Good morning, everybody, or good morning, I guess, afternoon, isn't it? Good afternoon. It's good to be here today, and again, back in the book of Haggai, we're gonna be in chapter two if you wanna follow along. We're just gonna go through the first, verse one through nine in the book of Haggai today. So chapter two, we're gonna be in verse one through nine today, but as you guys, if you wanna follow along, Again Haggai prophet and he is sent by God to bring a message to his people and again they had just come out of captivity and they had already began building the foundation for the second temple. And we remember in earlier lessons that Whenever they started to rebuild and build the foundation of the temple, we saw opposition. And that opposition caused them to stop. And they stopped because of that, and instead of pushing forward like they were supposed to do, they put God on the back burner, And they went and started focusing on themselves and started building their own homes and things like this. And we even saw that earlier in chapter one, Haggai and God, he put it to their forefront that they're worried about their paneled houses and building their houses. And they left his house in ruins. So again, they had kind of took all the things, they'd abandoned God's work to work on their own things. And again, he's going to bring discipline. We saw that in chapter one, he brought a drought. And again Haggai, God speaks through him to them and he brings that message to them and it opens their eyes and again they repent and they begin working on the temple again. Now something to remember in chapter 2 as we get ready to read through it but The first, and Brother Mark hit it on this morning, we know the first temple, again, King Solomon, he went through and built the first temple, very grand as we all know, but we hear that being the first temple, sometimes you hear it, Solomon's temple. Well here, Zerubbabel, he's starting to go through and build this temple, we hear it called the second temple, sometimes you hear it called Zerubbabel's temple. A little longer on, there's a remodel, Herod's Temple, you know, we hear all these things, sometimes we hear those names associated with it, but I wanted to make sure that you all understood the First Temple, Solomon's, Second Temple, Zerubbabel's here is what we're reading about. But, in this, we saw they're back into it, you know, 16, 17 years had passed since the foundation had been laid, and now we're starting to rebuild. We're starting to finish this construction up. But, again, there's a lot of excitement with a lot of people here in getting this built. God's children are excited, but there's a few that don't share that same feeling at this point in time. And God's gonna address this here in chapter 2. And let's read that. Chapter 2, verse 1 through 9, and it says, In the one and twentieth day of the month came the word of the Lord by the prophet Haggai, saying, Speak now to Zerubbabel, the son of Shattil, governor of Judah, and to Joshua, the son of Josedek, 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, saith the Lord, and be strong, O Joshua, son of Josedek the high priest, and strong all ye people of the land, saith the Lord, and work, for I am with you, saith the Lord of hosts. according to the word that I covenant with you when you came out of Egypt so my spirit remains among you fear ye not for thus saith the Lord of hosts yet once it is a little while and 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'll fill this house with glory say the Lord of hosts The silver is mine and the gold is mine, saith the Lord of Hosts. The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former, saith the Lord of Hosts. And in this place will I give peace, saith the Lord of Hosts. So let's go to the Lord in prayer. Dear Lord and Heavenly Father, again, it's just so good to be in your house, and Lord, just to hear all of your wisdoms here today, and Lord, the truths that we've heard here, and Lord, as we get into this book, Lord, you show us, you're gonna show us so many things as we go down through this, and Lord, how to live our lives and how to glorify you, so Lord, just be with us as we go through this today, and bless us. We ask all this in Jesus' name, amen. So, there's a lot. Again, those nine verses, there's a lot that the Lord is showing us here. And one of the things I want to go back and take a look at is in the book of Ezra. And again, we went through the book of Ezra in chapter 3, if you want to follow along, chapter 3 and verse 11. And again, remember, I told you that there were, for the most part, people all excited, but there were some that wasn't too excited about finishing up the build on the temple. And let's read about that. In Ezra 3, verse 11, it says, And they sang together by chorus in praise, and giving thanks unto the Lord, because he is good. For His mercy endureth forever toward Israel, and all the people shout it with a great shout, when they praise the Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid." So that's the point when the foundation of the temple was laid. Verse 12. But many of the priests and Levites and chiefs of the fathers, who were ancient men, These are the folks that had seen the first house. They had seen King Solomon's house. They're the ones that were taken captive, 70 years in captivity, and now they're returning. This is who they're talking about here. So they had seen Solomon's temple. When the foundation of this house was laid before their eyes, they wept a loud voice and many shouted aloud for joy. So again, When they're looking at this, they're looking at just the foundation and they're like, oh, this isn't nothing compared to what King Solomon built. This scale of this is not even close. And they wept because of that. Think of that. While the others were, you know, they were so excited. Verse 13. So the people there could not discern the noise of the shout of joy from the noise of the weeping of the people. So there was some shouting with excitement and joy, while some were crying. For the people shouted with a loud voice, and the noise was heard afar off. Most of the people here, the ones that are so excited, ready to go and all this, they had probably been born in captivity because, I mean, there were 70 years and the majority of them was born in captivity, they come back, they had never seen King Solomon's Temple. King Solomon's Temple was amazing, right? But for those that had seen the King Solomon's temple and now looking at this foundation, it wasn't as exciting for them. Again, it was so grand. Whenever you think of King Solomon's temple, it was just amazingly, physically just so much larger. but it was just the gold and the silver and all these things, its appearance. And just to show you a little bit more about that, let's see if I can find it back in 2 Chronicles. I'll read it to you, talking about how much gold there was on this thing and just how amazing the visual was on it. 2 Chronicles 3 verse 4. And the porch that was in the front of the house, the length of it was according to the breadth of the house, 20 cubits high and was 120, and he overlaid it with in with pure gold, with in with pure gold. This is not talking about the gold that we go to the jewelry store and get today that's alloyed up, you know, 14 karat, 18, whatever it is. This is pure gold is what it's saying here. Could you imagine what all that was worth? It's amazing to me, and that's in their mind, that's what they saw. This place was so bright that it would blind you when the sun would hit it. And that's what they remembered. It was amazing. So when they returned and they saw this foundation, this isn't exactly what we remembered, right? It's a letdown. It's a little bit of a letdown for them, and they wept. And that's why God, in the book of Haggai, that's why He comes to them through Haggai, in chapter 2 and verse 3, and that's why he says it. Who is left among you that saw this house in her first glory? This is King Solomon's temple. And how do you see it now? Is it not in your eyes in comparison of as it's nothing? So he's asking them, you know, do you see it as nothing compared to what you saw before? And in their hearts, you know, They were probably thinking, you know, if we go ahead and we build this, I mean, they might feel a little insignificant about building it, you know. It's not as good as what we had before, you know. That might be in their minds here. Thing of it is, they're drawing comparisons. And you know what? Comparisons, more than not, is probably not a good thing. When we start drawing comparisons about things. Usually, Unfortunately, it's just our nature when we draw a comparison, it's usually with people or others or something that we think is doing better off than we are. And what that does is it usually, it suppresses what we can do because it suppresses us and we miss out on blessings because of it. You know, here today, just a quick example, I can't hardly carry a tune in a bucket, really. You know what I mean? And we've got so many great singers here. But you know what? If I came in here and I try to compare myself to somebody that's really good, you know, the thing of it is, you shouldn't do that. You shouldn't get to that point because God blessed you. What do you say, have a joyful noise, right? And to me, that's about all I can do, but you know what? I could just sit there and look at somebody else singing greatly, and I could just sit there and quit. But that's not what He wants you to do. He wants you to use what He has blessed you with to glorify Him. And that's what we're seeing here. Hey, listen, well, you know, that was nice, but wait. And we're gonna see some things here. But the thing of it is, we cannot let it hinder us, because I wanna tell you something, folks. When we do that, comparisons, it can hinder your service to the Lord. It really can, because it makes you feel, you know, to the point where, you know, it might make you depressed or insignificant, you know, in what you're able to do. But the thing of it is, when God puts something on your heart to do, He gives you the tools to do it with. And the thing of it is, when we talk about these comparisons, Satan loves when we make comparisons. He loves it. He really does because, you know, you get to the point where you don't want to participate with what God blesses you with. And you miss out on a lot of blessings, but you miss out on, too, on glorifying God the way that He wants you to. So again, when we look at these folks that are coming back, and like I said, they're older, and they're coming back and they're seeing this, and to them, they're probably seeing a shell of a temple that they saw before. And are they ready to roll up their sleeves and get the job done and finish up at this point? No. And that's why God brings Haggai to them and gives them this message, right? He's going to provide them some encouragement because just like it says in verse 5 there, in Haggai chapter 2, He is with them just like He was whenever they fled out of Egypt, their ancestors. He is with them just the same there. And He tells them not to fear in verse 5. Don't fear! You know, don't fear. Use what I've blessed you with and God's showing us this and he brings him comfort through this. But as we continue on and look, again, we just need to be content. Utilize what he gives us for his glory and these individuals, you know, I think about that when I was doing a lot of study on this. Right now, Could you imagine back in the day, we're talking about these folks that had seen the temple, King Solomon's Temple. Could you imagine right now, put yourself in their shoes, right now, here comes some other nation, comes into your house, drags you out with military force, drags you out and takes you captive. Now again, this was because of their disobedience and we all know that. and it's gonna strengthen them, but that disobedience, this really happened to them. They were taken from their homelands and drug out and took captive for 70 years. Could you imagine that today? Could you imagine that in your life? I mean, this is real. This actually happened, folks. And, you know, everything was destroyed. The temple was destroyed. You know, all that gold inlaid and all these beautiful things that was blessed to build, that God blessed us with, they're all taken. It was all taken. You talk about being shook to the core. These folks were shook to the core. And they know what that feels like. They know what being shook to the core means. So when God, when He's going to give them some words of encouragement here, He's going to show them this because they understand what shook means. He's going to tell us here in verse 6 as we move forward on this. And again, He's telling us, we jump into verse 6 and 7, Thing of it is, he's saying, hey look, this new temple that we're building, yeah it's humble, but just you wait. Just wait and see what's going to happen. He tells us in verse 6. "'For thus saith the Lord of hosts, Yet once it is a little while, and I will shake.'" So here we start talking about the shake. They've been shook. They knew exactly what it meant to be shook. "'You shook the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry lands, and I will shake all nations.'" They know what it feels like to be shook. Now all nations are going to be shook. not just some of them, all nations are going to be shook, and the desire of all nations shall come, and I will fill this house with glory, saith the Lord of hosts." This is what Haggai is telling them. God is telling him and working through Haggai as he's given this message to him. And the desires of all nations, all their treasures, all these things will be there at the temple, right? So we're getting closer to seeing what he's got here. It says, again, we look through this, what is he saying? Glory? We talked about it earlier, right? Who's going to be in this temple down the road? Jesus is going to be there. He's going to fill it with glory. And again, you know, when you think about it, yes, after Herod remodeled the temple, the second temple, we know Jesus physically, when He was here on earth, would go in and He would teach and He would do these things. But it goes deeper than that. Folks, what He's talking about is the millennial reign that's coming. This is what He's talking about. The temple will be filled with glory. And that's going to be That's going to be incredible. Can you all imagine? Our Lord and Savior is going to rule and judge here in that temple, that millennial temple that he's talking about. What a perfect leader. You know, I thought about that myself. Just studying this, could you imagine having a leader? You know, today we have leaders and, you know, they take the best that they can and they take all the data and they try to, you know, figure out what to do next and this, that and the other and hope it works out. Well, when the Lord, He makes a call, you know it's going to be perfect. We don't have to worry. I mean, that is gonna be a time, and that's what he's showing you. Perfect. And again, whenever we've seen King Solomon in Ecclesiastes and Proverbs, all these things, he tells us, he tells us, he shows us how important wisdom is. You know what wisdom is? Jesus Christ is wisdom. That is wisdom. And that's what he was pointing us to. So, I mean, just whenever he rules, it's just gonna be an amazing thing. So, yeah, of course, King Solomon's temple, when he was, whenever he built that, Yeah, it was nice. It was unbelievable. We can't even imagine how nice that was. We haven't seen anything that nice here. But the thing of it is, it don't hold a lot in comparison to what the future holds. It's what he's telling us here. It's what he's telling the people here. It doesn't hold a lot. All this gold, all this silver, and all these things you were talking about back in the day, Again, he says in Haggai chapter 2 verse 8, The silver is mine. This is what God's saying. The silver is mine. The gold is mine, saith the Lord of hosts. All these things is God's. You know, he blessed King Solomon. He blessed him with more wisdom than anybody here on this earth. He blessed him with wealth that was incredible. But you know what? It's all God's. It's all God's. All the stuff that he has, he was just blessed. God blessed King Solomon and he's trying to let them know this. Hey, don't worry about that first temple. Be content with what we have right now. Be content and understand in verse 9 as we take a look at it, the glory of the latter house. And we were talking about that earlier in the message, Brother Mark was. The Shekinah glory in that first house, King Solomon's house. It says here, the glory of the latter house, this would be The millennial temple that we're going to see, the latter house shall be greater than the former, saith the Lord of hosts. This is saying it through Haggai, and in this place will I give peace. God is using Haggai to tell them all this information again, and is the place where I will give peace. saith the Lord of hosts." God is showing us that there are going to be peace there in that millennial reign. And I'm so excited, folks. The latter temple, that millennial temple, this is the place. It's going to be in Jerusalem, the throne of David. This is where it's going to be. And it's going to give us peace, ultimate peace, because Jesus is the Prince of Peace. And we know that here this morning. So what better motivator could He use for those folks that had seen King Solomon's Temple and come back to rebuild this? What better motivator than to see what's ahead of us? It puts everything into correct perspective. And I'm very thankful for that this morning. You know, the thing of it is, folks, perfection is coming. It is coming and of course we know judgment to this world is coming as well. But the good Lord, He is so good to us. So we need to take everything that He blesses us with, don't do any comparisons. Take what He gives you and utilize it for His good. God bless you all.