Immanuel Sermon Audio
Haggai (37:66)
All right, find Haggai in your Bible. Did everybody get an outline? Anybody need an outline? Need one, two, three, four. There may be a few in the back. There's a couple at the front. If you need one, raise your hand. If we don't have enough, you guys can wrestle for the ones that are left. [ Inaudible Remark ] Find Haggai in your Bible. If you don't know where it's at, look in the table of contents. If you've been here the last nine weeks, you know where the minor prophets are at, so you can probably get close. And we're getting close to the end of the minor prophets. We have three more to go. In high school, I took a New Testament class, my last year of high school as an elective, and the professor made us memorize, I think I've told you this, he made us memorize all the books of the Bible in order, and he would test us by calling out a book in the Bible. And what you had to write down on your piece of paper was the book before it and the book after it. So he would say Psalms, and you would write Joe Ben Proverbs. And some of those are kind of easy, and the minor prophets are really hard, because he would move pretty quick. And at one point I could do that pretty well. I don't know that I could do it anymore. But tonight we're looking at Haggai. I'm going to try to get you thinking about the importance of having your priorities in line before we jump into the book of Haggai. And I'll tell you a personal story, and then I'll tell you a couple other funny stories I found this week. When I was in high school, not only did I take New Testament my last year of high school, but I also worked at a grocery store. And that's the grocery store, right there on the corner. It looked slightly better than that when I worked there in high school. That is off of Google Earth today. The last time the Google card drove by, they took that picture. This is on West 10th Street, downtown sort of almost downtown Amarillo. And at one point in time, that little corner shop was not a thrift store. It was Russell's Central Food. And through a long story, me and a couple of my buddies got a job working at Russell's. And we ran the cash register, we stocked the shelves, we cleaned the stuff, we took the trash out, we did everything. And we're working at Russell's. And Russell's was an interesting place to work, because when you're looking at this, it says Southwest 10th. To the right across the street to the right is a neighborhood called Bivens. It's one of the first neighborhoods built in Amarillo. And it has some of the biggest homes in all of Amarillo. Old money Amarillo. And I remember one guy that used to come to the store, he lived over in Bivens, he would come in and he would write a check. And the top left of his check, all it said was Max. M-A-X, no last name, no address, no phone number. I don't know how you get away with that, but I think you have to have a lot of money to have that on your check. And so Max would come in and he would buy his groceries there at Russell's. But then over on the left side of the street is the old San Jacinto neighborhood in Amarillo. And it is as rough as any neighborhood in Amarillo. Extremely extremely poor and just a very, very rough neighborhood. And so you had this interesting mix of people that would come in and shop at Russell's. And the owner and the two managers of the store were really afraid because of our location. They were really afraid that we might get the reputation as a place that was easy to rob, okay? Businesses up and down this street, there's a bar right across that parking lot to the left. There's a liquor store down there in that sort of that Greenstein. They were just afraid, we don't want to be the people on Southwest 10th Street that it's easy to rob. And let them go rob the liquor store or let them rob whoever. We don't want to be that place. And so they said to us during our training, if you're working the cash register and somebody comes in to stick you up, don't give them the cash drawer. Excuse me? Yeah, don't give it to them. And I'm like, if they have a gun pointed at my face, you're telling me do not give them the cash drawer. Yeah, because once we do it one time, they'll know we're an easy knock off. And I said, you know, I don't want you to think I don't value this job or appreciate the opportunity to work for you, Mr. Russell. But if somebody comes in here and sticks a gun in my face, I'm running out the back door as fast as I can and they can have the cigarettes and the cash register and all the lottery tickets and all of it. They can take all of it because this is not that important to me, right? I had priorities. My life was more important than Russell's central food, right? Seems pretty obvious. Here's some people who needed to get their priorities in line. This is a guy named Marcin. Marcin, Marcin Molchowski. He lived in New York City a couple of years back. 7 AM one morning, he's walking across the Williamsburg Bridge. That means nothing to me. Maybe it means something to you if you've been to New York. Walking across the Williamsburg Bridge and he gets mugged. Seven in the morning. Out for a walk, he gets mugged. Mugger pulls a gun on him, points it in his face. He says, "Give me everything you've got." He says, "All I have is my cell phone." And he says, "Well, give it to me." And this guy says, "No." And he says, "I have a gun. I'm going to shoot you if you don't give me your phone." And that's the phone, by the way. We're not talking about the brand new iPhone 6. We're not talking about the Samsung Galaxy, whatever. None of that. It's the Nokia 3390 model. Some of you had that phone. I don't think you loved it that much. And the mugger says, "I'm going to shoot you." And he says, "Tough. I'm not giving it to you." And he says, "You got three seconds." And this dude turns and to run away. And the mugger shoots him in the leg. And he falls down and he says, "Give me your phone." And he gets up, clenches his phone, and hobbles across the bridge. And at that point, the only person with their priorities in line was the mugger who said, "I don't want to murder a man over a Nokia 3390." And he gave up and Marcin got away and they caught the mugger and he got arrested for shooting him in the leg. But I'm just telling you, if that happens to you, I don't care what kind of phone you have, just give it to him. Just hand it over. Put this next slide up. Any of you guys ever played the game gun bound? I bet you have not. You've heard of it? You really have? You haven't heard of it. It's apparently very popular in Brazil. And it's this little goofy video game you played online. And apparently, it's very competitive in Brazil. And it's a very prestigious thing among some people. You know the kind of people I'm talking about. Very prestigious thing to have your name on the worldwide leaderboard. High points in this game gun bound. And so there's a guy, his screen name, I won't even tell you his real name for his safety. His screen name was Do-Do Magic, D-U-D-U. Get your mind out of the gutter, D-U-D-U Magic. And he was the number one guy. He's like the world champ at gun bound. And in Brazil, there was also a drug lord who was sitting around one day with his buddies, probably on drugs, thinking about how they could make money. And somebody came up with this scheme. What if we hacked into the computers and we found out who was at the top of the leaderboard? And then we kidnapped him and demanded that he give us his password. And then we could take over his account and we could sell it to people because it's that prestigious to be at the top of the leaderboard. Sell him his account because he's already got the high score. I know you think this sounds crazy, but they did it. They found the guy, they kidnapped him. They holed up in a coffee shop in downtown Brazil, five guys with guns to D-U-D-U Magic's forehead, and said, give us your password to log on. And what did he say? Not gonna do it. And he lived to tell about it. I don't know what happened. I don't know how he got away, but they caught the kidnappers. He did not give up his password and he is still the world reigning champ of gun bound. And again, my advice to you is, if that happens, you need to have your priorities in line and forget about gun bound and give the password over and live to see another day. Here's one more in the United States. This is a lady named Marine Murphy. You ever heard about this lady? Lived up in the Northeast. And she was a teacher in New Jersey. She's teaching school one day. And she gets phone call on her cell phone. Your house is on fire. So you probably need to leave and come. So she leaves and she comes. And on the way home, she's calling all the people who live with her in the house to make sure they're okay. Her husband's okay. I think they said her mom lived with her, kids are okay. Nobody's in the house, everybody's fine. But she gets to the house. Firefighters are putting out this blaze that the whole place is just about to burn to the ground. But she runs straight into the house because she wanted to get her fillies, Philadelphia fillies, season tickets. They were in the house and she wanted to get them. She had money in the house. It all burned. She had insurance policies in the house. Fire insurance policy, it burned. But she ran into this burning house to get her fillies tickets and she made it out alive. Apparently she was injured in the process. And when the fillies heard about this, somebody called her up and said, "You know, we can print new tickets. "We have your name on file. "We could just print you new tickets. "You didn't have to do it." And they invited her to some special ceremony and she got to meet the filly fanatic and she got this little framed picture and they were very, very nice to her. But they said to her, "Miss Marie, "the next time your house catches on fire "and your tickets are inside, just let them burn." Don't worry about it. Have your priorities in line. Save your neck, lose the tickets, and we'll just print you some new ones, okay? Your priorities need to be in line and we see that in the book of Haggai and we're gonna talk about that tonight. So, let's jump in. Haggai is a minor prophet. He is number nine in the list of 12. So we've only got three more to go. Haggai Zechariah and Malachi. You wanna be here next week for Zechariah, by the way, 'cause he's got some great stuff to talk about in Zechariah. But tonight we're in Haggai. It's a good book, it's a short book. In the history of Israel, here's where Haggai falls. He is during the return. So we are way at the end of the Old Testament story, right? We've talked about this every week. Some of you guys are sick of hearing me talk about this, but some of you hadn't been here for all of it, so I'm gonna say it one more time. Israel begins, you could say technically with Abraham and Moses and the people, you could do all that, but I'm talking about Israel as a nation, right? It begins when they come in and they get land in the conquest and they fight and Joshua leads them, they go to Jericho. Then there's the period of the Judges, which is not a good period in Israel's history. Everything goes wrong. Then there's the monarchy under Saul, then David, then Solomon, then the kingdom splits. There's division, the northern kingdom of Israel and the north, capital is in Samaria, the southern kingdom of Judah in the south, the capital is Jerusalem, and then after the division, there's rebellion. Israel is pretty much wicked the entire time in the north. There's very few bright good spots, good things going on in Israel, it's just a dark place. Judah is sort of up and down like a rollercoaster, but there's rebellion in both of these kingdoms, and then God sends them both into exile. First the northern kingdom is the nation of Assyria comes and conquers them and takes them out, and then Nebuchadnezzar and Babylon come and conquer Jerusalem, and then God brings his people back, and that's the point of the story that we're at right now. So here's some of the minor prophets and how they come in order. First four guys are Hosea Amos, Micah Jonah, they all lived and ministered before the exile of even the northern kingdom. Then you've got Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, after northern kingdom goes into exile, before the southern kingdom goes into exile. And then the next group is Joel and Obadiah after Jerusalem falls, and then the last three that we're now talking about Hagai, Zechariah and Malachi, all ministered during the return. So here's the timeline, just so you can see it in visual form. Down at the bottom you see that there are returns from exile, multiple returns. We talked about these returns way back in our study of the Old Testament when we looked at Ezra and Nehemiah, and we talked about these waves of exiles that came back. The first group came back, you can see before 500 BC and then two more groups after that. And so Hagai comes right in this very, very end period. It's a short book, minor prophets are short, and Hagai is the second shortest book in the Old Testament. Only book shorter is Obadiah. So maybe that'll win you a trivia question sometime. Here's how the exiles came back, just so you can sort of get this in your brain. The first guy to come back, we're gonna talk about him when we wrap up tonight, was a man named Zerubbabel, or Zerubbabel, however you wanna say it, and he was sent back in 538 BC in his mission, this is gonna be important in Hagai, the first guy coming back, bringing exiles with him, and his mission, the one thing that he was supposed to do was to lead the people in rebuilding the temple, right? When Nebuchadnezzar hauled them into exile, he flattened the temple, not one stone left on top of another, totally desecrated the site. And when God sends Zerubbabel back, he says to him, you are going back to build the temple, and God provided for his people, that was a big job, and they were returning exiles. You wanna know what exiles have, think about the people leaving Syria, they have nothing. How are they gonna build a temple? Will God provide it? And God said to him, look, I'm gonna cause these pagan kings, Cyrus, and all these other guys to fund what's going on. They're gonna pay for it, your job is to go back and build it. The next group came back, many years later, Ezra came back, and his job was to teach the law. That makes sense, they built a temple, now they need to know what to do with that temple, right? It's been 70 years in exile. A lot of people have died, and are not around anymore. And there's a lot of people in Israel who have never experienced life with a temple. All they know is exile. And so Ezra is sent back, and Ezra says, look, I need to teach you what the law says. What does it say in the team commandments? What does it say about sacrifices? What does it say about the feasts? What does it say about the Passover? All these things, Ezra is teaching the people. And then lastly, the third wave is Nehemiah, he comes back with a group of people, and his job is to rebuild the wall. One cool thing about Haggai is we know exactly where he falls in this story. He falls in the year 520 BC, and he tells us that. He doesn't say the words 520 BC. You understand, that's not how they dated things. But from the reference he gives us at the beginning of the book, we know the exact time that he began preaching. And so if you're doing the math, we're in BC, the dates get smaller as you get closer to us that go backwards. So this is about 18 years after God sent the people back to build the temple, was the rubber belt. Ezra hasn't come along yet. That's another 20 years away. But it's been 18 years to rebuild this temple that God has sent him back. And when Haggai starts preaching, the job isn't done. Been almost two decades, and they haven't done the one thing that God sent them back to do. As we'll see, they've done a lot of other stuff. They've been very busy. It's not like they've just been sitting around playing Xbox. They just didn't do the one thing that God sent him to do. And here's a big lesson from Haggai. Haggai reminds us that delayed obedience is disobedience. My guess is if you went around in Haggai's day, 18 years after they should've had this thing built, you went around and you said, what's the deal with the temple? Why hadn't it built? My guess is, just from what I know about people, and I bet you'll agree, most of these folks who came back would not say, temple, we don't care about the temple. Who gives a flip about the temple? We don't need a temple. They probably would've just said, well, we've been busy. I mean, we're exiles. The last time we were here, Nebuchadnezzar was here and he'd flattened the city and he'd destroyed our homes and he busted the wall. Have you seen the wall? The wall looks pitiful and the wells are all filled up or stopped up and we've just had a lot to do in the last 18 years. And we've been busy with this project and we've been busy with that. We're gonna get to it, but it had been 18 years. It had plenty of time and you see here that delayed obedience is disobedience. We won't talk about this too much, but it's easy when you see this lesson in Haggai to say, man, 18 years to build one building. You guys couldn't pull it together? Two decades, you couldn't get a building built, one thing, and we know that when they finished it, it wasn't even all that impressive compared to the other one. So it's not like they were just delaying for quality. They just didn't get the job done. It's easy to look at them and thumb our nose. Maybe Haggai is up in heaven looking at us saying, you've had 2,000 years to make disciples of all nations and you haven't done it yet. Two millennia? We had two decades and yes, we didn't get the job done. You have had two millennia to tell all of the people on the earth about Jesus and you don't have it done yet? 2,000 years? I can tell you that I went on one mission trip, we went to Tanzania and the missionary took us out to the border between Kenya and Tanzania on a back road and we're out, we drove for an hour and a half of nothing. Not one hut, not one animal, not one tree, nothing. Just driving out and we thought, this guy's gonna take us out and leave us for dead or something. And he takes us out and we get to the border between these two countries and there's a little village right there at the border and it is almost comical because there's nothing out there, but in this little village they have a gate at the border to get through and they got guys with machine guns standing there at the gate and they're manning this little crossing right here. And we go out and he says, this is where we're gonna eat. And it just, it doesn't look like anything out there. It's just like some huts. It doesn't look like very many people are anything like, okay, we're gonna eat. So we go out there, we get out, we're in the middle of nowhere, on the border of Kenya and Tanzania, we go sort of weaving through these huts and this little group of huts. We go to this back hut and somebody back there has a generator and a restaurant and that generator is powering two things. One, a cooler full of ice cold Coca-Cola. I had an ice cold Coke out of the bottle, out of the freezer, coldest Coke I've ever had, out in the middle of nowhere. And the second thing that it was powering, you're gonna like this, I guess maybe two other things, was a TV and a satellite dish. And we sat in that restaurant and drank a Coke and guess what we watched on TV? MTV, rap videos on MTV, Snoop Dogg rap videos on MTV. And we sat there and the missionary made his point, right? It was pretty clear what he's trying to show us. Coke has made it to the ends of the earth. To make a buck, MTV has found a way to make it to the ends of the earth. To make a buck. We hadn't done it. 2,000 years, hadn't got there yet. Give us a little more time, maybe we can do it. Who was Haggai? Couple of things just about Haggai. His name means the pilgrim. And so if you know anything about Islam, you know that one of the pillars of Islam is that you have to go on the Hajj. At some point in your life, you have to travel to Mecca. And recently, that's been going on. These guys have been making this trip and you hear about the guys that got trampled, like hundreds of people trampled, opening these gates and that's what they're doing. And Arabic is a very similar language to Hebrew. They have the same roots. And so Hajj, H-A-J-J comes from the same root word in this language group as H-A-G-G. So his name means the pilgrim. And the idea is not that he's gone on this Islamic pilgrimage, but he's the pilgrim back to Jerusalem. He's been in exile. And now, ironically in this weird twist, he's a pilgrim coming home. So that's what his name means. He is described as being sent by God and a messenger of God, you can look that up. He worked with Zechariah, who we'll talk about next week, but these two guys lived and preached about the same time. We already talked about 520 BC. You can get that from chapter one, verse one. And some people think that he was an old man when he came back and that he had lived all the way through the exile, 70 years of exile, and that before the exile, he had actually seen Solomon's temple before Babylon and Nebuchadnezzar tore it down. And when you look at Haggai two, three, he says, who is left among you who saw this house in its former glory? How do you see it now? Is it not as nothing in your eyes? In other words, he's saying, some of you guys remember how great this building used to be and you look at it now and it looks pretty pitiful. This is after they finally got the job done at his prodding. But some people think he was an old man who came back and that would be an interesting lesson if it was true because he would be really old and it would be a great example of God not letting people retire from serving him in the Bible. Moses didn't get to do that. Abraham didn't get to do that. Possibly Haggai didn't get to do that. Served God even into old age. Here's the outline of the book. It's a short book and it's a really simple breakdown. The first few verses are a call to action. And again, we've talked about the people have not built the temple and he begins by calling them to build it. So there's a call to action. There's a word of encouragement. There's a promise of blessing. And then he talks about David's kingdom being restored. So that's the outline of the book. Here are the lessons. It's pretty simple. Three lessons. First lesson is that we need to evaluate our priorities to make sure that they're in order. And I'm certainly not just talking about if you work at Russell Central Food or you're gonna hand the register over or you're gonna give your Nokia over or you're gonna run in for the Phillies tickets. Those are silly examples to get you thinking in the right direction. But Haggai reminds us we need to make sure our priorities are in order. And so we're gonna read some of this book. Look at Haggai one, one. Says in the second year of Darius the king in the sixth month, on the first day of the month, the word of the Lord came by the hand of Haggai the prophet to Zerubbabel. Told you we were gonna come back to Zerubbabel. Zerubbabel the son of Shialteo, governor of Judah and to Joshua the son of Jehoshodak the high priest. We'll talk about Joshua next week. But right now you remember Haggai giving this message to Zerubbabel and the guys of Zerubbabel that he's talking to is not only the governor but he's the man sent back to lead in the building of the temple. Thus says the Lord of hosts. These people say the time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the Lord. So notice they don't say we're not gonna build it. They just say we're not gonna do it right now. We're just busy right now. Then the word of the Lord came by the hand of Haggai the prophet. Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses while this house lies in ruins? Now therefore thus says the Lord of hosts, consider your ways. You have sewn much and harvested little. You eat but you never have enough. You drink but you never have your fill. You clothe yourselves but no one's warm. And he who earns wages does so to put them into a bag with holes. He's saying you're living in a paneled house. You've been sowing all the crops. You've been trying to make the wine. You've been trying to get clothes for your, you've been busy. How has that worked out for you? You're not full. You're still thirsty. You're cold. And the money you save up, it's like you're putting it in a bag with a hole in the bottom. Thus says the Lord of hosts, verse seven. Consider your ways. Think about your priorities. Go up to the hills and bring wood and build the house. Not your house, the house that I may take pleasure in it and that I may be glorified says the Lord. You look for much and behold, it came to little and when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why? Declares the Lord of hosts. Because of my house that lies in ruins while each of you busys himself with his own house. Therefore the heavens above you have withheld the dew and the earth has withheld its produce. And I have called for a drought on the land and the hills on the grain, the new wine, the oil, and on what the ground brings forth on man and beast and all their labors. So basically God says look, you've been real busy building your own house, but you haven't built mine. And you need to understand this is not just God sort of being sort of a child selfish like a child. This is not God just throwing a temper tantrum. This is God saying, look, think about the history of things. When you didn't put me first and you had all these other things in your life that were so important to you, idols. I sent a nation to conquer you, to flatten this temple and to send you into exile. And when this house of mine was flattened, it was a sign for you and for all the other nations that I had abandoned you. And I abandoned you because you abandoned me. That's what he'd been saying through his prophets. The Lord is gonna punish you. The Lord is gonna turn his face away from you. The Lord's gonna bring judgment on you. And I did that and the house was flattened. But just like I promised, I brought you back. And this house is the picture for you and for all the nations that I live with you, that I'm here with you, that I'm still your God. And you're busy with lots of different things, but you really don't seem all that concerned that I'm here with you and that I dwell with you. And maybe even in there, he's thinking, or God's thinking, he wants the people to think, Haggai wants the people to think. Man, when Solomon built this temple the first time, you remember what happened when Solomon built the temple and they dedicated it? The presence of the Lord fell down and everybody saw it and they fell on their face and they worshiped and they were blown away and it was this amazing corporate worship experience. And maybe Haggai's thinking, wouldn't you like to see something like that again? Wouldn't that be at the top of your priority list that maybe God would do the exact same thing when he's brought you back and you rebuilt the house just like he's commanded you to? And instead you say, well, I'm busy with the farm. Well, I'm busy with my house. Well, I'm busy working on clothes today. Well, I'm busy with this. Well, I'm busy with that. The time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the Lord. Let us get our feet underneath us for crying out loud and then we'll do it. And God says your priorities are out of order. So you need to make sure that your priorities are in order. For you and me, that means, we're not gonna get too specific here, but that means you need to think about work, family, church, hobbies, friendships, marriages, children, grandchildren, lots of different things. And you need to make sure your priorities are in the right order. God never says forget about your own house. Forget about clothing. He knows they need those things. The problem is their priorities are not in the right order, okay? That leads to number two. When your priorities are not in order, God wants you to repent. It's pretty simple. Want you to repent. Look at Haggai 112. Haggai gave the message to Zerubbabel, and it says, "Din Zerubbabel, the son of Shiaotiel, and Joshua, the son of Jehosadak, the high priest, with all the remnant of the people, obeyed the voice of the Lord their God, and the words of Haggai, the prophet, as the Lord their God had sent them. And the people feared the Lord. Then Haggai, the messenger of the Lord, spoke to the people with the Lord's message. I am with you." That's significant that that's the first thing he said when they repented and feared him. I am with you. Now build the house that is the picture that I really am with you. I am with you, declares the Lord. And the Lord stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel, the son of Shiaotiel, governor of Judah, the spirit of Joshua, the son of Jehosadak, the high priest, and the spirit of all the remnant of the people. And they came and worked on the house of the Lord of hosts their God, on the 24th day of the month, and the 6th month and the second year of Darius the King. A couple of things I want you to see here. Number one, when repentance truly happens in your life, there will be obedience. Okay? Be done with any notion in your brain that repentance is just sort of you feeling sorry for something you've done in telling God, God, I'm really sorry I did that. And I'm gonna try not to do it anymore. Biblical repentance always involves obedience. And Hagai mentions that. Verse 12, they obeyed the voice of the Lord, their God. They actually did what he was telling them to do. And you can do the timeline here. From the time this message came to Hagai, to the time they actually started working on the house, it was 23 days, right? They had wasted 18 years of nothing. And then they decided, let's get our act together. And within 23 days, they were ready to go. What is the motivation of repentance? Look at the end of verse 12, it says, "The people feared the Lord." If repentance in your life is not based on fearing God, all you're really doing is trying to modify your behavior. You're just sort of trying to change external things. And when he mentions this, that not only did they go out and obey, but they feared God, what he's saying is, yes, they did the right thing externally, but they did it from a heart that was in a right relationship with God. They feared the Lord. And I want you to see this. Here's the cause of the repentance of all of it. Verse 13, it says, no, I'm sorry, verse 14. The Lord stirred up the spirit of who is a rebel, the governor, Joshua, the high priest, and of all the remnant, all right? God is always behind our repentance, stirring our hearts up and moving us to repentance. I give you two scriptures you can look up on that last idea that God is the one who stirs up repentance. You can look up Ezekiel 36, 22 to 36. Ezekiel 36, 22 to 36. You can also look up 2 Timothy 2, 25. Ezekiel 36, 22 to 36. And 2 Timothy 2, 25. Both of those passages with Haggai 114 say, God is the one who motivates repentance. It's not something we work up on our own spiritual power, but it's something that God works in us. Here's the last lesson. And we're gonna talk about this on three different levels. God promises blessing to obedient people. And I know that sounds a little bit like the title of a Joel Osteen book, but don't just hold tight. God promises blessing to obedient people. In this last section, okay? I'm giving you chapter two, verse one to 23. All of chapter two, the second chapter, is all about God saying, if you're gonna obey, and they've done that, they've obeyed. Their hearts in the right place, they fear the Lord. God stirred this up among them. He used the prophet in his message to do it. He says, here's what I'm gonna do since you're obeying and doing what I've commanded you to do, okay? In verse one to nine in Haggai, and in most translations, there's a break there. They kinda show you that section. Chapter two, verse one to nine, it's all about spiritual blessings, okay? Not talking in that first section right out of the gate saying, I'm gonna make you rich, you're gonna win the lottery. Somebody's gonna hit the power ball, and it's gonna be fantastic. He's talking about spiritual blessing. So he says, I'm gonna be with you. He says, I'm gonna keep my covenant with you. He says, my spirit will be with you. He says, I'm gonna glorify myself through you, and he talks about giving them peace. And you can read that on your own later, but that first section, verse one to nine, all about spiritual blessings from God, okay? Then comes chapter 10, I'm sorry, chapter two, verse 10 to 19. And it's about financial blessing. Not gonna lie to you. First he talks about spiritual blessing, and then he talks about financial blessing. And it's a long section where God basically says, you know, your crops haven't been growing well, and there hadn't been a lot of rain, and there haven't been good herds and the flocks, and your houses, nothing really seems to be going right. And then look what he says at the very end of verse 19, but despite all these things that have been going wrong, but from this day on, I will bless you. And when you read that section, it's a lot of agricultural stuff, and it seems weird to people like me who are not agricultural people, but you realize for these returning pilgrims, that was their money, that was their livelihood, that was their wealth, that was their survival. And God says, look, all this stuff has been going wrong because I was making it go wrong. It's trying to get your attention. But now that you're doing what you're supposed to be doing, now that your priorities are in line and you've repented, from this day on, I'm gonna bless you. The rains are gonna come, your crops are gonna grow, the wine's gonna flow, the crops are gonna be fantastic, all these things are gonna change. Now, you hear that and some people say, so are you telling me that all I have to do is obey God and he's gonna give me lots of money? And I say, no, that's what God told these people. Why did they need the money? They needed it to build the temple, they needed it to build their homes, to rebuild the city, they did need money. And God says to these specific people, I'm gonna do this for you. Let me give you an illustration. If I go home tonight and I sit my kids down, okay? My girls and I say to my girls, look, if for the next week you can keep the trashes emptied, not overflowing and you can do it for a week, then I will take you in a week and I will buy you all a brand new pair of shoes. And I say that to my kids, right? I can do that as their father. I can make a deal with them and say if you obey me and do what I'm asking you to do, I've asked you to keep the trash a million times if you can just do it for one week. Just do this one thing. There will be a reward on the other side. I can do that. Now I'm just warning you, if I go home and do that and you follow me home to take the trash out and then you show up tomorrow to take my trash out and the next day to take my trash out and you do it for a week and then you say, hey, let's go to Academy, I'm ready for my Nike's. I'm gonna look at you and say, no, that wasn't a deal. That was a deal I made with them. A specific person at a specific time, it really had nothing to do with you. And the same thing is true for us today. You can look at this and you can see from the last chapter, God does promise certain blessings for his people when they obey, but this is a specific people at a specific time in a specific place. And for a health and wealth preacher to take a passage like this and say, look, this is proof. You do what God says. He's gonna give you lots and lots of money. It says it right here. On this day, from this day forth, I will bless you. God's gonna bless you. God's gonna bless you. Here comes the money. Just turn the channel. Get up and walk out of the room. You say, no, no, no, no. You're taking a promise that God gave to a very specific people and you're just trying to apply it to everybody. That's not how any promise works. So he talks about spiritual blessings. He talks about financial blessings. Here's the best blessing, okay? Those are important. Here's the best one and it's the last few verses. It's a blessing of the Messiah. And we're gonna read this last little section. Haggai to 20, the word of the Lord came a second time to Haggai on the 24th day of the month. Speak to Zerubbabel, the governor of Judah, saying, "I'm about to shake the heavens and the earth and overthrow the throne of kingdoms. I'm about to destroy the strength of the kingdoms of the nations and overthrow the chariots and the writers. The horses and the writers shall go down everyone by the sword of his brother. And on that day declares the Lord of hosts, I will take you, O Zerubbabel, my servant, the son of Shealtiel declares the Lord, and I will make you underline this phrase. I will make you like a signet ring." That's what I'm gonna do. Why am I gonna do it? Because I have chosen you, declares the Lord of hosts. We're not gonna flip back and look at it, but you can look at Jeremiah 22 verse 24. Jeremiah 22, 24, it is God before the exile. Understand, before the exile, speaking to Zerubbabel's grandfather. You're tracking with me? Before the exile, talking to Zerubbabel's granddad, and he says to him, before the exile, this is what I'm about to do. Even though you, the king, even though you're like a signet ring on my finger, I'm gonna rip it off and throw it away. Meaning, you are special to me as the king, but I'm sick of your rebellion, and I'm gonna rip you off, and I'm gonna throw it away. You're going into exile. Jeremiah prophesied that, and it happened in Jeremiah's lifetime. Now God says, to that man's grandson, Zerubbabel, I'm gonna make you like a signet ring on my finger. I'm putting you back on. I took it off and I threw it away, but now I'm gonna put it back on. And he says some interesting things in here. He talks about kingdoms being overthrown, and nations being overthrown, and riders, and horses, and all this stuff. And I'll be honest with you, Zerubbabel never marched out and conquered anybody. Neither did his grandkids, or his great-grandkids, or any of them. In which you understand, Hagai is saying here is a lot like what Daniel is saying, when Daniel has these visions. Do you remember Daniel's visions? One of the visions Daniel has is that there's this statue, and the head is made of one thing, and the body's made of another thing, and the legs are made of another thing, and the feet are made of something else. And then what happens? Something else comes crashing into the statue and blows the whole thing up. And Daniel says, this is a kingdom. It's not like these kingdoms, just another part of the body and another precious metal. Something completely different. It just comes and it explodes, and it blows everything up, and it destroys these kingdoms. It's like nothing in the world's ever seen. That's what Hagai's talking about. He's saying to Zarebabel, through you, I'm putting you back on like a signet ring. Through your grandfather away, he went into exile. Now I'm putting you back on, and through you I'm gonna do something that is totally earth-shattering. And in our minds, we think big, strong military, nuclear weapons, thousands and thousands of soldiers, something like that. God's saying, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's not like this. It's like the stone in Daniel that comes in from outside and blows everything up. Interesting about Zarebabel, after this happens and the temple gets built, he disappears. Don't know anything about him. Some Jewish sources say that he was assassinated by Darius the Mede, because Darius the Mede heard these prophecies and said, that guy's a threat, I need to kill him. Some people say he was assassinated. We really don't know that. Here's what we do know. Flip over to the right. Go past Zechariah, go past Malachi. We're right on the doorstep of Matthew and look at Matthew chapter one. Matthew one, jump down and look at verse 12. After the deportation to Babylon, Zechariah was the father of Shialtio. Shialtio, the father of Zarebabel. That's our Zarebabel. Zarebabel, we don't really know what happened to him, but we do know he was the father of Abiad. And Abiad the father of Eliachim, Eliachim the father of Azer, and Azer the father of Zadik, Zadik the father of Aikim, Aikim the father of Eliud, Eliud the father of Eliezer, Eliezer the father of Mathen, Mathen the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary whom Jesus was born, who was called the Christ. That's your king. That's the one that God's promising. And that's what Haggai is pointing us to. So with that, let's pray, and we will move on from Haggai. Father, we're grateful for your word. We're grateful for the book of Haggai. Thank you for his ministry. Thank you for the fact that you stirred the hearts of the people to respond in repentance and obedience to fear you. Father, help us to understand that delayed obedience is not any kind of obedience. It's disobedience, it's disobedience. Help us to think about our priorities, and whether or not we have those things in line as they need to be. Father, is the church help us to think about the one mission that you gave us, and that's to make disciples of all the nations, and where that ranks for us as individuals, and where that ranks for us as a congregation. How important do we think that is? Help us to be honest about that question. Father, we thank you that when we look at the Old Testament, we see a long story, beginning with Adam, and through Noah, through Abraham, through Moses, through David, and the story continues all the way up through the Old Testament right up to Jesus. And we understand that you all along the way, we're doing good things for your people so that ultimately you would send Jesus to live for them and to die for them. Father, help us not to make heroes out of men like Haggai, but help us to make a hero out of the one that Haggai points us towards, and that's Jesus Christ. We love you, and we are grateful for your faithfulness. We're grateful that you keep your promises. We're grateful that even when your people are unfaithful, you are faithful to them, and you continue the good work that you've begun in them. Father, we love you and we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.