I look forward to hearing the words of God through you. It is a pleasure to be with you this morning, and Catherine, Owen, and Katie and I are just thrilled to get to be here. I was with you a few years ago, and that's the only time a representative of our family has worshiped with you. But over these four years, you have faithfully prayed and supported us in the work. And there's a great fellowship in that. And so we are so happy to be back and be with you in person today and to thank you. We'll say some more words personally in a little while. But now let's turn our focus to the word of God, the book of Haggai. I'd invite you to stand. And if you have your Bibles, turn to the second chapter of Haggai as we stand together. and demonstration of our love and respect for God's word. I'll be reading from verses six through nine. And you may recognize this passage as the passage Handel used in Messiah in that great oratorio of his. So let's read together. I'm reading from the English Standard Version. It may differ slightly from yours, but it's God's word. So let's read together. For thus says the Lord of hosts. Yet once more, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land. And I will shake all nations so that the treasures of all nations shall come in. 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 shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts. And in this place, I will give peace, declares who? The Lord of hosts. Amen. Will you pray with me? Father in heaven, How much, you know, I need you, how much, you know, we all need you. That's why we've come here today to worship, to express to you our need of you and to bow down in worship for all of your glory and grace expressed to us. And we ask you now, Father, that you would use your word, that you would speak through me, that your Holy Spirit would speak, Lord God, by and with your word to accomplish your purpose in us and in your world today. And for this, we pray your blessing in Jesus name. Amen. Be seated. And in your bulletin, this wonderful promise, all men are like grass and all their glory is like the flowers of the field. Amen. Well, I think that. Handel's Messiah is probably, and I'm showing my personal taste, I'm showing something of my age, I'm showing a lot of things here, but I think it's probably the greatest piece of music ever written. There are people who legitimately might disagree with me on that, that's okay, but that's my opinion. There are reasons for that opinion. When I come to this passage, Handel uses the King James version, and if you know the piece, it's this baritone solo, recitative they call it, and you just feel the nations shaking as he sings. And he says, and yet in a little while, I won't sing at you. But if you can get the feel of it a little bit and yet once more in a little while and I will share and you feel him, the Lord shaking the earth as this guy singing. It's just amazing. And you as you feel the word, viscerally come through you, you know, shaking the earth. You wonder, what is this all about? What is this shaking that God is going to do? I was thinking about that as I was preparing this. I've been meditating and thinking on this passage for a while. Actually, I've preached it two or three times before. And it seems that God is shaking the nations, isn't he? You know, there's a line of thinking out there that God is at work in some places and maybe not at others. And so we go and join God where he's at work. So we look where there's a great response to the gospel and we go there and we work. But how about those places where there's not so much a response, where we don't see a huge response to the gospel? Is God somehow not working there? Has God somehow ceased being God? And he's not working there? I don't think so. I think God is at work in the whole world in his own way. And although we don't see all the time the shaking of the nations, we don't see all the time maybe a great outpouring of fruit from the proclamation of the gospel in all places. We do know that God is at work accomplishing his purpose, accomplishing his plan, moving forth his plan for history for his own glory. And it seems to me that as we are looking at what's going on in the world today, we are becoming very much aware that maybe if we weren't before that God is now shaking the nations, he's shaking the world, and he's shaking to the foundations as we heard a while ago. is shaking to the foundations, whatever it is we have built on those foundations, and a lot of us are finding ourselves a little bit aghast, aren't we? I don't know if you are like I am. I no longer have a 401k, or not much of one anymore. That was what I was banking for my retirement on, right? If I am honest and confess to you my humanity and my sinfulness, yes, I was trusting in that. And now I'm realizing I don't have that to trust in. And you know what? That's a good thing. It's a good thing that I'm realizing I don't have that to trust in. I never really did, did I? God is saying to us, and he was saying to his people in the book of Haggai, You don't have what you thought you have to trust in. And I am going to build my kingdom. We've heard it already today interpreted by the writer of Hebrews that that God is building a kingdom. He is at work in history all the time, never ceasing, never sleeping. He is at work in history to build his kingdom, to accomplish his purpose, to bring his people into his kingdom. And he's saying to the people in this day, and the people of Israel in this day, think a little bit differently about your role in what I'm doing. That's my interpretation. That's the way I want to cast it this morning. Think a little bit differently. Now in our text this morning, there's a refrain you heard five times in the short space of two chapters of the book of Haggai. It's used 12 times and five of those times we hear it in the space of these two, three short verses. What is it? The Lord of hosts declares the Lord of hosts. First of all, I think what, what God is, and this is central in the whole book, what God is saying to his people is, I am the one who created. The I am the one who is all powerful. This is the name of God as you well know that represents him in all of his power and all of his glory and all of his providential control over all of history and all of creation. The earth is the Lord's and what 10 percent of it. No the earth is the Lord's and everything in it. He is the creator he controls. And do you go back to creation. And think about our catechism and how it reflects God's creative power. What did it take God to create? It was by, I believe it says, the power of his breath. Or maybe it says the breath of his power. OK, do this with me. Do that. How many worlds did you just create? That's all it took God to create this world and everything in it and all of the heavenly hosts and all the expanse of heaven. He went, and that's an exaggeration. It was by the sheer will, his sheer will and pleasure that he created all things. And he is emphasizing once again to his people, I am the one who is going to do what I ask you to do. And what has he asked us to do? Well, his people here, if we go back to chapter one, there's a little bit of an indictment, not a little bit, there's a big indictment. Haggai came into to his ministry for just a span of weeks in the history of Israel. It was a critical time in the history of Israel. They had come back to the promised land out of exile and they were told to rebuild the temple. That was their mission. They were to come back and rebuild the temple. That temple is the representation of the place where God is worshipped. And when you come face to face with the one who goes, and creates everything. What do you do? You worship, don't you? You fall on your face. So it's a title of his power. It's a title of his glory. And when we are faced with that power and glory, we worship. And so God's instructions to the people were to build my place of worship, rebuild the temple so that my worship might be present here again. But as we come into this period in Israel's history, they were in danger of not doing it. They had moved back into the promised land, and as we read in chapter one, had built their own paneled homes, their own nice homes to live in. But what had they not done? They hadn't begun to rebuild the temple. And God says to them, is it right that you live in your paneled homes while my house stands in ruins? And that's when Haggai was raised up to preach this message, to proclaim this to the people. Now, the good news is the people repented and agreed. Yes, Lord, you have commanded us to do this. We will do it. But, you know, there's a little bit of a different take on their doing it this time. The first temple, when it was built, was built how? It was built with all of the wealth and resources Israel could muster, wasn't it? All of David's riches, all of Solomon's riches, it was all brought in to build that temple. And now God is saying to the people, go and build my temple. How? Out of your poverty, out of your nothingness. They have moved back. They have been replanted in the promised land and they have nothing. Kind of like our 401Ks, our 403Bs, whatever it is, probably like your stock portfolio looks right now. And God is saying to them, take your nothing that you have and rebuild my temple in a way that he says to us today. Take the nothing that you have and be obedient to proclaim my glory in the world and that my worship might go forth to the ends of the earth until I finally bring into completion all things that I have planned. So he says to them, go do it out of your poverty, out of the nothing that you have. Do it. What does he say in verse seven of chapter one? Thus says who? Oh, wow. Here we go again. The Lord of hosts. We hear his title again, don't we? Thus says the Lord of hosts. Consider your ways. Think about. what you're doing. Think about what you have been doing and think about what you're going to do. And in a very literal sense, think about the ways you travel day by day, your normal life every day. Consider your ways. And he says, verse eight, go up to the hills and bring wood and build the house that I may take pleasure in it and that I may be glorified, says the Lord. And there's the name again. Out of their poverty, they didn't have gold and silver to bring in. They didn't have all the treasures that they could bring in to build this temple. But you know what? They had strong backs and they had saws and axes and carts. And he says, basically, take what you've got and go into the hills. You can cut the wood. You can start, can't you? And cut down the trees, saw the lumber and start building the temple. Now in our culture, and I don't think our culture is too much different from what this culture must have been like, what these people were facing, but our culture has gotten so used to operating out of a position of wealth and having it and being able to do with what we have, with our wealth and our resources, that we're not used to having to go back to the raw materials, are we? We're not used to thinking on a little more basic level. Well, I'll write a check. That's what we tend to be used to doing in this culture as a whole. Now, you may be different, but in our culture as a whole, isn't that the truth? that we're used to writing the checks, we're used to calling the stockbroker and say, sell off so much and send the money here. And that's a wonderful thing. What a wonderful blessing that we've been able to do that to support what God is calling us to do. But now God's taken that away because we've trusted in that. We've trusted in that. We've looked to that as our security, our source of that. We've looked at that as our foundation, as Pastor was talking earlier. And now that foundation is taken away. And what he's saying to Haggai, what Haggai, the Lord is saying through Haggai to his people, he says to us today, take where you are, where you live, what you have at your disposal and use it to start the work. And then as they begin to do that and the agreement is, yes, we will do this, we will, the Lord has called, we will do it. Then we get to chapter two and the Lord says, for thus says the Lord yet once in a little while, and I will shake, what? the heavens and the earth the sea and the dry land and I will shake the nations and the treasures of all the nations will come in. Now this is in one sense it's a messianic prophecy the desire of the nations he whom the nations desire whether they know it or not I will bring in and he will come in and fill this temple with his glory so that the temple of the latter temple excuse me so that the glory of the latter temple is more great is greater and more glorious than that of the former temple. But there's also a mission here. Do you hear it? God said, I own the silver. I own the gold. The earth is the Lord's and everything in it. And I will bring the treasures, the most desired things, those things that the nations have at their disposal. And I will bring those things in to the temple. How do you bring the material wealth of the nations into that place where God is worshipped if you don't bring the nations themselves. Do you see this is not only a messianic prophecy of the Christ who will come and we saw that played out when Christ himself walked the halls of the temple that was built. And we hear it as we hear from Hebrews what God has planned that the glory of Christ in the nations will be manifest in God's kingdom. But we hear it here again, the nations themselves will come in. God says to his people, not only in Haggai, we've read it before in other parts of scripture. And my one of my favorite places to read it is in Isaiah, where God says to his people, and you are my people, Israel, in whom I will show my glory. And in a few short verses later, he says to them, but it is too small a thing that you should be my people. It's not enough. that you should be my people. My plan isn't for a little strip of ground of sand in the Middle East and for a certain ethnicity. That's not my plan. It's too small a thing that you should be my people. I will also, in a more glorious way, make you a light to the nations so that what my salvation may extend to the ends of the earth. The heart of God is for the nations. That the nations would come into that point where they can, they will worship him, bow down before the Lord of hosts who owns and created and uses all things for his glory. That's the heart of God. And he's telling them, I will do the work. You be obedient to the call with what you have at hand. Go on up and cut the wood, bring the timber down, do what you can do and I will fill your lack. I will fill your poverty with my wealth. So that the nations might come in and worship me. Now, I haven't asked permission, but I've already preached this a couple of times, and so my daughter is just going to have to grimace and correct any details later. But I have to tell you a story about my dear daughter. Now, she's human, and I promise you she is as sinful as the best of us in here. So I do not want to unduly glorify her. I mean, she takes after her dad anyway, after all. But we moved to Bulgaria almost five years ago. September, it will be five years that we moved to Bulgaria. Katie and Owen were at the time 13 and 11, right on the cusp of adolescence. And so we thought, since they're going to hate us for the next five years anyway, let's go ahead and let them do it in Bulgaria and have a real reason to focus on. They don't hate us. The first two years were really hard. They really struggled and Katie in a lot of ways struggled even more than Owen. Owen had a bunch of guy friends to play baseball with and run around with and have friends. Katie was the only girl on our whole mission team anywhere close to her age. There were some little girls, but Katie was older and there weren't any girls there for her to be friends with. And there were times when Katie honestly felt that God had abandoned her, didn't love her anymore, thought, is there really a God after all if he's abandoned me this way? That was a tough time for her. But she pushed through it and she had some sort of, I don't know where it was or how it happened exactly, but at some point she had a turnaround in some thinking and in her heart And she wasn't so much focused on, how can I be happy? How can I have joy every day in my life? But she started thinking about, how can I bring joy and happiness to others? And she was 13 to 15 years old at the time. No job, no allowance, no resources. She was poverty stricken, materially and in many ways emotionally. But do you know what she did? She started doing things like having tea parties for the little girls on the team, organizing tea parties. Now, I don't get into tea parties, but I have to tell you, they were wonderful tea parties. All the little frills and the nice things, the nice cloth accoutrements to the table and real tea and nice cakes and sweets and things. And everybody dressed up really nice in their clothes. Do you know what it's like for a five, six, seven year old girl when a girl 13, 14, 15, 16 years old organizes a tea party for you? Do you know what it communicates to that little girl? You are special. You are loved. You are important. You have a place to fill in someone's heart. Katie, out of her poverty, looked at what she could do, and she did it for others in a way that encouraged them. And do you know how that affects the building of God's kingdom? Well, if you have a 5, 6, 7 year old daughter who's unhappy but suddenly becomes happy and you're a missionary dad and mom, do you know how much easier it becomes to do the ministry, to focus on ministry when your children are feeling happy and feeling cared for and feeling loved and nurtured by someone like Katie? So it's not just that it is an act of direct love. It is a direct an act of fellowship and care. But it's an act of love and fellowship and care that that multiplies in kingdom work. By doing what she could do even in her poverty. In obedience to what God calls us to do. And then as she got older, she went with some of the older missionary ladies of other teams and she went to orphanages and spoke and helped teach English, conversational English with teenage orphans, riding the bus alone all the way to the other side of the city to do these things. And then she went on projects and became a translator for medical teams and other teams that would come to do children's work, going into gypsy villages, working with them. She did what she could do in her poverty to serve the Lord. And now if you ask her, she would rather be there than here. The point is this. God promises to shake the nations. And he's always at work doing it, whether we feel the rumbling or not. And he promises to shake the nations to fill this place of worship with his glory. And that place of worship ultimately is where it's the heart of each individual believer, isn't it? And then we bring those individual temples with us together as we gather together corporately to worship. But as God is at work using us in our poverty to express his gospel in tangible, practical, loving, direct ways in the lives of others, he fills it with his glory and he brings the riches in. And do you know what? Then the nations come. The nations come. That's how he does it. Now, there's really a wonderful thing lest we think, oh, I have what it takes. We go further in chapter two and I won't read it to you, you can read it to your to yourselves later. We go further in chapter two and the Lord challenges his people and he says, if you take something that's clean and it touches a dead body, does it become Is it clean or unclean? Well, it's unclean. Can you make it clean again? No. Once something has become unclean, you can't make it clean again. And he says, and if you take something that's unclean, can you make it somehow clean? No, you can't take something that began as unclean and make it clean. And what God is saying to his people, and that's you, that is you people. There's no way that you're going to make yourselves clean. No way. But he says to them, still, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do the work. I'm going to use that which can't be clean. And in my grace, my mercy, my power, I'm going to make it something new so that it's useful in my hands. It's useful in my creative, gracious, healing, restoring hands to restore the image of what was broken. in those who can't ever be clean in themselves. I'm going to do it. He says, yet I will do these things. We can't ever be good enough, even unless we become proud in our poverty. We were proud in our wealth. We can't be proud in our poverty either. We humbly submit who we are and what we can do. Into the power of him who can make it worthwhile and make it significant in the lives of others. So that the latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former. Says who? The Lord of hosts. And what's his final word? What's his final word? And in this place, I will give peace, peace, comfort. In the Great Commission, Jesus says, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. He says, go, therefore, and make disciples or as you are going, as you are taking what you have at hand in your poverty, as you're going, make disciples of all nations, teaching them to observe everything I've commanded you. I think I've gotten it backwards, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son of the Holy Spirit. And what's the last word? And behold, lo, hey, listen, people, I am with you always to the very end of the age. And in this place, I will give peace, declares the Lord. The promise of God, as we trust in Him, we look to Him, we obey Him, we offer what we have in good faith and ask Him to take all of our uncleanness and our poverty and use it for His glory. The promise of Him to us is His peace, His comfort, His presence with us, never to leave us nor to forsake us. And on that note, we can act boldly given whatever it is he allows us to do, even if it appears to be failing, even if it appears to be doomed from the start, even if it appears that I'm going to be ruined for life by moving to this foreign country. You see that God will take that, bring comfort and peace and use it for his glory. May he use us for his glory and may he give us that peace which he alone can provide, that thing which the pastor told us earlier. As we read earlier, we try to fill with other things, but nothing can give the peace. that passes all understanding, except that peace which comes through Christ Jesus. Amen. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, thank you so much that this hope that we profess isn't a fairy tale. Oh, Lord God, it's the truth of you. Your truth. Your promise to be with us, to love us, to walk beside us, to live inside us. How we thank you for your presence and for your promise to use us. And Lord, we ask you because we don't have anything. We really look at how things are being torn away from us, from what we trust in, what we look to for security, and it's not there anymore in so many places. And even if our lives haven't been so affected, we are in fear, wondering how they could be affected by what you're doing in the world today. But Lord, we do confess with confidence that you are God, the Lord of hosts. And we do ask you to give us courage and faith in these days, knowing that you are at work and that you call us to continue moving, continue working, using what we have for your glory. But our efforts are weak. We don't have much. And we submit them to you for you to fill them with your strength and your glory. With your treasures. So that your name would be lifted up, your worship would be known in the world. So, Father, use us. We offer ourselves to you. And we thank you that we know you will accomplish your purpose because you're going to do it through the power of the risen Christ. We pray in His name, Amen.