Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript: Haggai 2
## Pastor Dennis Tuuri, Reformation Covenant Church

Sermon text is Haggai, the second chapter. Second chapter of the book of Haggai toward the old end of the Old Testament, one of the last of the minor prophets, Haggai, the second chapter. Let me just mention while you’re finding your places that the psalm we just recited responsively says that he’ll have the dew of his youth. What that means is it says, “I believe that he has youth like the dew as countless of the dew drops.

God assembles his host over history, his army, his church that will go through the earth making disciples of the nations and God’s judgments will accompany them and he will establish his people.” Something about this arrangement in this particular physical structure that reminds me of a host, a heavenly host, an army of God assembled to hear his word, to be strengthened through his sacraments, and to go out into the earth making disciples of the nations.

The end of that psalm said that he shall drink of the brook in the way and therefore shall he lift up the head. Showing that this warfare is not waged somehow in a nervous or frenzied fashion but rather in a restful fashion. That rest being accomplished through the work of the Savior. Haggai 2 tells of the work in the days of the restoration of Israel after their Babylonian captivity. But it also speaks of the coming work rather of the Savior.

Haggai 2. In the seventh month, in the twenty-first day of the month, came the word of the Lord by the prophet Haggai, saying, “Speak now to Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua, the son of Jozadak, the high priest, and to the residue of the people, saying, Who is left among you that saw this house in her first glory? And how do you see it now? Is it not in your eyes in comparison of it as nothing?

Yet now be strong, O Zerubbabel, sayeth the Lord. And be strong, O Joshua, son of Jozadak the high priest. And be strong, all ye people of the land, sayeth the Lord, and work, for I am with you, sayeth the Lord of hosts, according to the word that I covenanted with you when you came out of Egypt, so my spirit remaineth among you. Fear ye not, for thus sayeth the Lord of hosts, yet once it is a little while, that I will shake the heavens and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land, and I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations shall come, and I will fill this house with glory, sayeth the Lord of Hosts.

The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, sayeth the Lord of Hosts. The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former, sayeth the Lord of Hosts. And in this place will I give peace, saith the Lord of hosts.

In the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, in the second year of Darius, came the word of the Lord by Haggai the prophet, saying, Thus saith the Lord of hosts. Ask now the priest concerning the law, saying, If one bear holy flesh in the skirt of his garment, and with his skirt do touch bread or pottage or wine or oil or any meat, shall it be holy? And the priest answered and said, “No.”

Then said Haggai, “If one that is unclean by a dead body touch any of these, shall it be unclean?” And the priest answered and said, “It shall be unclean.” And then answered Haggai and said, “So is this people, and so is this nation before me, saith the Lord, and so is every work of their hands, and that which they offer there is unclean.

And now I pray you, consider from this day and upward, from before a stone was laid upon a stone in the temple of the Lord, since those days were, when one came to an heap of twenty measures, there were but ten. And when one came to the press fat for to draw out fifty vessels out of the press there were but twenty. I smote you with blasting and with mildew and with hail and all the labors of your hands. Yet ye turn not to me, saith the Lord.

Consider now from this day and upward, from the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, even from the day that the foundation of the Lord’s temple was laid, consider it. Is the seed yet in the barn? Yay, as yet the vine and the fig tree, and the pomegranate and the olive tree hath not brought forth. From this day will I bless you.

And again the word of the Lord came unto Haggai in the twenty-fourth day of the month, saying, Speak to Zerubbabel, governor of Judah, saying, I will shake the heavens and the earth, and I will overthrow the throne of kingdoms, and I will destroy the strength of the kingdoms of the heathen, and I will overthrow the chariots and those that ride in them, and the horses and their riders shall come down, everyone by the sword of his brother. And that day, saith the Lord of hosts, will I take thee, O Zerubbabel, my servant, the son of Shealtiel, sayeth the Lord, and I will make thee as a signet, for I have chosen thee, sayeth the Lord of hosts.

Let us pray. Father, we have assembled in this place at your calling to hear your word, to be comforted, and to rest assured in the finished work of our Savior, but also to be encouraged and exhorted to take the implications of that work and of our life in Jesus Christ our savior into everything that we do. Bless our time, Lord God. Now open our ears to hear instruction from your word that we may open our hands to do thy work in this day and on into the rest of our lives. Bless, Lord God, your speaker to this end as well. In Jesus name we ask it and for the sake of his kingdom. Amen.

Please be seated. We’ve set up today. I’m not sure this is the best way to set up the room, but it was the setting that I chose. And so if you’re displeased with it, please don’t hold that against the men who have faithfully and very diligently set this room up the way that I asked it be set up. And so if you do have suggestions for other ways we can set up when we are in the gym, please let me know and I will try to do whatever we can to make this a more comfortable setting whenever we have to be in here.

Of course, as most of you know, those of you who are at the head of household meeting Friday night and have been involved in some of the other discussions, there is a consideration in the light of the William C. Beer’s Bethel fund which has been established to move into this facility apart from the sanctuary for the next several years. We could even with renting additional classrooms in this building for Sabbath schools and nursery for the younger children save over the next three years $20,000 by such a move.

And while it may be somewhat inconvenient, the singing, frankly, is much more encouraging in here to me. I don’t know about you. And hopefully the setup can be accommodated to whatever we think would be best to keep attentive during the sermon and yet to worship our God as well.

In a way I mentioned before, we can rent a very nice, beautiful sanctuary, but we are renters. We are not freeholders. And our desire in both our families and our church are over the coming years to become freeholders. Whether that takes generations, whether God will supernaturally bless and bring us into such a position institutionally as a church and as families shortly, if we decide there will certainly be much in congregational discussion about this.

We wouldn’t make this decision rashly or quickly without consulting every single covenanted family head and discussing it at length with them. If we decide to move this way, it would be perhaps a reminder of our true status as at this point in tabernacles as opposed to temples, so to speak, and tents as opposed to nice finished structures. And that may be a good reminder to us as well of our reality, of our situation as a church institutionally.

And maybe also a reminder to you if you’ve not been able to become a freeholder of land and property yet yourself, of your own status, a reminder of that status as tabernacling, so to speak, while we pray and work diligently to the end that we could establish permanent structures for our homes and for our church.

All right. Why are you alive? Why are you here today? What is your purpose for life? Why do you draw breath? What’s the purpose of all this? It’s an answer, a question rather that cannot be answered by our culture. It’s a question that demands answering every day of our lives.

While we can intellectually give assent to “Oh yes, we’re Christians,” it is important to recognize that God says the belief in that very thing, that the purpose of our life is to glorify him, is really at the heart of everything we do. And it’s rejection of that belief or a disbelief of that truth that leads to all of our sins and all of our difficulties in life. The question of belief is an important one.

I mentioned this before, but several months ago I was diagnosed as diabetic. Not a real bad case at all. I hopefully will be able in the next few months as a result of exercise and diet to be able not to be on any medication at all, all simply control it that way as many do these days with the sort of things we know about diabetes and its cause and cures.

A diabetic condition was to me an inescapable reality that I had to change things about my life if I wanted to have a long life and be a proper steward of the body that God has given to me. So often our falling short of God’s will is a result of our disbelief that there are negative consequences to that, that God does actively and in time and space temporally as well as spiritually and judge us and bring chastisements upon our head.

Not because he doesn’t love us, but because he does love us. Because he wants us healthy. He wants us whole. He wants us effectual for the work of the kingdom. He wants us as the youth who the Savior counts as more numerous than the dew drops in the earth. The earth will be populated by sons of the king who go forth preaching his gospel. And he will accompany that preaching with temporal judgments and spiritual realities so that the earth will at one day yield up its full praise to the Lord.

Well, this question of where we are, what our purpose for living is, I always think of Steppenwolf being a product of our culture to a large degree. This rock band, not the book by Herman Hesse, but rather the rock band that took its name from that book. They had a song called “I Don’t Know Where We Come From, Don’t Know Where We’re Going To” and if all this should have a meaning we would be the last to know. So let’s just party essentially then till the end.

The question of origins, the question of destinations is central to human existence. And when those things are taken away through evolution and through a cyclical view of history such as our culture has, then meaning is removed. When meaning is removed, temporary sensational pleasure is usually what the culture devolves into. And that’s the case here in America. We are different. We know our origins from the scriptures and hopefully we know our destiny as well and that gives meaning and purpose to our lives.

History is part of understanding our past and our origins. And I want to start today by some pretty, I don’t know, maybe not awe-inspiring stuff but stuff that I think you need to know or be helpful for you to know about your scriptures. I want to start with a brief historical overview. Again, I did this somewhat last week. I provided a couple of chronological materials to the heads of household today that’ll help us and I just want to briefly go over an overview of history to understand what this wonderful message of encouragement we read from the book of Haggai.

I’ll speak about that in a couple of minutes. But you know, Haggai—we normally hear the verses we normally hear from Haggai are the ones that says if you don’t give to God you’re going to lose money. It’s going to go out the holes in your pockets. And that’s an important message that begins the prophecies of Haggai. But the rest are total encouragement. And so the book of Haggai is a tremendous encouragement to those who have been brought back from captivity and as I said last couple of weeks ago there’s a very real sense in which that’s our status well I want us to understand the historical flow of Haggai, its context, because of that I provided some chronologies as I’ve said these are developed by Mr. Jordan.

He’s done over the last number of years a very serious study of chronology of the scriptures and properly understood these chronologies can help us to understand the books of Haggai and Zechariah the restoration prophets who spoke contemporaneously to the exiles who have been brought back from the land. It’ll help us to understand the book of Daniel and its prophetic significance. Daniel wrote around this same period of time.

Mr. Jordan believes, and I think that evidence—if you want detailed evidence he has two commentaries on the books of Esther and Daniel he will be selling at family camp. I’ve purchased a couple of copies of those—lots of good information laid out where he believes that Esther also is contemporaneous to many of these events as was Nehemiah. So it’ll help us to understand much of your scriptures, I guess, is what the first thing I want you to do.

The army of God, those people who rest in the finished work of Christ and are empowered to do his work are empowered by that word. And a failure to study the scriptures diligently and consistently and knowledgeably results in a weakened people. And so it’s important that you attend to the scriptures. We stress the daily reading of the scriptures. That’s good. It’s a good place to start, but certainly adults in the church should study the scriptures to understand their significance. You’re not going to get everything once a week in an hour from the pulpit. Okay.

So, let’s look briefly at these chronologies I’ve provided to you. The first one is really just an overview. And the couple of pages behind that are a more detailed account of this overview account on the first or second page. I don’t really remember what I have blown up copies for myself, but in the detailed chronology, the overview chronology he provides, and I don’t think I gave you the first page—maybe I did.

At the first page, is Josiah’s death circled at the top of it? It is. Okay. And that’s all that’s circled on that page if I’m not mistaken. The death of Josiah is important because if you look at the return of the exiles from captivity, it is 70 years after the death of Josiah. Mr. Jordan believes that in the flow of these 70 years of captivity, there are really several separate 70 years that are considered and I’ll show that as we go along.

But the death of Josiah, the last godly king of Israel, who was actually fighting for Babylon—showed then the judgment of God and the people under the captivity at that from that point on of Babylon, even though they weren’t taken into exile yet. That’s why that first page has that event circled.

On the second page, you know, kids, I hope you like your history, by the way, in your home schools. If you don’t, it’s because you don’t understand the significance of it to God’s sovereign actions in history. And parents, it’s really incumbent upon us to find good materials and supplement them to the end that children see in history not a dry recitation of facts with the hand of God moving exalting and breaking down cultures for his sovereign purpose to the establishment of his kingdom and that’s what these chronologies tend to show.

Now in 537 on the second page we have Cyrus I, his ascension to the throne. Remember I mentioned last week that the way that God’s people are delivered from Babylon is Babylon falls. Remember Daniel foretells the overthrow of Babylon long after the death of Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar has taken over. Now that in that very year in 537 Babylon will be overthrown—mene mene tekel upharsin—the kingdom has been judged and found wanting and so God shakes that kingdom and establishes Persian dominion over what was once Babylon.

We’re in the time of empires, the Babylonian Empire is replaced by the Persian Empire and the king of Persia at this time is Cyrus I. Cyrus is referred to in the book of Daniel as Darius the Mede. There are two Dariuses given in the scriptures and the one account in Daniel refers to Darius the Mede. Darius the Mede is Cyrus. Same person, different names. Just as for instance the kings of England and Scotland would have different titles and different designations for the different rules. So these men would have different reigns, different names as well relating to their particular significance in terms of that particular calling, whether it’s to emphasize their justice, their rule over a particular place of land or whatever it is.

Darius means in one sense “the doer of God.” So Cyrus is Darius the Mede prophesied in the book of Daniel. Cyrus of course is prophesied in other of the major prophets as well who would provide deliverance for his people. And Cyrus ascends to the throne in 537.

In 536 and the dates are getting smaller because these are BC—before Christ—dates. They’re getting smaller as they progress along in history. The next year Cyrus had ascended to the throne—that very year he took ascension to the throne, so to speak, of Babylon and over the area that the people of God were captive in. He releases those people to go back to their land and he tells them specifically to rebuild the temple. So the next year the work on the temple begins.

And then in 535 the next year we have opposition to the temple which halts this rebuilding project. And Daniel at this point, Mr. Jordan believes Daniel 10:1-3 are going on contemporaneously to this opposition to the temple and Daniel mourns for three weeks because of the stopping of the temple work. The people grow discouraged in that temple work. Talked about that last week. So the book of Daniel correlates to some of these events that Haggai does as well.

The next thing I’ve got circled on this overview is year 522 where Darius the Great takes the throne. This is Darius the Great. And most of the references to Darius apart from the reference of Daniel is not Darius the Mede, it’s Darius the Great. And here Darius replaces Cyrus and who had also reigned with a fellow named Cambyses. And it was Cambyses who had the opposition to the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem that stopped the work for a period of time.

Now Darius takes over in 522 and then in 520 Haggai and Zechariah both begin their prophetic utterances and the temple foundation is laid there and God returns to the people. When we read in the text of Daniel that God said “I am with you,” that was very significant. 70 years prior to that God had departed the temple. The temple was still standing but God had departed the temple under the desolation of the temple.

And now as the temple is beginning to be rebuilt, before it’s rebuilt totally—it’ll take four and a half years to finish the building project—God says, “I am with the people because the temple foundation has been laid again. God returns to his people who have returned from exile.”

Very significant to them. God’s presence is here again. That’s what they were rejoicing about. And Haggai spoke of that as well. So God returns and that’s the end of the 70 years after the desolation of the temple itself in the year 519.

The next year—very next year—Vashti, who is Darius’s chief queen, is deposed and the book of Esther starts to take significance here. Mr. Jordan thinks that Ahasuerus, Artaxerxes, and Xerxes and Darius are—and there’s—this is not just his idea. A lot of conservative commentators believe this. We’re all referred to the same person and that’s the king who would eventually have Esther as his queen in the book of Esther.

So contemporaneous to these activities going on, we’ve got Vashti being deposed preparing the way for Esther to ascend to become queen with Darius in the land. And in the context of that, of course, we know from the book of Esther that various things happen. The temple is completed in 516. And that ends the 70 years after the temple itself had been destroyed.

So now the temple is rebuilt after four and a half years. It’s significant by the way that under Solomon you had forced labor and heavy taxation—seven years to build Solomon’s temple. Under Haggai, less imposing structure but nonetheless it was voluntary work without taxation and volunteerism worked to get that temple rebuilt in four and a half years in time for the 70 years that God had prophesied that the temple would lay in ruins.

So then the temple is rebuilt in that particular age. 516, the temple is completed. In 515 the very next year Esther becomes queen. Then we have the plot with Mordecai, etc. And finally then there is victory for God’s people. In 502, 13 years after Esther becomes queen, Nehemiah returns and begins the rebuilding of the walls.

Nehemiah had actually gone back first. These are based on the chronological list of who returned in different groups of exiles coming back to the land. So Nehemiah actually returns to rebuild the walls just 18 years after Haggai prophesied in the year 520.

Now, I won’t go through the detailed chronology, but attached to the back of those, the next few pages is a detailed chronology, a more detailed chronology of these same events, and I have circled for you or put blocks around some of the significant events that happened. I’ll ask you not to read those now, but take those home. Help your children to think through the chronology and the timeline.

You know, the best way to learn something is to teach it. And so, as you assimilate this data so you have a better understanding of the book of Daniel, the book of Esther, Haggai, Zechariah, the restoration, which all points to the coming of Jesus—as you learn that material, the best way to really learn it well is to then teach it to your children. So, I’d encourage you to do that.

Now, that’s kind of in a sense the micro view of history leading up to the book of Haggai. It’s the little details more or less, but I want to talk very briefly, but still importantly for the big view as well. And this will be more familiar to most of you. If it isn’t, take notes because this is very important to understand. Again, our origins and what history is all about.

There are, as I said, three, and you won’t necessarily know this till today—some of you do—but there are three periods of 70 years in terms of the restoration from the captivity. This is a big overview of these specific events.

In 608, Josiah died, symbolizing captivity to the Babylonian Empire, the part of God’s people. 70 years later, in 537-538, the Jews returned to the land. 70 years of dominion to Babylon, crushed, and they now return to the land.

In 590 or 591, God abandoned the temple and 70 years later, God returns and says he is back with his people because the temple foundations have been laid. So God returns to his people. Now God is omnipresent, right? It’s not as if he’s not there. But he’s not there in the special sense of being a protector, a guardian, and a nourisher of his people. He has departed covenantally, and he returns covenantally now at the rebuilding of the temple.

It’s important to see that what we do physically has significance in the scriptures. Now, I’m going to mention a little bit about the temple significance to the body of Christ. But understand that, you know, spiritual realities are demonstrated by physical truths. And if you say you love your wife or you love your children and you don’t obey God’s commandments relative to the need to nurture them and to guard them, and I don’t mean perfectly, but if your life isn’t characterized by your heart turned to them in actions, that God says there’s no love there.

So God has us evaluate our spiritual state in relationship to what we do. What’s more important, what you do or who you are? Well, we’ve been taught and there’s certainly a very important truth to the fact it’s more important who you are. But not to the exclusion of what you do. What you do stems from who you are. And you cannot become a Christian by works. But if you are a Christian and if you are a faithful steward of what God has given to you, that will be demonstrated in your physical actions.

Your commitment to the body of Christ is evaluated not in terms of your pious statements but rather in terms of how much you work for the body of Christ in the context that God has placed you in. What is your dedication to helping people in the body of Christ at Reformation Covenant Church? See, that evaluates our love for Jesus. He says that the church is his body.

So what do you do in terms of the church? It’s easy to say, “Well, I support the church worldwide.” Easy, much tougher when you come face to face contact with people and you’re called to expose who you are, confess your sins. And of course, that’ll happen whether you want to do it or not. If I’ve known anybody five, six, seven years, I got a pretty good idea. You know, I haven’t seen them all that much. Seen them on a regular basis, weekly at the Lord’s supper and at communion and at our gathering. Occasionally, more prolonged visits in the home.

I know who you are. And if you’re thoughtful and you’re evaluatory of your relationships, you know who I am and you know how I screw up and I know how you screw up. Well, that’s hard to admit to each other. But God says that your commitment to loving Christ is evaluated on your commitment to loving the body of Christ. These physical people walking around in the context of where you are.

And there is a sense in which that commitment is also tested by your commitment to the physical structure of the church. There’s a relationship to that. Not the same as the temple, but there is a relationship. So, we’re in a period of evaluation for this church. That’s what I’m saying. Now, we’re always in that period. This is the day of the Lord when God comes to judge his people.

But now, in a heightened sense, I think we are trying to accomplish things as a community, as an army of God, as a restful host. God says that there’s evaluations that’ll happen. My attitudes, your attitudes, our faithfulness to each other, to the work of his church. And yes, the physical structure of this church, the physical structure of your own home is probably in for a period of intensified evaluation. This is good. This is God’s love.

This is God helping us to see who we are, helping us to see where we need work, helping us to see where we need encouragement from each other. You see, he doesn’t do this to beat us over the head. He does this to bring us into further rest and blessing.

Well, God’s people were the same. There was commitments to the body of Christ that were required. So, these periods of 70 years occurs as one of the big overviews of the book of Haggai.

Let me give you a bigger overview leading up to the Babylonian captivity. The world has moved through stages: from the Garden of Eden where you had the family, to the patriarchs, to the judges, to the kings and now they’re in a stage of empires. These were no longer individual little kingdoms. These were large empires and Babylon was the first empire.

Daniel spoke of these succession of four empires in world history. And your children should know that we stand at the end of one of the fourth periods of empire. And actually we stand in the middle of the fifth period, the final period, the coming period of Christ’s empire. Those four empires were the Babylonian Empire, the Persian Empire, the Greek empire and the Roman Empire. Those four cultures assume dominance over essentially the whole world preparing the way for the final empire to come, the little stone that crushes the manifestations of these other empires as it grows to fill the world—the mountain of God, the empire of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The book of Haggai occurs after the Babylonian Empire is in decline and as the Persian Empire is in its rise. See, so it’s an imperial book. In an empire stage of building, there’s a tremendous temptation to compromise one’s faith. You see, because there’s no longer distinctive individual little tribes. There’s imperial formulations going on. There’s empires going on. And the great temptation is to compromise one’s witness to the Christian faith. And that is where we’re at, right?

We live in the context of a culture that has become global, a global village, an empire based upon an ethic of secularism and humanism, but it’s an ethic. It doesn’t want just evil to reign in the world. It’s kind of like Jerry Garcia. I was thinking about that this last week. You know, Jerry Garcia didn’t sing like the lead singer from Metallica. Now, those of you who don’t listen to those things, the lead singer from Metallica, it’s always kind of a rough edge to his voice. “I’ll go anywhere like that kind of,” he sounds evil and the guitars are just wailing away.

Jerry Garcia played kind of like bluegrass almost and he’s saying real kind of neatly, you know, “Ah, a friend of the devil is a friend of mine.” Now I don’t know what he meant by that but the culture is like that, you see. It lures us into unchristian practices to the extent that we do not input things into this system of our Christian worldview and life, we’re going to tail off into this empire around us. That’s what we’re going to become.

Like I mentioned debt. I’m going to mention it a lot over the next 200 years. I’ll mention it for the next long as I live. It’s going to take a long time for all of us become freeholders. And in the meantime, we’re going to have tremendous temptations to think it’s not important whether we eventually get out of debt in terms of home ownership and become freeholders of property, either as families or as a church. But of course, it’s important.

As soon as you start looking at the scriptures again, you’re realize the significance of it. The culture, our empire drags us off, tempts us to go ways that are not overtly evil, but still are in opposition to Christ’s kingdom.

There’s a big flow of history. And what we have to recognize is Jesus promised in the book of Haggai that shakings would occur. He says it in two of those last three prophecies. Shakings will occur. And ultimately, he was not talking of the shaking of Persia, though that would happen. Ultimately, he was talking of the shaking of the whole earth.

The book of Hebrews says that the shaking continues. “Yet once more will I shake heaven and earth.” Jesus is in the midst of his empire building campaign through his church. That’s what Acts is all about. As Paul moves from the promised land to Rome, empire building for Jesus Christ. That empire building is accompanied by temporal judgments. If you fall back to the world, you fall back to destruction. That’s what the book of Hebrews is all about.

You fall back to destruction. Whether it’s apostate Judaism, whether it’s the secularism of our culture, whatever it is, you fall back from a self-conscious Christian commitment. You fall back to damnation. God will shake out all enemies. He’ll shake out all people that do not base their life upon his word. We fall back to destruction.

Jesus will shake things. That’s a great message of encouragement to people that want to be distinctively Christian in their life, who love the Savior and who want to continue then to demonstrate that love by their extension of his rule and reign in their lives. Great message of encouragement that you are the only thing that cannot be shaken in this world. You’re the church of Jesus Christ.

Oh, the temple building was a picture of this. Another big movement of history. You should, your children should know: Babylon, Persia, Greek, Rome, and now we’re in the continuing the process now of the empire of Jesus Christ crushing the remnants, what’s left over of the old Roman Empire in our day and age. There’s much that needs to be crushed, by the way. Well, I won’t go off on that.

But another big flow of biblical history, and this your children should know as well, is that there’s a movement throughout the scriptures of God’s worship with his people, his meeting with his people. It moved from a garden, that’s the first one, to altars in the patriarchal period, to the tabernacle, the period of the wilderness, and to the temple you know, they’re in the land.

And now we have the reconstruction of the temple going on in the book of Haggai, don’t we? But it’s very significant that the temple that will be rebuilt will be smaller, as nothing in the eyes of some, is what he says, compared to the glories of Solomon’s temple. There will be another temple. Herod’s temple will also be built. The point is that this last temple that Ezekiel speaks of that the restored exiles built externally grew less significant. Why?

Well, God had built up over garden, altar, tabernacle, and temple quite a picture of the glory of Jesus Christ. But it is the glory of Jesus Christ. It’s not the glory of an external architectural structure. It’s the glory of Jesus Christ and his church. Peter says that you’re as living stones. You comprise this temple.

Now, you know, don’t you know, Paul wrote to the Corinthians the message you should know this just from looking at the history. You should know you’re the temple of God. But if you don’t, Paul says, “Don’t you know that you are the temple of the living God.” And that word “you” is used both singularly at some points in that epistle and in other epistles it’s used in the sense of the plural. You know, you are the dwelling place of the living God and the church is the temple of the living God as well. And you are spiritual stones who are being built into a house and Hebrews says you’re Christ’s house.

If you remain steadfast, you’re the temple. So the reduction in architectural significance that Haggai speaks of and has to encourage the people about is to remind us that it’s not in external forms that God’s dwelling place this people is to ultimately reside. Jesus comes as the great temple who after three days—after having torn down and dead three days will rise from the dead. “Tear down this temple, I’ll build in three days,” and then creates the temple of his body, the church of Jesus Christ.

Your children should know that as you move from garden to altar to tabernacle to temple all those things has significance. They tell us about who we are. Okay? And we’re at the end of biblical history. We’re in the last empire of the world. We’re in the last period of the manifestation of glory. And the church is a more glorious manifestation than the architectural structures of the temple of Solomon. Even though that was tremendous and tremendously glorifying.

So these are the big flows of history in our lives. This is where the book of Haggai takes place in the context of this.

I want to talk a little bit now specifically then about the book of Haggai. Finally, huh?

So, let’s turn back to Haggai and we’ll try to go through this real quickly. I want to give you an overview of Haggai. Did this a little last time, do it again this time. Haggai has, if I understand the text correctly, there are five messages. Could be that one is part of another. So, there’s only four. But let’s look at these real quickly. Go through the book of Haggai. And I want to focus particularly on one of these.

We’ll go through all of them real quickly.

In Haggai, the first chapter—you know, this one, we talked about this a couple of weeks ago—that people say, “The time hasn’t come yet. They’re too busy building their own houses. We’re not freeholders yet. So, we don’t want the temple to be built, etc.” And God says “You’re going to be judged. You won’t be able to be freeholders unless you put my glory first.”

And so God, the first message is a message of repentance to them. He says that “Consider your ways. You know, you’ve sowed a lot but you haven’t reaped much. Think through what happened to you and as a result of that you’ll come to repentance.” So the first message is strictly a message of repentance to the people, a call to repentance.

And then we’re told that indeed they obeyed the voice of the Lord in verse 12 of chapter 1. “They obeyed the voice of the Lord. They did fear before the Lord.”

The second message comes verse 13. “Then spake Haggai the Lord’s messenger in the Lord’s message unto the people saying I am with you, sayeth the Lord.” Now some people think this is part of the first message. There’s kind of a dialogue going on, but I tend to think this is a separate second prophecy of Haggai while undated.

In response to the people’s obedience and fear of the Lord, he declares his presence with them. And you see, it’s all by itself, I think, because its significance is that God has now returned to the temple and to his people again because of their commitment to his work. Very important.

So the second message is a message of blessing to them. “I am with you.”

Simply stated, and you know all the other blessings that we can speak about in our lives. All the blessings that will be mentioned in the book of Haggai from now on really they’re just details of the one message that God is present with his people. If God’s presence with you based on the work of Jesus Christ mediated through his spirit, his word, and of course the church as well, if God’s presence with you isn’t enough, then you’ll never have enough.

Now, God gives us much more than that. “Seek first the kingdom of God and all these things shall be added unto you.” But you see, if you think somehow that just God’s presence alone isn’t enough, I need silver and gold. I need a wife. I need even a church. You’re wrong. See, God said to Abraham, and he says to us, “I am thy exceeding great reward.” Knowledge of him, to be in his presence with his blessing upon us is the height of all blessing and every other blessing is an outworking of that.

Now the flip side of that should be of great comfort to you. You know, these last few weeks have been filled with trouble for some folks. And as the people returned both under Cyrus and then later under Darius to rebuild the temple and then later rebuild the walls of the city, opposition came. You know, when God calls us to be faithful and we begin to accomplish things for him, opposition will surely occur because the devil hates God and the seed of the devil hates God’s people. War will be waged on God’s church.

Some of you are in the midst of very overt manifestations of the war of the demonic seed against the godly seed. Couple of families here directly right now in the midst of big battles. All of us are involved in smaller battles and we will have larger battles at various times in our life. Commitment and obedience brings opposition and the opposition can threaten much to us.

And normally the opposition will not be able to take away the physical manifestations of God’s blessing. They can’t steal from us everything. Normally they can’t take away our children. Normally the opposition can’t take away our wife. Normally the opposition is not allowed under the providence of God to kill us. But sometimes they will.

Every other manifestation of blessing—material blessings, blessings of communion and fellowship with your children, your wife, the people in the church, even the secondary blessing of physical life in this body itself—all these things may be taken away. And I cannot give any of you assurance that you will not have one of those things taken away today, even in the providence of God.

But his presence with you, that blessing that can never be removed. You see, that’s the light at the end of the tunnel. That’s the light all along the tunnel. And that’s the light that no man can take from you.

What glorious thoughts, huh? These other things are not insignificant. Whether we’re poor or rich, whether we have children or wives or vocations or husbands or physical life—these are not unimportant. Please don’t misunderstand me. They’re very significant. But at the end of the day, they’re significant only because they’re a picture to you, or primarily because there’s a picture to you of the blessings of God’s presence with you. And that is secure once and forever. That is secure through the work of the Savior.

You see?

Well, that’s tremendous rest. I can only give you the assurance if you’re going through such a pitched battle in your life today, and some of these battles I would love to be able to do something about, but some of them I can do nothing to help. And you’re some of you are involved in situations you can do nothing really about. You can flail about if you like, but probably there’s not much you can do except wait to see what God has in store for this particular test.

The only thing on your side is God. Well, that’s all you need, of course. At the end of the day, God’s presence will be with you.

And so God told the people in Haggai a single prophetic word: “I am with you, sayeth the Lord.” Praise God. Blessing and encouragement. Then the Lord stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel and they began to build the work. And they did work in the house of the Lord their God.

And then in chapter two, this is a third message now if I’m correct. And he says, “Speak to Zerubbabel. He says, ‘Who is left among you that sees his house in her first glory?’ Looks pretty crummy, doesn’t it? This foundation you’ve laid?”

Some of you are weeping. The book of Ezra and Nehemiah says that they’re weeping so loud people couldn’t tell if people were laughing or crying as the temple was being built.

Ecclesiastes says, “You ask, ‘Why were the former days better than these days?’” And you don’t ask this from wisdom. Why is it that our temple that we build seems so shabby compared to that great temple of the early church, or that great temple of the church of the Reformation, or that great temple of the church in America that established a free society based upon God’s word primarily? But what we’re doing seems completely insignificant to me. Most every day, or at least once a week, I sinfully fall into discouragement about what we’re doing here, comparing it back to what God has done in revival in years past.

Some of you wonder, “Am I a Christian? Are we Christians?” You read the history of what the church has done at various times. You think, “We’re nothing compared to that.” It is quite easy to grow discouraged in the work of the Lord. But that too is from the Lord.

Just as the removal of some exterior blessings are his loving disciplines to us to remind us of our relationship to him, so it is that this consideration, also a discouragement, is God’s way of telling us: “You’re wrong in this. What I am doing amongst you will be more glorious than what I have done in the past.”

Now, how can you say that, Dennis? You don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. Ah, but I do. But I do because Haggai tells him why this is more glorious. He says, “Don’t fear. Verse 6 of chapter 2, ‘Fear not. In verse 5, verse 6, a little while I will shake the heavens and the earth. I’ll replace rulers and authorities in the church and in the state—heavens and earth, the sea and the dry land. I will shake all nations.

The desire of all nations shall come, and I will fill this house with glory,’ sayeth the Lord of Hosts.”

Speaking ultimately—speaking temporally of the removal of the Persian Empire that the Greeks will come along. Speaking ultimately of the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, the desire of the nations.

But doesn’t it also say to us that as we look back on former work of the Lord, he promises that history will be a manifestation of increased glory and blessing? And if we’re part of the church of Jesus Christ in 1995, and we surely are, that we should not mourn over that fact. But if the church that is being assembled today, laid up stone upon stone, precious person upon precious person, will baptize another stone today, so to speak, wash it off for work in the temple—won’t that structure be more glorious than the past?

Well, of course it will be. This structure is identified with the Lord Jesus Christ directly, called his body, his temple, and he is the temple. So surely we can say, yeah, it’s discouraging work when you’re coming out of exile and captivity and it is. “Don’t despise the day of small beginnings,” God says. Not because small beginnings are enough in themselves. They’re enough for today. It’s not as if God’s hand is shortened somehow.

He will build his work in our day and age that has begun a return from the captivity of false doctrines of Arminianism, etc. He will build that work and accomplish a much greater and purer church, a more glorious church than the church of the war for independence. A more glorious church than the church of the Reformation and a far more glorious church than the church of the patristic fathers.

God’s vision of history must be ours. We got to know where we came from and where we’re going. And then we don’t grow discouraged because this isn’t the end. This is the beginning of a work.

It’s like the building fund. Well, you know, 35, 30, 35 families. What can we build in a couple? Who knows what we can build? I know we’ll build nothing if we don’t put our hand to the task. What kind of house can you build in the next 30 years for yourself? Well, if you’re like me, probably not much. But it’ll be nothing if we don’t put our hand to the test. It’ll be nothing for our children if we don’t teach them not just by word, but by example, self-sacrifice to the end of becoming freeholders.

Same thing’s true of the institutional church. What kind of a community or army do we have? We have a head of household meeting and you know, barely half of the congregation shows up. Half the households are represented. This is the army of God called to muster and bivouac and consider a matter kind of. I’m not trying to step on your toes, but let’s admit it, folks. We’ve got a long way to go to be a disciplined group under the Lord Jesus Christ.

But let’s admit also that is exactly what God is accomplishing. That he will build us into a group of people who know the Lord Jesus Christ, love his manifestation in the context of our families and with ourselves and in our covenantal community and desire to preach that gospel across all of Portland and a church that will not rest over time until Portland sings praises to the Lord Jesus Christ in obedience to his word.

Easy to grow discouraged. Important to remember that God says don’t do that. Sinful to discourage others by open shows of your discouragement. Instead, correct your attitude. Know that what God is doing in the future and we have a great…