our scripture in Haggai once again as we continue that series in this small little book. We'll look at Haggai chapter 2. You can find that on page 939 in the provided Bibles. And for those of you who may not have been here for the last couple weeks or are visiting with us, We've seen Haggai come and challenge the people to what their heart is set on, what their priorities are. And so he tells them to consider their priorities and move, instead of away from their comfort, toward God and His priorities, to go back and build that temple which they have left in a pile of rubble. Last week we saw the response of the people to that, a very uncommon response, but we saw how the Lord was working through that, that He stirred their spirit, that He gave them this willing spirit to go about the work. And they repented and believed in this God and His promises. And now today we will see what happens approximately seven weeks later. So we're gonna read the first nine verses. Hear now God's holy word. On the 21st of the seventh month, the word of the Lord came by Haggai, the prophet, saying, Speak now to Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua, the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, and to the remnant of the people, saying, who is left among you who saw this temple in its former glory? How do you see it now? Does it not seem to you like nothing in comparison? But now take courage, Zerubbabel, declares the Lord. Take courage also, Joshua, son of Jehozadak, the high priest, and all you people of the land. Take courage, declares the Lord. And work, for I am with you, declares the Lord of hosts. As for the promises which I made you when you came out of Egypt, My Spirit is abiding in your midst. Do not fear. For thus says the Lord of hosts, Once more, in a little while, I am going to shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and also the dry land. I will shake all the nations and they will come with the wealth of all nations. And I will fill this house with glory, says the Lord of hosts. The silver is mine and the gold is mine, declares the Lord of hosts. The latter glory of this house will be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts. And in this place, I will give peace, declares the Lord of hosts. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of the Lord stands forever. Beloved people of God, I don't know if they do it here, but in the States, we did something called the Pinewood Derby Race for the cadets. Now in the Pinewood Derby Race, we would be given this block of wood, and we would be told to make a car out of this, and we would race other cars. Now I always had such grand plans for this block of wood. I would draw on it what was in my mind and what I thought this car should look like and how it would best work to stay on the road and go down that track the fastest. I had these grand plans of this awesome looking car, but as I would cut As I would sand, I would make mistakes. I'd cut off a little too much here and a little too much there, or sand too harshly here with the wrong sandpaper. I'd mess up. And eventually, I would lose all hope of seeing that car the way I had first imagined it. What I would see before me was nothing what I imagined it or wanted it to be. And the people of God have come now building this temple. They're working at it hard and they have in their mind's eye this amazing temple which would match at least the glory of Solomon's temple. The elderly among them could tell them all about it. They could look at the records and the history of what Solomon's temple looked like and how it was covered in gold and all this ornate work and the skilled workers working on it. But as they come to this place, it's not quite matching what they had anticipated. They look at this footprint and it seems meager in comparison to the ideal temple of the past. But God commands them. He says to them, endure. Despite your thoughts on how this looks on the outside, endure, continue to work. He commands these people to endurance along with a promise of a greater glory for this house. So that is our theme this morning. God commands endurance to a disheartened people with the promise of greater glory for his house. And so we will look at verse three, where we see the past glories bring current discouragement. Then we will look at verses four and five, seeing that the current commands for the people to endure, to continue the work that they had begun. And finally, we look at God's greater glories promised for the future. And so Haggai comes again in our passage to bring another word from the Lord. And it's likely that it comes at a time after they have just gone through several days of celebrating the Feast of the Tabernacles, which means that they would have traveled around in a tent and stayed in these temporary dwellings, and they would have come to the temple And this would be the final day in which they come to the temple. It also was the same month in which Solomon finished his temple and dedicated it to the Lord. So the people would have come to this meager temple at this time with fresh thoughts of Solomon's temple and how God had dwelled with them in the past. in His wonderful dwelling with them as they wandered through the wilderness. They would be looking at the progress and the footprint. They would be assessing the materials that they had as they had to continue forward to build this temple. And you could easily see that as they were going through famine and hard times, that they were falling up short. Things were not the way they had anticipated or wanted. And so once again, Haggai comes with this question. He uses these questions to challenge their worldview, to say, this is how you look at things, isn't it? And then to say, should you be? How ought you respond to this? And so he says to them in verse three, who is left among you who saw this temple in its former glory? How do you see it now? Does it not seem like nothing to you in comparison? You could quite literally say he's saying, the temple is absolutely nothing in your eyes, isn't it? This temple is nothing when you look at it, isn't it? It doesn't seem like much, just this slight and meager beginnings. So the people are beginning to realize that they can never replace that temple, that previous temple. And even they might have had some exaggerated understanding of this temple. Many of the people that were old enough to remember the temple were probably quite young. And we know that in our, those of us who are older, sometimes we tend to exaggerate the past. For example, when my dad knew that I was going to follow in his footsteps and run cross-country, he was very quick to tell me that he ran the 5K in 12 minutes. Now, as I've heard, some people have realized that that would be a really, really fast time among some of the fastest people in the world. But, as we later found out and found the high school records, it was not 12, but it was 21. So, I did end up beating his time. We tend to exaggerate the past, don't we? We tend to exaggerate and think about those things in the past, and we think how wonderful they were. And these people, too, had exaggerated the past. But there was also a reality to the situation. Because there were so many things taken from the temple that they could never replace. The ark of the testimony was gone. The tablets of the law written by God's very own hands were taken away. The pot of manna was gone. Aaron's rod that had budded was gone. The urnum and thunum were also taken. Sure, replicas and likenesses could be put in the place, but they could never replace what was once there. And so the people become despondent. They become depressed. They look upon this meager beginnings and they lose that excitement and that energizing that they once had. They were so excited and going heavy at it, but they lose so quickly again their focus as they look at this meager beginning. People of God, it can be like that for us as well. When we look at the church and we think about its slow growth, We can sometimes become despondent, become depressed, lose our ambition. Is it really all worth it? All this work that I'm putting into it, is it really worth it? We might even think about the temple in and of ourselves as we read 1 Corinthians 6.19 where we are told that our body is a temple of God and we are to glorify God in our body. We recognize as we take meager and small steps forward in our walk with God, it's easy. to get despondent, to get depressed, to think, will we ever make it? Will we ever match the ideal? Will we ever match what we are even called to do? Will we ever become, as a church and as individuals, worthy of the glory of God? Can we ever do that? It can begin to make us feel hopeless because the standards are too high and the commandments are too hard. We can say to ourselves, I will never bring the glory that is worthy of God's name. And God comes and says to the people and to you right now that this temple will never be worthy, not without me. because the temple never achieved anything, but it was my glory that filled the temple. It was me who made the temple glorious. And so God comes to these people in the midst of their depression. And He tells them and commands them to do and continue with the work that they had started, which is our second point. He gives these commands along with a promise. And He says in verse four and five, But now take courage, Zerubbabel, declares the Lord. Take courage also, Joshua, son of Jehoshadak, the high priest, and all you people of the lands. Take courage, declares the Lord. And work, for I am with you, declares the Lord of hosts. He commands them to continue on, to strive, to endure. Don't fall back. Don't fall away. Take courage, he says. These people are focusing on something which they say is unattainable. There are many times in Israel's history that God commands similar commands to people who are in a similar situation. Where the people look at things with their own eyes, not with eyes of faith. And they say, look at these great giants in the land of Canaan. How can we ever knock them down? How will we ever be able to conquer these people? We are a small, little nation. But God comes to Joshua and He says, be strong and courageous. Be strong and very courageous, being careful to do all the law of Moses. Do not turn from the right hand or to the left. And then he says, have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened. Do not be dismayed. For the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. The people of God are called once again to be faithful. to obey the commands of God despite what they see, despite their depression and understanding of what they see before them. Their expectations and their fears have caused them to be despondent, but God calls them to endure, and He requires obedience even in the midst of hopelessness. The people are not to focus on what they see. but they are to focus on the word of God, to focus on His promises to them and what He has commanded. And so he adds those words, that I am with you. And then in verse five it says, as for the promises which I made you when you came out of Egypt, my spirit is abiding in your midst. Do not fear. Yes, the people of God look at this temple. They say it is not worthy of being a dwelling place of God. But God is telling them, I am with you anyways. I am there with you, and this ought to give you courage to continue. to continue in obedience, to know that I am the God who is with you. I have promised, even from the earliest days, when I brought you out of Egypt, that I will be with you, and I will follow that promise all the way to the end, and I have stayed with you, even though this temple is not what it once was. because a temple made with human hands can never contain His glory. Solomon himself says this when he dedicated the temple, that the temple made by human hands cannot contain the God of heaven, for He is greater And it was not the silver or gold that make this temple glorious, but it was God's glory that came and dwelt upon that temple that shook it. And he revealed his glory there at the temple. So people of God, sometimes we are tempted to look back at those previous eras and exaggerate them. We think to ourselves, wow, when we read that apostolic age, those places when the apostles grew the church daily, daily there were added to the number. We think to ourselves, why? Why can't we? And yes, those were great times in which the Lord added to the church. But he was with them then as he is with us now. We might look at the Reformation age and think about how strong and how faithful they were. How awesome those men must have been to be in their presence. But God was with them then as he is with us now. For Jesus said that he is with us even to the end of the age. So let us not look back in history to see this an exaggerated times, but to look at God's promises that he gives throughout history. To look to him and his word to find strength in his dwelling presence with us even now. And so God, through Haggai, takes the people's attention off that past temple, which has caused them to despair, and points them to that past covenant promise, saying that, I am with you. I am faithful. I have told you that I will be with you, and I am with you. but then he promises to give them an even more glorious future, which brings us to our third point. In the hearts of God's people, the promises are given, or God gives to the hearts of God's people a promise of a better future, so that they may be urged in obedience to understand that God remains faithful and He is going to bring about an even greater future, not because of their faithfulness, but because of His, and He will work through them and in these things. You will note that the term Lord of Hosts was used quite regularly. In those six verses, six through nine, it was used quite a few times. Now this word Lord of Hosts emphasizes that sense of God's name, that he is this great commander, that he commands the hosts of heaven, that he is mighty and powerful with his great army. And so here, that sense of who he is is being emphasized. That he is this mighty and powerful God who achieves what he purposes to do. Who accomplishes what he has set his mind to and the things that he has promised. And he has promised to act. and he will bring about a greater future for his dwelling place. And it will be far better than what their eyes can see as they try to assess this situation. We want to note that this is not happening because they are working on this, but instead it's going to happen because He is faithful, He is strong, and He is the God who shakes both heavens and the earth. It is by His work that it is accomplished, as you can see in those verses six through nine. And so he promises to do this. He says in verse six that once more, in a little while, I'm going to shake the heavens and the earth. He promises that he is going to shake the things of this earth. And when God comes and comes to earth, the earth trembles. We see that in Exodus 19 as he comes to dwell on Mount Sinai. It shakes at God's presence. We read that in Hebrews 12 as well. The great glory of God shakes this world because it is not worthy. But this shaking also changes the aspect of this world. where it shakes up the nations. It shakes them to bring treasures to the temple and bring great things. As it says in verse seven, that the wealth of the nations will come and I will bring this and I will fill this house with glory. And so this shaking of the heavens is this understanding of the manifestation of God's glory, that he is changing the way the world works and the way that he is going to work in bringing this to the people. And so he promises that he will be with his people and do these things. Now in one sense, we look at these promises and we wonder if this really happened with the temple. If you read throughout and see the histories as well, and we read throughout the Bible, we don't really see the glory of God ever filling this exilic temple, this post-exilic temple where the people have returned from exile. And so we wonder, has God been faithful? Has he really done what he has told the people he would do? Now, one way we can understand this is that God, in some ways, does fulfill these things. Because his ultimate promise is that he will be with his people. And in the Old Testament, He was with his people at the temple. That was the primary place that he dwelled with his people. First of all, the tabernacle, which went around with them. Secondly, when they went into the nation of Canaan and took it over, he placed his name upon Mount Zion and Jerusalem and dwelt with them there. But then in the new covenant, in the new way, Jesus Christ comes as the temple, and he dwells with his people. In a sense, it's an upgrade. Now, many of you are probably familiar with computers. And so one illustration we can maybe use is that a program, a computer program, does a certain task. It claims to do one thing. It's for a certain purpose. So for example, a word processor where you type it out and you would do the making documents. Now when you get an upgrade of this system, it anticipates to do it in a better way. You anticipate that it would be far easier and far better to work with. This is similar in this way as well, as God promises that He will dwell with His people. That is the essence of what He has promised. And He, in a sense, upgrades each way. So finally and completely he comes in Christ and he comes to his people. But then he also goes to heaven and prepares that heavenly dwelling place where he will once again bring heaven to earth, his dwelling place to his people. And that dwelling place can never be shaken. It can never be moved. because it is the perfect dwelling place of God without sin. And so Jesus himself enters this heavenly dwelling place and prepares it for us as a kingdom that cannot be shaken. And so ultimately these promises are fulfilled in that heavenly dwelling place of God that is being prepared for us. through Christ and His work. And so when we read Revelation 21, these words bring such a glorious hope to us and give us a reason to endure, a reason to continue to be faithful to God as He promises to us. Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people. And God Himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more. Neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. The wall was built of jasper while the city was pure gold like clear glass. The foundations of the wall of city were adorned with every kind of jewel. The first was jasper, the second sapphire, the third agate, the fourth emerald, the fifth onyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh chrysalis, the eighth barrel, the ninth topaz, the tenth Syropes, the 11th jacinth and the 12th amphis, and the 12 gates were 12 pearls. Each of the gates made of a single pearl, and the city was a pure gold like transparent glass. And I saw no temple in the city, for it is the temple, or for it is For its temple is the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it. For the glory of God gives its light and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light the nations will walk and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. And its gates will never be shut by day and there will be no night there. They will bring into it glory and honor of the nations, but nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb's book of life. What a wonderful description of God's dwelling place. The hope that we have that is given to us in Christ Jesus. So children of God, it is easy for our faith to get discouraged when the results of our labors are not met with the fruit that we hope for. We can see little progress and we may think that it's not worthwhile. But God comes to us and says take courage. Work. Do not be afraid, for I am with you. For He is present with us, and He has prepared a place for us to dwell with Him face to face. For there is even greater blessings that we will attain in heaven. Let us pray. Gracious God and mighty Father, we thank you that you are a God who promises to dwell with us. Please come to us and give us hope, hope of the greater future in Jesus Christ, hope of that wonderful dwelling place But Lord, let that hope give us courage to continue to be faithful, to work for your glory and your honor, knowing that you will shake the nations. You will take away all sin from this world. And you will bring glory to your people and to yourself. This we ask in Jesus' name alone, amen.