays was actually on the book of Esther and showing the themes of what we celebrate at Christmas in that book of deliverance.

So we’ll be looking at those things. And what we’ll be doing is in those three narratives, little stories—you know, we’ll first look at selfishness, work becoming selfish as a means of identity, of creating our identity. That’s in the text before us. And then with Shebna we’ll see that work becomes selfish when we seek to work to accumulate personal gain that becomes the driving force in our work and that brings judgment from God.

And then the third narrative will be work becoming selfish for Esther when she’s trying to survive in the midst of being the queen of Persia. In a way, we don’t really know exactly what was going on with Esther and her hiding of her identity, but certainly survival is a major theme in the book as she comes to reveal who she is to her king.

So, identity, material gain, and survival in the workplace in our world can be three great motivating factors that drives us toward our work being selfish. And we want to brace ourselves against those things and learn that we need to work actively to honor God in all that we do and say.

So remember, actually next week I’ll be talking about work in idolatry, but this is really the beginning of work in idolatry. Idolatry means taking a good thing and making it the ultimate thing. We can do that with our work. We can make that the ultimate thing in terms of our identity, right? Or we can look to work as the ultimate way we’re going to accumulate value and material gain. So when work becomes kind of this source of idolatry, we’re really reflecting the idolatry of our own selves, right?

That’s really the ultimate idolatry for Christians is our own self.

Okay. Well, let’s look at this narrative that we just read briefly. And you know, hopefully if you know your Bible you know pretty much the story here. This is after the flood. That’s an interesting reality to keep in mind. It’s after the judgment on the Hamites. And if we were to take the time we would see that in the narrative leading up to this text that it is the Hamites who are doing this, but the Shemites—you know, one of Noah’s three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth—the Shemites, who, you know, had acted more honorably with the Japhites in the affair with their father, the Shemites actually join in this building.

So, the Hamites are going to build a city and a tower. The Shemites—you can think of it as Semites, you know—also then come along and help. Right away, if we’re being careful to notice the narrative leading up to this, we know this is not going to be good. We know the rest of the scriptures tell us about the Semites building a temple for God and Hamites, you know, in the person of craftsmen coming to help Solomon build a temple for God. So, right away there’s a, this is like an anti-temple building project. Instead of the Semites being taking the lead, the priestly nation, instead the priestly nation are serving the non-priestly nation.

And so, what we have here is not a good deal.

Now, another interesting thing to note here before we get to the idea of what their sin was is it says the whole earth had one language and one speech. God’s not repeating himself for emphasis here. He could have done that, but these are two different words. And what we’re to see in these two different words is not just a reference to our language. You could think of it as tongue and lip. And in the Bible, this word lip, translated as speech, really means more the confession, not the language we’re using to make it, but our confession of what reality is.

And so in our speech, we’re really doing two things. We’re using a language in this part of the world, English, but we’re making a confession, right? We’re choosing our confession. We’re making statements that reflect who we are and what we believe. So the text is telling us that there’s not only are these people united in language, they’re united in a common religious perspective as well. And that religious perspective is really secular. We could say it’s outside of God.

And that’s demonstrated by what happens next because what they try to do is they try to build a tower and a city. Another two things that’s important in the text. So we’ve got Semites and Hamites. We’ve got language and our confession. And we also have them building not just the Tower of Babel, which is what we think of, but it says specifically they’re going to build a city and a tower. And the tower is to reach to the heavens.

The tower in the Old Testament, the high place, whether it’s short or tall, the high place though is a place of mediation. It’s the place where heaven and earth meet. It reflects our spiritual values, our transcendent values, okay? They’re not trying to build a tower to reach God. They’re trying to reach spirituality apart from God. They’re doing it on their own. Okay?

And that spirituality will produce a city. So, you know, we know this that there’s the temple and then there’s Jerusalem, right? In Greek history, there’s the Acropolis where the gods are worshiped and downstream, actually down the hill, is the agora, the marketplace that develops from that. So, if we think of language and confession, the confession is what’s being emphasized here. It will drive everything else.

And so they’re going to build a tower, a high place, not in reference to God. And we know that because they want to build a name for themselves, make a name for themselves.

Now, before we get to that, think about how this is pretty diagnostic of what’s going on right now in our country and around the world. You know, we have a lot of discussion about the importance of cities, right? Everybody’s going to move to the city and that’s what these people do. They all want to congregate together and they have new tech that allows them to do that. Okay.

Now, instead of just using stones, which you know, you can only build so high with stones, it’ll fall apart and bad mortar, they’ve come up with a way of baking clay, making bricks, which means you can size them differently, whatever you want to do with them. And they have this great mortar they’ve developed from asphalt. And so the end result of this is they’ve got new tech that allows them to build a modern city and to build higher than any other city has been built. And this is a lot like what’s going on today, right?

So people have new tech. They want to make advantage of the new tech. They get together in cities. What’s the problem with them all going to build this city? And it says this is all of humanity, right? What’s the problem with that? What are we supposed to be doing as workers?

Well, the primary emphasis in the creation of man, both in the dominion mandate and in the great commission, is to go, not to gather. So, we gather every Lord’s day, but we’re gathered so we can be sent. Right? And mankind is supposed to fill the earth, not congregate in one particular plane in a massive city. So they’re showing that they’re actually rejecting what is their identity, which their identity is to take the image of God’s garden into all the world and transform the world to the glory of God. That’s their identity. Okay?

But they want a different identity. And in the world in which we live today, primarily, not across the board, but primarily, what we see is the same basic impulses. We see new tech. We see the strive to build bigger and better cities and we see high towers of spirituality that don’t have reference to God. Particularly in cities, okay? The last thing you want to do in a city is build a high place with reference to God. And by say build, we’re talking about a physical structure, but it implies what your life is all about, what you’re centered on.

When you go to work tomorrow, primarily where most people work is in that secular culture with high places of humanism, not theism. Okay? There’s a spirituality. There’s always a lip. There’s always a confession. And what our jobs are today is we’re found ourselves in the same sort of place.

But the central thing I want to point out here is that the Bible identifies their sin. It alludes, I think, to this failure to go and transform the world. It alludes to a false spiritual tower and a city, a culture based upon that. But then the text tells us that what they’re trying to do is to make a name for themselves. Let’s make a name for ourselves. And this is driven by a fear lest we be scattered.

Okay. Man in his rebellion against God tries to deal with guilt in various ways. Guilt brings fear. And one way we try to get over the fear is to congregate with others in a group and do something to make a name for ourselves to make us better than other people. Okay.

Now, the idea of a name, you know, to us, we just kind of toss it off. Although when we watch Christian baptisms, at least in this church, you hear people talk about the Christian name of the child. So, we sort of recognize this historical context in which we’re found where people would have a new name given to them at baptism. Why a new name? Because it’s a new identity. Our name is our identity. It’s who we are in the totality of our being.

And you don’t choose your name. Well, these days you do. Everybody can choose your sexual identity, your name, whatever it is. Anything goes as Cole Porter predicted, and led to, I might add. But in any event, you know, your name throughout history has been given to you. But these people want to make a name for themselves.

Now, I know they’re not talking about what people call them, but you see the same thing, right? I don’t know how it came to be called the John Ross Building where one of my sons lives in downtown Portland, but it’s a name for that guy, whoever he was, whatever he did. And that isn’t necessarily a bad thing to put people’s names on stuff. But here, what they’re trying to do is be like God.

What do you mean, Dennis?

What I mean is they’re trying to make a name for themselves rather than have God make a name for them. Do you see the difference? When we want to make a name and an identity for ourselves, rather than have God make us, assign our identity and provide us a name—perhaps a name that will last through generations that people will remember us and not get angry but rather be happy about it—when we do that and want God to do that, that’s okay. But the Bible says what they really were getting wrong here was that in their pride they wanted to make a name for themselves. Okay.

Let me give you a couple of other verses to reflect this.

God makes a great name for some people. In Genesis 12:2, God tells Abraham, “I’ll make you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great and you shall be a blessing.” So people that are a blessing are people that don’t try to make a name for themselves, but rather whom God makes their name and identity significant in the history of the world. So it’s not wrong to have significance. What’s wrong in the Tower of Babel is trying to create that significance without reference to God.

Not asking God to remember our work as Nehemiah did for instance, but rather saying we are going to do stuff and we’re going to make a name for ourselves.

God says the same thing to David as he said to Abraham in 2 Samuel 7:9. “I have been with you wherever you have gone and I’ve cut off all your enemies from before you. This is God speaking to David. And I have made you a great name like the name of the great men who are on the earth.” So God does give great names to certain people and he gives all of us in Jesus the name of Christian which is a great name of course. But it’s not wrong, you know, to desire that God would bless us and make our name and what we do in our work and in our lives and in our participation in community.

It’s not wrong to want to see that established. But what’s wrong is the establishment of themselves because they’re being like God.

Let me read what God does in Isaiah 63:12. “You led them forth by the hand of Moses with his glorious arm, dividing the water before them to make, and speaking of Yahweh. Now, it says to make for himself an everlasting name.” God actually does make a name for himself. That’s what we read about here that he did in the Exodus. He made a name for himself in Isaiah 63:12.

Again in Jeremiah 32:20, “You have set signs and wonders in the land of Egypt to this day and in Israel and among other men. And you have made yourself a name as it is this day.” Well, see, God makes himself a name, but then we want not to, you know, see a name or an identity apart from God. We want God to establish us.

Nehemiah 9, same thing. Verse 10, “You showed signs and wonders against Pharaoh. All these refer by the way to God’s name being the deliverer, right? Bringing of justice, bringing of delivery from oppression. Anyway, you showed signs and wonders against Pharaoh, against all his servants, and against all the people of the land. For you knew that they acted proudly against them. So, you made a name for yourself as it is this day.”

So, you see, God makes a name for himself. We’re God’s creatures, and we’re to wish that he make our name, give us our identity as it relates to him, not in autonomy from him. Okay?

So, what they were doing wrong at the Tower of Babel was autonomously seeking to get their name and their identity from their work, even from their culture building work in the construction of a tower and a city. These men were radically rebellious against God. And it’s a reminder to us of what we can start being tempted to do, will be tempted to do in the modern world is to make a name for ourselves through our vocation.

One of the best things God has given to us is our work. And we can now see ourselves in terms of that work and that work only and see our identity all wrapped up in what we do at the job, at the place we go to from 9 to 5 or 8 to 5 whatever it is.

So when we seek to in our work to make a name for ourselves apart from reference to God, then we fall into this work becoming selfish. It’s total self-centeredness on our part. Now, usually what it means is we want to be better than the next guy, right? We want a name better than the next man’s name. We want to be more successful at work than the other guy.

C.S. Lewis talks about this in his book, Mere Christianity. He says, “Now, what I want you to get clear is that pride is essentially competitive. It’s competitive by its very nature. Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next guy. We say people are proud of being rich or clever or good-looking. But they are not. Lewis says they are proud of being richer or cleverer or better looking than others. It’s that’s what’s reflected in our work.”

When work becomes selfish and we try to attain our own identity, see our identity totally wrapped up in our work rather than our relationship to God of which work is a significant part.

So when we do that we enter into what these guys entered into. And I think that the evidences in the country around us, probably even in the world around us but certainly in our country, we should be able to read backward from the judgments and see our connection to this sin of the Tower of Babel.

What does God do to judge them? Right? He evaluates the situation and he confuses their tongues. Now, I think that probably in the context of the story has reference both to their confessions, their sense of spirituality as well as their language. But he breaks them up. Now, is that a bad thing? Well, they found it a lot more difficult to do work and to come up with great tech from now on. A little different to do that. But what’s he doing? He’s driving them back to their true identity.

They’re supposed to be scattered. They’re supposed to, you know, go around the world and take culture where they go. They’re not supposed to convocate in one place. He’s restoring them to their true sense of identity. Even while he’s judging them, this is an Advent, right? So, they’re going about their affairs. Who knows how long it took? Maybe years. I don’t know. And then the Advent of God isn’t the sort of Advent we always hope for, right? We want an Advent that brings presents or good things. But God’s Advent does bring good things, but those good things can look very, very bad to us. And to these people, it did, right? They knew the judgment had come upon them.

And so, it restores them. It humbles them first of all, right? God hates pride because it gets in the way of his plan for who we are. God doesn’t hate it because we’re competing with him. He has no, he doesn’t have concern about, you know, his sense of well-being like we do. It’s not like that. God hates our pride because it gets in the way of what he’s created us to be.

So, he humbles these people. He judges them. And that judgment actually, you can see it right in the text. It’s restorative because it’s sending them out again now around the world.

Now, I said that this is like what’s going on with us. You know, I remember hearing a song by Bob Dylan, I don’t know, 10, 15 years ago, “Everything is Broken.” And it resonated then. And I mean, oh boy, does it resonate now.

Listen to the song “Everything is Broken.”

The New Yorker magazine this week, the cover is going to have the Arch of St. Louis. Now, the Arch of St. Louis, I don’t know, probably some of you have seen it. It’s the tallest monument in the United States. I think it’s the tallest stainless steel monument in the world. It’s over 600 feet. You can, I guess, ride up to the top. There’s an observation deck up there. But it’s this big arch.

And the idea was it was connected to westward expansion is what it was showing. Archway to the west. Anyway, this week on The New Yorker magazine, they’re going to have a graphic, you know, a drawing or whatever it is, graphic representation of the arch in St. Louis, but it’s broken in the middle. It doesn’t connect anymore. One side is white, the other side is black. And so the visual representation is that from reading it from our perspective, judgment’s here. Advent’s happening. God is dividing people. Polarization, politically, economic, whatever it is, everybody’s fighting. Everything’s broken.

Why is it bad? Well, yeah. It’s bad. It’s certainly uncomfortable as we saw in our television sets last week. But ultimately, God is restoring our purpose, you know, to a nation that gets its identity from its money or from its politics or from its, you know, particular ethnic group or whatever it is, to a nation that has become Babylike and it’s seeking to make itself a name in different directions and to exalt itself against others.

God is bringing restorative judgment and the judgment is what he brought here. It’s disunity in Genesis 11. It’s division. It’s polarization we call it today, right?

So, as we see that going on, and who cannot see that going on and increasing every time we think things will get a little better, they don’t. They get worse. They’re going to continue to get worse until the nation becomes humble. Until people humble themselves individually and nationally.

This is a text I’m going to turn to a text in a minute about an individual. This is a text about a group of people. And as a group of people in America, we’ve turned away from Jesus. And in doing that, we’ve turned away from the only source of true glory and the only source of true community. And as a result, just like in Genesis 11, the Advent of God that we see happening is division, disunity, and struggle.

Now, I wanted to read something here. I hope you don’t mind me doing this. At Thanksgiving, like a lot of families, we had not much, but a little spirited discussion about the events in Ferguson. I’m looking for my watch. Don’t know where it is. Got to check my cell phone. Okay. 11:46.

Some spirited discussion and one of my sons, Elijah, mentioned actually pulled it up on his smartphone and he read an editorial by a tight end of the New Orleans Saints on Ferguson and I wanted to read a little bit of that for you, maybe all of it.

So this is from a football player and he says this: “At some point while I was playing or preparing to play Monday Night Football, the news broke about the Ferguson decision. After trying to figure out how I felt, I decided to write down here. Write it all down. Here are my thoughts.” So, it’s a series of I’m this, I’m that.

“I’m angry because the stories of injustice that have been passed down for generations seem to be continuing before our very eyes. I’m frustrated because pop culture, music, and movies glorify these types of police-citizen altercations and promote an invincible attitude that continues to get young men killed in real life away from safety or safe movie sets and music studios.”

So, the pop culture teaches invincibility, but of course it isn’t that way when the bullet goes through you.

“I’m fearful, he said, because in the back of my mind I know that although I’m a law-abiding citizen, I could still be looked upon as a threat to those who don’t know me. So, I will continue to have to go the extra mile to earn the benefit of the doubt.”

You know, the shooting of the 12-year-old kid with a pellet gun or whatever it was is another example of what he’s talking about. If we don’t teach our children to be fearful in the state of affairs and the division and disunity that’s going on now relative to police, we’re making a mistake. They will put you down. That’s how the training works these days.

“I’m embarrassed because the looting, violence, violent protests rather, and lawbreaking only confirm and in the midst of, in the minds of many, validate the stereotypes and thus the inferior treatment. I’m sad because another young life was lost from his family. The racial divide has widened. A community is in shambles. Accusations, insensitivity, hurt, and hatred are boiling over. And we may never know the truth about what happened that day.

I’m sympathetic because I wasn’t there, so I don’t know exactly what happened. Maybe Darren Wilson acted within his rights and duty as an officer of the law and killed Michael Brown in self-defense like any of us would in the same circumstances. Now he has to fear the backlash against himself and his loved ones when he was only doing his job. What a horrible thing to endure. Or maybe he provoked Michael and ignited the series of events that led to him eventually murdering the young man to prove a point. Who knows?

I’m offended because of the insulting comments I’ve seen that are not only insensitive but dismissive to the painful experiences of others. I’m confused because I don’t know why it’s so hard to obey a policeman. You will not win. And I don’t know why some policemen abuse their power. Power is a responsibility, not a weapon to brandish and lord over the populace.

I’m introspective because sometimes I want to take our side without looking at the facts in situations like these. Sometimes I feel like it’s us against them. Sometimes I’m just as prejudiced as people I point fingers at, and that’s not right. How can I look at white skin and make assumptions, but not want assumptions made about me? That’s not right.

I’m hopeless because I’ve lived long enough to expect things like this to continue to happen. I’m not surprised. And at some point, my little children are going to inherit the weight of being a minority and all that it entails. At the same time, I’m hopeful, he says, because I know that while we still have race issues in America, we enjoy a much different normal than those of our parents and grandparents. I see it in my personal relationships with teammates, friends, and mentors. And it’s a beautiful thing.

I’m encouraged because ultimately the problem is not a skin problem. It is a sin problem. Sin is the reason we rebel against authority. Sin is the reason we abuse our authority. Sin is the reason we are racist, prejudiced, and lie to cover up for our own. Sin is the reason we riot, loot, and burn. But I’m encouraged because God has provided a solution for sin through his Son Jesus. And with it, a transformed heart and mind. One that’s capable of looking past the outward and seeing what’s truly important in every human being.

The cure for the Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, and Eric Garner tragedy is not education or exposure. It’s the gospel. So, finally, I’m encouraged because the gospel gives mankind hope.”

Nice, huh? Lots of stuff there. I’d encourage you to look it up and think it over. There probably some of those perspectives you resonate with and some you don’t. But the point is, there’s all kinds of things to consider in this. And ultimately, as the football player says, it’s not a skin problem. It’s a sin problem.

And the ultimate sin I think that we need to bring to this discussion is the sin of seeing our identity apart from our relationship first and foremost to God. Seeing our attempts to make a name for ourselves.

Alright. Now, let’s look at a case of individual self-interest when work becomes selfish. This is in Isaiah 22. This is happening during the time of Hezekiah. This is happening to a guy named Shebna who was Hezekiah’s kind of overseer of his house so to speak, the king’s house.

Isaiah 22:15-23: “Thus says the Lord God of hosts, ‘Go, proceed to the steward to Shebna who is over the house and say what have you here and whom have you here that you have hewn a sepulcher here as he who has himself a sepulcher on high who carves a tomb for himself in the rock.’”

Interesting that Shebna’s self-interest and his skimming money and stuff. The first issue that God brings to bear is a sepulcher for himself, a resting place. Why? Why would he do that? On high, a name for himself. After he’s dead, he still wants a name for himself. So, his working is geared towards self-interest again, toward making a name for himself. This case individually, this case for material gain.

God on through the prophet: “Indeed, the Lord will throw you away violently, oh mighty man, and will surely seize you. He will surely turn vehemently, or violently rather, and toss you like a ball into a large country. There you shall die, and there your glorious chariots shall be the shame on your master’s house.”

Another indication of, you know, he made himself glorious chariots. I’m going to—and so this is Advent, right? So God comes to a man who in his vocation has let his self-interest materially or financially gets away with it for a while, but God’s Advent here is a personal Advent. And when we pile up sin for a period of time, thinking we can get away with it, there’ll become an Advent of God. And that Advent will bring judgment upon us. That’s what he does to Shebna. I’m going to throw you away. I’m going to wad you up like a piece of garbage paper or something and throw you into another country. He says, judgment has come to your house.

“So I will drive you out of your office and from your position he will pull you down. Then it shall be in that day that I will call my servant Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah. I will clothe him with your robe and strengthen him with your belt. I will commit your responsibility into his hands. He shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah. The key of the house of David I will lay on his shoulder. So he shall open and no one shall shut. And he shall shut and no one shall open. I will fasten him as a peg in a secure place and he will become a glorious throne to his father’s house.”

Now what does God do in history to people that are engaged in self-interest, build up to themselves, in this case material wealth, trying to make a name for themselves, seeking their own identity, a name for themselves through their own labor and through skimming off money in this particular case from the king, God judges him.

But the Advent of judgment on Shebna is at the same time an Advent of promotion for a faithful man, Eliakim, right? Son of Hilkiah. He gets promoted. God replaces us in our vocations with people that will be faithful. When he comes to judge our selfishness, when our work becomes selfish, he judges us for what purpose? So that he can put faithful men who will see their rule as connected to the rule ultimately of the Lord Jesus Christ.

You heard the reference, right? The key of David will be given to him. You know, in the Bible, we read in Isaiah, right, that the government will be upon his shoulders. Well, this key, that’s where it was. It was on the shoulders of the guy who was kind of second in command overseeing the affairs of house, his capital as it were, his throne essentially. And he had a key that would let people in or not. He would give them access or not to the king and to different portions of the kingdom, right? And that key was on his shoulders.

Ultimately, he’s a picture of course, Eliakim of the Lord Jesus Christ. And this very verse is quoted, of course, in the book of Revelation when God says that Jesus is the one who has the key. And will give it to his people. So when we are in seeking our material gain from our vocation ultimately right taking the good thing the blessings of work making it an ultimate thing and making that material prosperity now the big deal we’re seeking our own name our own identity that way God will bring judgment because he wants people in our positions of authority and in our vocations that’ll reflect ultimately the reign of the Lord Jesus Christ.

We celebrate the coming of Christ, right? Clavis Davidis, right? One of the seven O Antiphons, the key of David. And that’s a reference to this text, the text in Revelation and the text in Isaiah with the government being on his shoulders. God calls us to repent of trying to feather our own nest is one way to put it here as Shebna did and warns us that his Advent will replace us with faithful stewards in our positions if we’ve been unfaithful.

“So unto us a child is born. Unto us a son is given. The government will be upon his shoulders.”

And so it is with us. We’re to reflect the Lord Jesus Christ in our vocations.

Third, and we can only touch briefly on this is the book of Esther. Hopefully you know the story. Now in Esther’s case, she’s hiding her identity. She hasn’t owned up to being a follower of Yahweh, a member of the Jewish faith. Okay. She’s hidden that identity. She’s become the queen perhaps through hiding the identity. But you know what we’re told in the middle of this story is there she is. She’s got a vocation as queen to the king. She’s got a calling by God. She’s been given this identity.

How will she use it? That’s the key to the book of Esther. Will she decloak? Will she admit who she is. Will she exercise her vocation referencing her ultimate identity, a relationship to the God of the Jews, to the Israelites, to Yahweh, the same God we are connected to, of course, through Jesus.

So, what do we do with our work? Sometimes in our work, you know, we’re kind of frightened. We need to survive for various reasons, and we don’t want to be overt about our testimony. We just want to get along. And particularly if you got a good job, a good gig, you’re like, you can be like Esther. Well, don’t mess it up. Somehow if something happens and you know, a question of your identity as a Christian gets brought up, you know, just kind of ignore that. Don’t do it. Don’t serve Christ overtly in your workplace.

The problem with that is that if you don’t serve Christ and your identity of who you are and vocation, you’re probably not serving Christ in your identity. Right now, I’m not calling you to be overt in the sense of being obnoxious. But I am saying that our work is given for the purposes of the kingdom of Christ. And that’s what we’re supposed to be doing. And too often again in our particular setting, just like the materialism of Shebna, the disunity and identity apart from God of Babel. So here in our workplaces, we’re liable to face persecution if people know we’re Christians. And so we’re tempted, you know, to sublimate our identity and become just another secular member of state.

In Esther’s case, what happens of course to Esther is God in his providence sends along Haman who has a plot to kill all the Jews. And Mordecai, Esther’s uncle, finds out about this plot. He says, “Look,” he goes to her and he says, “Look, you need to decloak. You need to reveal to other people your identity.”

Here’s what he says. We read in Esther 4:13: “And Mordecai told them to answer Esther, ‘Do not think in your heart that you will escape in the king’s palace anymore than all the other Jews.’ She’s told them, ‘Look, I’m afraid of doing anything about this because the king will kill me and I can’t go to the king because the way it works in Persian law is the king’s got to summon me.’”

Then I could talk to him, but I can’t initiate that. Okay? She tells Mordecai, “It’s just too bad.”

And Mordecai says to tell her this. He says, “You tell Esther, ‘Do not think in your heart that you will escape in the king’s palace any more than the other Jews. For if you remain completely silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place. But you and your father’s house will perish. Yet who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this.’”

It’s very interesting text. The question is not whether God’s people will survive. It’s never that. God is faithful to his church. The question is, will we survive? Esther, you know, look, deliverance will come from another place if you don’t do it. But it won’t come for you. You’ll be like, we could say today, Shebna. You’ll be thrown out and Eliakim—or someone else—will be the deliverer. You need to identify with your people. You need to go to your king.

Not ultimately for the sake of your people that’s there, but for your own sake, for our own proper sense of who we are in Christ. We need to decloak in our vocations. We need to understand that our core identity is not in secular work, but that secular work, what we’re doing is work for the kingdom of Christ. And if we’re not, we got to do something else because this life’s too short.

I’m 64. I don’t know how much longer it’ll go. But if you’re not using your life overtly for Christ in your workplace now, and like I said, don’t be obnoxious. I’m not saying that. But if you don’t get up in the morning and think you’re going to go and serve Jesus at your workplace, something’s wrong. And if you want to always cover up who you are to your fellow employees and to your boss for fear you might lose your job or whatever it is, that’s wrong. That’s wrong.

Work has become selfish to you then. And your survival has become more important to you than your accomplishing the work of Jesus Christ in your workplace. And you need to know that if Advent comes tomorrow to you, it’s not going to be good for you from God. You know, he’ll work out his purposes in the world, but you may not be part of that. You may perish in the way.

Esther wises up. She decloaks. She says, “Hey, you go pray. Have people fast and pray. All the Jews do this for three days.” And then in response to that, God just does some cool, wonderful, providential, circumstantial stuff. Read the rest of the story. And it’s just amazing what happens.

We trust God. We do the right thing. We do it with submission to him, with prayer and fasting at times when it’s a big deal, right? We do it. We do it carefully. We do it thoughtfully. We do it prayerfully. We do it humbly, but we do it. We identify with God in our workplace. And then, of course, the rest of the story is the emperor gives the Jews the right to defend themselves and they’re saved from annihilation.

You know, this story was forbidden by Hitler to be read because he was Haman and he didn’t want those Jews reading the story of Esther. And we should think about it in our day and age. You’ve got a job. You’ve got some credentials. You got some gifts. You got some financial resources because of your job. You got chits, right? You got things that have happened to you there. You’ve got some degree of influence and power. Maybe not a lot, but some.

And how do you know? Seems like what this text is telling us is that’s true because God has brought you to the kingdom for a time such as this. In other words, she didn’t attain to this position. She was brought to the kingdom. It’s a passive word here in the Hebrew. God did this. Whatever you’ve got in your workplace, it’s because God has brought you to that place.

And our response then isn’t works, trying to attain an identity with God, but it’s a response to the grace of God and to his love for providing us the kind of work that he knows is meaningful and gives us a sense of identity and purpose and our great calling to serve Jesus. We’ve been brought to—I don’t know why I’m here, but here I am. You don’t know why you’re where you are. There you are. God has brought you to your particular vocation so that you can serve Jesus fully and self-consciously in that particular calling and not on the contrary to do it for selfish purposes.

Ultimately, as Keller points out in his book, Esther is a pointer to something else, right? All these things are pointers to something else. Eliakim is a pointer to the true Clavis David, key of David, right? And Esther is a pointer.

What does she do? The two things she does: she is called to identify with her people and then she’s called to mediate for those people with the king so that they will be, they can flourish, they can have life, they won’t be killed and all their goods plundered by Haman and the wicked Persians that followed him.

Identification and mediation. That’s what we celebrate because that’s what Jesus did. When we think about Advent, we think about the first Christmas. That’s what it was, right? Jesus took on, you know, flesh and blood. He became incarnate. He identified with us totally. You know, Esther says, “If I perish, I perish. I got to do the right thing.” That should be our attitude. Jesus’s attitude was one step beyond that. I’m going to identify and then to affect mediation and salvation for my people, I will perish. That’s what Jesus knew. He had to perish.

And because of that, we have this tremendous gift of vocation that we can exercise not selfishly but for the purposes of serving the king who loves us so much that he identified with us in our rebellion and our fallen nature and then brought mediation through him perishing, his death for us on the cross.

Now that’s the ultimate great movie. That’s the ultimate great love song. That’s the ultimate source of all reality is that gracious love of the triune God bringing us to the father, son and spirit through identification and mediation resulting in our salvation.

May the Lord God this Advent season warn us with the tales of the Advents of judgment. But more than that, may he draw us by a recognition and a meditation on his Advent of identification and mediation resulting in our salvation.

Let’s pray.

Father God, we pray that we would bless you, Lord God. Help us to recognize your blessing in our work, in our vocations, our various callings, and bless us this week that we not become selfish, that we turn away from selfishness, fearing your judgments, and loving your grace. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. Amen.