Ezra chapter 9, we'll be reading verses 5 through 10. Ezra is praying in this passage, Ezra chapter 9, verse 5, and at the evening sacrifice, I rose up from my heaviness, and having rent my garment and my mantle, I fell upon my knees, spread out my hands unto the Lord my God. Ezra's heart is broken, it's stirred. and said, oh my God, I'm ashamed. I'm ashamed. And blushed to lift up my face to thee, my God. For our iniquities are increased over our head, and our trespass is grown up unto the heavens. Since the days of our fathers have we been in a great trespass unto this day. And for our iniquities have we Our kings and our priests have been delivered into the hand of the kings of the lands to the sword, to captivity, to a spoil and to confusion of face as it is this day. And now for a little space, grace has been showed from the Lord our God. And by the way, for America, grace has been showed. I hope you know that. I hope you understand that. We don't know for how long, but I think we ought to pray for that, that God would shed his grace on America and God would send revival. I hope you're praying for this country. It desperately needs it. Ezra's praying for his country. His heart's broken as he looks at a nation that's plunged into iniquity, and he's beseeching God on behalf of the nation. And now, for a little space, grace hath been showed from the Lord our God, to leave us a remnant to escape, to give us a nail in His holy place, that our God may lighten our eyes and give us a little reviving in our bondage. For we were bondmen. Yet our God hath not forsaken us in our bondage, but hath extended mercy unto us in the sight of the kings of Persia, to give us a reviving, to set up the house of our God, and to repair the desolations thereof, and to give us a wall in Judah and in Jerusalem. And now, O our God, what shall we say after this? For we have forsaken. Thy commandments. Tell the message tonight when government stops, the work of God, part two. Let's pray. Father, it's so good to be here. Lord, you've been so very good to us. And Lord, we thank you for what you've done for Lighthouse Baptist Church. Thank you for the blessings. Thank you for so many wonderful people you've brought here. We could fellowship together. We could love each other. We could love you. We could serve you. Lord, you've been so good to us. Thank you for the great spirit of unity, for the fellowship that we can have in you with our brothers and sisters in Christ. And Lord, as we gather this afternoon, we thank you for the opportunity to do just that. We thank you for your word, and as we look at it, as we study it tonight, oh God, I pray that you would use it, that you would work in our hearts. Speak to our hearts tonight, we pray in Jesus' name, amen. We left off last time with the message of Zechariah that God had commissioned him to give to the post-exilic crowd that was back in the land. Post-exilic, as we said, simply means after the exile, they'd gone into bondage. they'd been there 70 years and so now some of these that had come back of course had been small children then they hadn't spent the 70 years the entire time in bondage but this is the post-exilic, post-exile crowd and a decree from the government had stopped the building of the temple Ezra chapter 4 verse 23, Now when the copy of King Artaxerxes' letter was read before Rehob and Shimshi the scribe and their companions, they went up in haste to Jerusalem unto the Jews and made them to cease by force and power. Then ceased the work of the house of God, which is at Jerusalem. So it ceased unto the second year of the reign of Darius, king of Persia. So for 15 years, Nothing happened. Nothing went forward as far as the work that God had called them to do. God waited a long time for people to get going again. Finally, his long suffering was over. He sent not one, but two prophets to wake up the people. to challenge them, to stir them, to get busy again. Zechariah didn't exactly ease into his message. He didn't try to win the crowd over before he got to the heart of his message. When I was in Bible college in homiletics and hermeneutics and one of the things that they said was you have to have an opening statement and that opening statement has to be something that's going to The crowds gonna hang on to and obviously I didn't know always pay much attention to some of those things People preach different ways, but that's what they said and homiletics that you have to have that opening statement that captivating statement that will get people tuned into the message and here is his opening statement Zechariah 1 verse 2 the Lord hath been sword as pleased with your fathers That's the opening of his message The Lord hath been sore displeased. The Lord was really upset with your fathers. In verse 3, Therefore say thou unto them, Thus saith the Lord of hosts, Turn ye unto me, saith the Lord of hosts, and I will turn unto you, saith the Lord of hosts. This isn't that complicated. In verse 4, Be ye not as your fathers. Under whom the former prophets have cried, saying, Thus saith the Lord of hosts, Turn ye now from your evil ways and from your evil doings. But they did not hear nor hearken unto me, saith the Lord. And then the Lord, through his prophet, asked the question that we saw last week, Zechariah 1, verse 5, your fathers, where are they? Where are they? The opening of the message, don't be like your fathers. Don't be like your fathers. They didn't listen when the prophets preached the word of God. They let it just go right on by. They didn't change their ways. Don't be like them. And then he says, your fathers, where are they? The answer to that question by the Jewish way of thinking was very difficult. A very difficult answer. To their ongoing shame, the answer to that question was Babylon. Babylon, a sign of the great judgment of Almighty God on the nation, the proud nation of Judah. Thus signifying the judgment of God upon them and the permanent reminder, where are your fathers? They're in Babylon, buried there. In Israel, in Jerusalem, before the eastern gate, Down through the Kidron Valley, up the side of the Mount of Olives, you can see thousands and thousands of graves. And their graves are sarcophaguses on top of the ground, white concrete burial vaults, if you will, marble, different materials. Perhaps the most common picture of Jerusalem you'll ever see is that of, you see the Golden Dome and you see the city of Jerusalem, you see the wall, that's probably the most common picture you'll ever see. That picture is taken from the Mount of Olives. As you stand on the Mount of Olives, the Kidron Valley is below you, you look across and then you see that picture of the Golden Dome and the walls of Jerusalem and the city of Jerusalem behind it. And you see that sometimes at sunset, sunrise, different times, but that's the most common picture. If they would take the camera and instead of focusing in on the wall of Jerusalem and the Golden Dome and all of that, and they would just bring the camera down a little bit, you'd see thousands and thousands of graves. So as you stand there, as you stand there on the Mount of Olives and you look, there's just an awful lot of graves. It can cost well over $100,000 to be buried there. It's highly prized by the Jews. From there you can see the eastern gate Ezekiel chapter 44 verse one, then he brought me back by the way of the gate of the outward sanctuary, which looketh toward the east and it was shut. Then said the Lord unto me, this gate shall be shut. It shall not be opened and no man shall enter in by it because the Lord, the God of Israel has entered in by it. Therefore it shall be shut. It is for the prince, the priest. He shall sit in it to eat bread before the Lord. He shall enter by the way of the porch of that gate and shall go out by the way of the same. It is believed by many that Jesus actually, when he came into Jerusalem, the triumphal entry, the hosanna, the palm branches being strewn in the way, the garments being put on the path, it's believed that he went in by the way of the Eastern Gate. We don't know that, but that's the most logical way to go, coming from Bethany, that's the way he would logically go. And then after that, the gate was shut completely. It's bricked off, it's blocked off. You couldn't possibly walk through the Eastern Gate. It's a solid wall now. It's believed that that gate will remain that way, even though some people have tried to open it, that gate will remain that way until the Prince of Peace comes triumphantly through that Eastern Gate. And so for the Jew to be buried there, With a view of the Eastern Gate, that's as good as it gets. That's the best burial possible by the Jewish way of thinking, and there's limited amount of space, and they'll pay premium dollars to be able to be buried looking toward that Eastern Gate, believing that the Messiah will come through that, and they'll have front row seat. So for a Jew to be buried there, It's considered a high honor and even a sign of the approval of God. By the way, Matthew 23, the passage where Jesus really lays into the Pharisees and the religious crowd, Matthew 23, 27, woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you are like unto whited sepulchres. to believe that Jesus preached that message on the side of the Mount of Olives. And so the backdrop, the object lesson, if you will, were all of those whited sepulchers. And in that context, in that setting, He lays bare their hearts, as you can just look around and see all of the whited sepulchres. He said, what one of you scribes and Pharisees hypocrites, for you're like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones and of all uncleanness. Even so, ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within you're full of hypocrisy and iniquity. You can imagine how those words stung as they're sitting right there amongst these whited sepulchres, and Jesus is addressing directly the religious crowd and all of their finery, all of their religious garb, and as we've said, you go there to this day, you can see all of that, thousands of dollars sometimes, just even their hat, the guy that sold us, can cost $3,000 or $4,000, very, very expensive, and they'll parade around in their nice, fine, religious clothes, and he says, Why did sepulcher? It's beautiful on the outside. Within, it's full of dead men's bones. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you build the tombs of the prophets and garnish the sepulchers of the righteous and say, if we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. Oh, we wouldn't have done that. Wherefore, ye be witnesses unto yourselves that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets. Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers, ye serpents, ye generation of vipers. How can ye escape the damnation of hell? You can just imagine that message, how well that went over. But regardless of all of that, it was great honor to be buried there, and it was perpetual shame to be buried in Babylon. So it's a very pointed question that Zechariah asks, hey, by the way, where are your fathers? And they're not here. They're buried in Babylon. And then in verse six, he says, but my words and my statutes, which I commanded my servants, the prophets, did they not take hold of your fathers? Did the message somehow not get through? They returned and said, like as the Lord of hosts thought to do unto us according to our ways and according to our doings, so hath he dealt with us. Your fathers would have to testify if they came today, and indeed they would have before they died. God did what he said he was gonna do. God was true to his word. And his word was if you don't turn, if you don't repent, judgment's coming. And they heard the message so often, so many times, by so many prophets, they got used to it, and then they didn't hear it anymore. Read the book of Jeremiah. As Jeremiah over and over and over says, God's gonna judge you if you don't change your ways. They accused him of being a traitor. They threw him in a dungeon. They tried to have him killed. They persecuted him. He kept giving the message over and over and over. They got tired of hearing it. And then they didn't hear it anymore. And so here's Zechariah coming out on the scene saying, wait a minute, you guys need to learn from history. Your fathers could testify that God did everything he said he was gonna do. He's true to his word. So that's how Zechariah opened his message to some Jews who were very satisfied and complacent in their relationship with God. They were fine by their way of thinking. They were pretty self-satisfied. Meanwhile, as we mentioned previously, Malachi was also preaching at this time. In fact, his first recorded message to this same group actually preceded Zechariah's message by about two months. Malachi's message was about two months before this, or Haggai's message. They were a great one-two punch. Here are the opening words of Haggai's message, not Malachi, Haggai. Malachi would come after. Haggai 1, verse 2, Thus speaketh the Lord of hosts, saying, This people say, The time is not come, the time that the Lord's house should be built. This is probably the number one excuse to this day. It's my favorite excuse. Probably yours. You know, now's not a good time for me. I'm really busy right now. I have a lot on my plate right now. I really need to get through whatever, fill in the blank, before I can commit to fill in the blank. Well, I'd like to help. I'd like to get involved, but work is really crazy right now. When things settle down a little, then maybe I can think about getting involved. As soon as things slow down for me. My schedule is super full right now, maybe later. Sound familiar? You ever find yourself saying things like that? You ever hear those sayings? Because they're very calming for our conscience. Those sayings work really well for us because, number one, A, it sounds like we really want to help. B, we would if we could. And C, one day, eventually, sometime in the future, we fully plan on getting involved. There are actually a lot of things wrong with these excuses. They appease our conscience. They let us off the hook. We still look good. Next year and the next and maybe the next, we'll probably be saying the same thing. So for the Jews in Jerusalem, the time has not come. It's not a good time right now. We want to. You know we want to do that. It's just now is really a bad time. Just not the right time for 15 years. for 15 years. You say, wow, how could they have that mindset for that long? There's Christians that have had that mindset for that long. I'll go door knocking when I learn a little bit more. How much more? For how long? I'll get involved when my situation at work changes. When is it going to change? Will I retire in 17 years? In the meantime, we feel good. Because we've kind of made a commitment, it's just not right now. Not right now. You know people that do things for God do it in spite of their schedule? Not because of it. They plan, they purpose, they set some things in place. And here's a crowd that got to where they were saying it evidently with no sense of shame or even embarrassment. The people say, the time has not come. It's not a good time right now, it's just not. And so, God's message, Haggai 1 verse 3, then came the word of the Lord by Haggai, the prophet saying, is it time for you, O ye, to dwell in your sealed houses, and this house lie waste? Your sealed houses, the word means literally in the Hebrew, it's a finished house, it's a house that's nice. It's got the molding and the wainscotting and the chair rails, and it's all laid out, it's paneled, it looks good. And so they're saying, you know what? We'd like to build the Lord's house, and now's not a good time. And so the prophet says, you know what God wanted me to ask you? How it is you found time to get your own house so fixed up, and you had no time for his? That's the message. That's the message. God says he wants me to tell you, he's noticed you have a lot of time to do what you want to do on your own stuff. but you don't have time for his stuff. Pretty convicting message. Because they'd all sat around and felt pretty good about it. Yeah, I'm just so busy. I don't even know if I'm coming or going. I'm telling you, I get up and I run, run, run all day long. At the end of the day, I fall asleep exhausted in bed and get up the next day and do it again. Someday it'll change, but right now, no time. No time. God says, well, I noticed that You've gotten your house fixed up. I've noticed you have time for things you really want to do. After pointing that out, God makes a great statement. Verse 5, now therefore, thus saith the Lord of hosts, consider your ways. That's the message of God through Haggai to the people. Think about what you're doing. Think about what you're saying. Consider your ways. Look at verse seven. Thus saith the Lord of hosts, consider your ways. Look at chapter two, verse 15. And now I pray you, consider from this day and upward. Chapter two, verse 18. Consider now from this day and upward. Again, verse 18. Consider it. And so, over and over and over, God says, think about something. Think about it. It was time for some serious reflection. It was time for introspection. They needed to stop and consider their lives, their priorities, their excuses. And God helps them with their reflection. You look at verse 6, Haggai chapter 1, verse 6, and bring in little. Ye eat, but ye have not enough. Ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink. Ye clothe you, but there is none warm. And he that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes. But wait a minute. Those aren't bad things. Those are all necessary things. Sowing for a harvest It's the lazy man that doesn't sow for a harvest. Eating, drinking, those are necessary things. Getting dressed, earning money, working. These aren't sinful activities. These are all necessary activities. These are all God-ordained activities, if you will. But yet we have here in this message, God in essence is asking, so how is all this working out for you? This sowing grain and eating and drinking and clothing and earning wages, how is all this working out for you? These are all good things. What's the problem? Again, verse 6, you have so much and bring in little. You eat, but you have not enough. You drink, but you're not filled with drink. You clothe you, but there is none warm. And he that earneth wages, earneth wages to put it in a bag with holes. Thus saith the Lord of hosts, consider your ways. But Lord, these are all good things. These are all necessary things. What's the problem? Matthew chapter 6. Verse 24, no man can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. Therefore, I say unto you, and take no thought for your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor yet for your body. What you shall put on is not the life more than meat and the body than raiment. And that word take no thought in the Greek is literally don't be anxious about it. Don't be obsessed with, if you will. And don't let that be your priority. God is not saying don't ever make plans and just kind of take things as they go, be totally unstructured and just kind of waltz your way through life. He's saying, but don't you be anxious about this. Don't you make this the main priority in your life. Don't let that be what's the most important thing. God is concerned, very concerned with our priorities. In fact, He would close that passage, that chapter, Matthew chapter 6, with words that we've heard many times, but seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. And all these things should be added unto you. That's given in the context, in the context of necessary things. He said, wait a minute, those aren't the first things you ought to seek. Seek ye first the kingdom of God. That's the priority. These necessary things, they're necessary. But seek ye first the kingdom of God. Philippians 2.21, for all seek their own, not the things which are Jesus Christ's. That's the nature of man. That's the nature even of a regenerated man if he's not careful. He's more concerned, more preoccupied, obsessed even with the things of this life. And God wants to change priorities. Luke chapter 12 verse 30, for all these things do the nations of the world seek after. And your father knoweth that ye have need of these things. Again, they're necessary things. He said, look, your father knows you have need of these things. He's not oblivious to that, he's not blind to that. He knows you have need of these things. But don't be like all the nations of the world, that that's what their focus is put on. God made a phenomenal promise to the Israelites in Exodus chapter 34. In Exodus 34 verse one, or 21, excuse me, he says, six days thou shalt work. But on the seventh day thou shalt rest. In earring time and in harvest thou shalt rest. Now that's an incredible command. I didn't grow up on a farm. I know a little bit about farming. We did a little bit of farming when I was growing up, but it wasn't a farm. Anybody in here grow up on a farm? Few of you. And so you know that in sowing time and in harvest, earring time and harvest, it's all hands on deck. In fact, Proverbs condemns the young man that sleeps in time of harvest. Why? It's everybody's gonna be working and you're working long days. You're getting up way before the sun gets up and you're staying up long after the sun goes down on a regular full-size farm. You're working, you're working hard. and especially at harvest time. You're not working eight-hour days or 10-hour days or 12-hour days. You're working as long as you possibly can until you can just barely make your way into bed, and then you're getting up and you're going again. And the roosters crow at about 3.45 in the morning, and you're getting up and getting at it and wanting to strangle the rooster, but you have to get up and get going. And so when you're planting, the two most critical times of the year on a farm, you're planting. Your planting has to be done right and it has to be thorough. And if you get to where you're thinking, I'm just tired. I don't even think I'm going to plant the back 40. You're going to pay a price for that eventually. You're going to pay a big price. No, you've got to do it. And then at harvest time, if you don't get out and do it in a timely manner, you're going to lose some of the harvest and it's not going to be the quality that it could be and should be. And so everybody's working hard all day long, every day. And the Lord says, I've got a command for you. Even in harvest time. Even in sowing time. You better observe the Sabbath. Wait a minute, Lord. For those two or three weeks where we've gotta get the crops in, it would be okay to work Sabbath days in, wouldn't it? He said, no. Even in planting time. Even in harvest time. So that's the first major thing. That's the big major commandment. But then God goes beyond that and he tells them this. And thou should observe the feast of weeks of the first fruits of wheat harvest, and the feast of ingathering at the year's end. Thrice in the year shall all your men's children appear before the Lord God, the God of Israel." Wow. So three times a year, in addition to observing every single Sabbath, even in the busiest times of the year, but three times in the year, They were to go and they were to observe the festival, the feast days, which would run, when you count the time of travel, getting there and going back, and the time of the festival, you're talking about about a week and a half's time. And God says, you're to go. Agrarian culture, they were very busy. Work was hard. God says, I wanna make sure you take the times off you need to. And their rest and their relationship with God were intertwined. Our rest is more intertwined with amusement and not thoughts of God, but their rest was intertwined with thoughts of God. And so the Sabbath was to be a day of rest, but it was to be a day of spiritual growth and fellowship as well. So it was with the festivals. The festivals were enjoyable times. It was a time when they would gather together and it was a time of celebrating and singing and eating and all of that. It was not an unenjoyable time. It was an enjoyable time. But it was tied in with their worship with God. It all had spiritual significance. Every one of their festivals had spiritual significance. And God said, I want you to know that those three times a year when these festivals, these feasts are set up, you have got to go. And I want you to think about that. Think about what God had required of them. Three times in the year, they had to go. And we don't have the magnitude of what God is asking them, but even as God asks them, he gives them reassurance. Look at the next verse. For I will cast out the nations before thee and enlarge thy borders. Neither shall any man desire thy land when thou shalt go up to a peer before the Lord thy God thrice in the year. See, three times in the year, every year, three times in the year, every year, all the men, all the men had to go up to Jerusalem for festivals. They would be gone for over a week. Again, counting travel time, sometimes it would be close to two weeks for some. These were regularly scheduled annual calendar events. Now think about that from a military perspective. Your enemies can plan ahead. They know when you're going to be gone. It would be akin to you going on vacation and just planting a sign in your front yard, I'll be in New York for two weeks and all my doors are unlocked. You're wide open. Their enemies would know this is the time of the Feast of Tabernacles. All the men are gone. All the men are gone. The cities are being protected by the women and children. I mean, it would be like the enemies could say from, to put it in our calendar, oh, from October 12th to October 21st, all the cities are being protected by the women and children. You know how much faith it would take for all the men to move out of the city and caravan down and go up to Jerusalem? knowing they're leaving all their valuables, all their everything in the care of their women and their children. Took tremendous faith. God says, I'll keep your enemies from wanting your land when you go up and do what I'm telling you to do. If you'll put first what I'm telling you to do, I'll take care of the other details. If you'll just trust me and obey me and step out by faith, And I can imagine some years as they're going, and you have people going, and they're telling their wife and kids goodbye, and they're going to Jerusalem, and I can imagine sometimes maybe in a moment of weakness and weak faith, they're thinking, man, I sure hope, I sure hope the Hittites don't invade the land. I sure hope the Ammonites don't come through. I sure hope the Philistines don't come up from the south and wipe us out, because it's just women and children. They had to take God at His word. They were basing everything on his word, everything. God says he'll protect us. God says he'll keep our enemies from wanting on. So for three weeks of the year, four weeks of the year, you add the travel time, it wasn't even in the hearts of the enemies of the land to even think about invading the land. Militarily speaking, the most logical time to come through the land, you could wipe it out almost overnight. God says, I won't even let them think about it. Trust me, trust me. Look at the verses again. Exodus 34, 23, thrice in the year, shall all your men, children appear before the Lord God, the God of Israel. For I will cast out the nations before thee, enlarge thy borders, neither shall any man desire thy land, when thou shalt go up to appear before the Lord thy God thrice in the year. Look at verse 27, the Lord sent unto Moses, write thou these words, for after the tenor of these words, I have made a covenant with thee and with Israel. God says, I'm putting my name on the line. I'm gonna commit to you. I'll guard your land while you're gone. Write it down. I'm gonna make a covenant that took faith for the children of Israel to believe God. just like it takes faith for you and for me to seek first the kingdom of God. He said, I've got a lot of stuff I've got to do. And God is saying, in essence, those things can wait. Your priorities are messed up. Your priorities are upside down. They're backwards. Seek first the kingdom of God. God is telling them, you do what I've told you to do, you make work what I've told you to, and you have that be first priority, and I'll cover you on the rest. Back to Matthew 6, verse 25, he says, therefore, I say unto you, in light of the fact that you have to pick, you have to choose, am I going to serve God or am I going to serve the things of this world, mammon and what mammon can buy? So he says, therefore, in light of that, therefore, I say unto you, take no thought for your life. Again, don't be anxious about. Don't be anxious for your life and worried and fretful. How are we going to take care of this? What ye shall eat or what ye shall drink, nor yet for your body what ye shall put on? Is not the life more than meat and the body than raiment? Behold, the fowls of the air, for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Those are necessary things that he's talking about. It's your food and your clothing and your drink and all of that, those are necessary things. He says, don't worry about those. Don't let that be the priority. The priority ought to be doing the will of God. And all of these other things will come into place. Verse 27, which of you By taking thought, can I add one cubit unto his stature? Why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow, they toil not, neither do they spin, and yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, in light of that, if God so clothed the grass of the field, which today is and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? He says, God takes care of things all over the world, all the time. Takes care of the grass in the field, the flowers, the birds in the air. That's a lot of stuff to take care of. And God's told us over and over, those things aren't near as important as you, but I can take care of those. He says, aren't you better than all those things? If God takes care of those, don't you think he can take care of you? So therefore take no thought, verse 31, saying, what shall we eat or what shall we drink? Or wherewithal shall we be clothed? Take no thought, don't be anxious about those things. For after all these things do the Gentiles seek. He's saying, do you understand the lost person obsesses about these things? Do you understand it's the lost person worries about these things? Here he's using Gentiles in the sense of the unbeliever. We say Jews and Gentiles today, but oftentimes in the Bible when it's speaking of Gentiles, it's referring to the unbeliever. He says the unbeliever obsesses about what he's going to eat or drink or how he's going to be clothed. He worries about how he's going to pay the bills. He worries about how he's going to pay the electric bill. He worries about how he's going to pay the rent. He worries about how he's going to get the car fixed. He worries, he worries, he worries, he worries. He says, you're not supposed to worry. You're not supposed to. If our priorities are right and our focus is on living for God and bringing glory to God and pleasing God, God can take care of all the rest. But when we don't do what we're supposed to do and don't expect God to take care of the rest. I think in the time of coming into the promised land If there had been a village elder, they gathered all the men of the city together and said, men, I've been thinking. God wants all of the men to go up to Jerusalem. We're going to be gone about a week and a half. I was thinking about that last night. That's kind of foolhardy. That's pretty risky. Think about it, men. We got enemies that are just 10 miles here over the River Jordan and just 10 miles away. And they've got spies out all the time anyway, and they're going to know if all the men leave. So I've been thinking maybe what we'll do is we'll divide up, and we'll just have a third of the men go to each of the feasts, and two-thirds will stay back, and we'll protect the city. Guess which city in Jerusalem would be the most vulnerable in all the land? It would be that one. It would be that one. And God would have undoubtedly brought in the Ammonites or the Hittites or the Philistines or somebody. And that city would have paid a high price because they didn't trust God. And so then that promise would not have been theirs. It wouldn't have belonged to them. God says, no, I'll keep your enemies from wanting your land if and when you go do what I told you to do. And so when God says, seek ye first the kingdom of God and all these things shall be added unto you, that promise is conditional. It's contingent on us seeking first the kingdom of God. And so if our lives are consumed with what we earn and what we can get and this and this and this, and then all of a sudden we don't even have enough to pay the rent. We say, wait a minute, I thought God was gonna supply all my needs. It's contingent, conditional on us saying, you know what? I want God to be first in my life. And then everything else can be number two, three, four, five, six. I wanna seek first the kingdom. and then let God fill in the cracks. It doesn't mean you're to be lazy. It doesn't mean you quit your job. It doesn't mean you absolve yourself of responsibilities. It just means you reorder your priorities to where God is first. The Israelites were in trouble because they sat around for years saying, you know, it's just not a good time. It's just not a good time right now. We're so busy. We'll do it one day. We'll do it one day. Just not today. We got a lot to do right now. I think next year. Next year, yeah, next year, we'll get going. For 15 years, they were content. And God finally said, that's it. I'm not sending you one prophet. I'm sending you two. And the message from both of them is the same. They overlapped. Zechariah comes along and says, hey, Your fathers, where are they? Oh, that's right, Babylon. They lived in disgrace, in bondage, and they died in disgrace. And they would testify to you, God did everything he warned that he was gonna do if they didn't put him first. And Malachi comes along with a message saying, Haggai, not Malachi, I don't know why I brought Malachi in as a guest speaker. Haggai. Haggai says hey, would you would you consider your ways? Would you think about what you're doing? You're doing all these things and you can say well, they're necessary things and they are necessary things But they're not priority You're here to glorify God. You're here to serve God and when you get so busy planting sowing reaping feeding clothing drinking making money and you have no time for God, and we don't have time to really develop the passage today, but the whole idea with him saying you have all these things, but they're not satisfying. They're not. They're not satisfying. You're earning wages, put it in a bag with holes. You eat and you're not filled. You drink, you're not satisfied. You're just making a lot of money, and you don't even have enough money left at the end of the month because I'm not your priority. The time has not come. Would you think about what you're doing? Powerful message from Haggai and Zechariah. They were content to let the work of God stop because they were busy living their own lives. We dare not do that. We dare not do that. Get so busy. That it's my schedule, my plans, my goals, and maybe, just maybe, someday, hopefully, I'll serve God. Just not today. Not this week. Not this month. Not this year. It's been a crazy year. Maybe 2021. Right now, the time's not come. Some good lessons from some prophets sent by God to some people that were very complacent. in their Christian lives. May we learn from them. Father, thank you for your word tonight. Lord, I pray that we'd be honest with you. Honest with ourselves. Lord, that we would be willing to face up to the reality that maybe you're not first in our lives. Maybe we're not seeking first the kingdom of God. Maybe there's a lot of other things that are really more important in our lives. Lord, help us get the message, burn it deep within our hearts. Help us respond to it, in Jesus' name, amen.