The City That Pride Built Series

A young pastor was asked by a funeral director to conduct a graveside service for a homeless man who had died while traveling through the area. He had no family or friends, and the funeral was to be held way out in the middle of nowhere in a brand-new cemetery. In fact, the homeless man would be the first to be laid to rest at that particular cemetery.

The pastor was not familiar with the area, so he got lost on the way to the cemetery. Being the typical man, he did not stop to ask for directions. He finally arrived an hour late. He saw the crew and the backhoe, but the hearse was no where in sight. The workmen were eating lunch.

The pastor apologized to the workers for his tardiness. They looked puzzled, but the pastor stepped to the side of the open grave anyway and found the vault lid already in place. He assured the workers that he would not hold them long, but that this was the proper thing to do.

As the workers gathered around, still eating their lunch, the pastor poured out his heart and soul. As he preached, the workers began to say “Amen!” “Praise the Lord!” and “Glory! (They must have been Baptists). So he preached, and he preached some more, like he’d never preached before. He began in Genesis and went all the way to Revelation. He preached for two hours and 45 minutes. Finally, he closed in prayer and was finished.

As he walked to his car, he felt he had done his duty and left with a renewed sense of purpose and dedication, feeling pretty good about himself. Then, as he opened the door of his car and took off his coat, he overheard one of the workers saying to another, “I've been putting in septic tanks for 20 years, and I ain't never seen anything like this before” (William M. Baudhuin, P.E., President, Baudhuin Incorporated, The Funeral, 8-16-2005; www.PreachingToday.com).

The preacher had made a complete fool of himself. But you don’t need to be a preacher to do that kind of stuff (although it helps). Anybody can make a fool of themselves. Anybody can come into a situation feeling high and mighty and leave feeling awfully low.

The question is: How do you keep from doing it? How do you keep from humiliating yourself? How do you keep from doing stupid stuff? Well, if you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to Genesis 11, Genesis 11, where the builders of Babylon demonstrate what NOT to do.

Genesis 11:1-2 Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there (ESV).

Shinar later came to be known as Babylon, which is now in current day Iraq.

Genesis 11:3-4 And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth” (ESV).

These people are very proud and full of themselves. They are proud of their own ingenuity. They are proud of their own intelligence and advanced technology.

They wouldn’t dare do it the old, outdated, inferior way. They wouldn’t dare just let the bricks dry in the sun, and they wouldn’t dare use mud for mortar. Oh no! They are going to thoroughly BAKE the bricks to make them harder, and they are going to use TAR for mortar to make them stick together for ever. Oh wow! We’re going to use the latest technology. Aren’t we just the greatest? “We’re invincible, because we’ve used the latest technology.”

Old sailors like to tell the story of the young sailor learning to become a navigator. Aboard ship at sea, the captain said to him, “Please tell us where we are.”

So the sailor took a sextant and made the complicated set of calculations. After a while, he wrote down the coordinates of longitude and latitude and handed it to the captain.

The captain studied it for a while, checked his charts, and said to the young navigator, “Are you absolutely convinced that these are the right coordinates?”

“Yes, sir, I'm absolutely convinced.”

“You know exactly where we are?”

“Yes, sir.”

“There could be no conceivable mistake in your calculations?”

“Absolutely not, sir. I've done my best.”

Then the captain said, “Well, then I would suggest you put on a jacket.”

“Why, sir?”

“Because according to your calculations, we are planted squarely at the top of Mount Washington” (Gordon MacDonald, “When Religion Becomes Serious Business,” Preaching Today, Tape No.142; www.PreachingToday.com).