As a new convert in Christ and a young Christian in Christ, I had friends from a variety of different theological perspectives as I was growing. And I remember, and that included those who didn't hold a Reformed perspective of salvation. And I remember having several conversations. with people and also overhearing conversations as towards, you know, why is it that this person is choosing God and this other person is foolish and not choosing God, as if it was something that was within their power to do. Then later on, I got saved and understood a whole, learned a whole bunch of good theology from the scriptures that explained a lot of that. But then, as I would be within reformed circles, it seemed like something very similar to that was experienced again as it relates to repentance. You know, in a very similar type of conversations, I would hear reformed folk say, you know, why is this person repenting and why is that person not repenting? How come they're choosing not to repent? How come they won't make an effort to repent? And then suddenly, that became a very big question for me as I tried to figure out why is it that, assuming that everyone was Christian that we were talking about, some chose to repent and some had no desire to repent. And I think that that has a lot, that's an important question and our passage today does seem to address that. And so I don't know if you've ever thought that yourself. Why is it that this person's not choosing to repent? And why is it that this person is? So having said that, let's take a quick recap of what it is that we saw last week in scripture and see how that relates to what we have for this week as well. So God, if you recall, God spoke through his prophet Haggai, informing them that they need to consider their ways. The people of God had misplaced their priorities in life. They were more consumed with their own interests. They placed God below themselves. The people of God ceased working on the temple, and if you recall, it was for 16 years after they had gotten there. Originally, they stopped the construction because the locals gave them a hard time. But as time went on, they were more concerned with embellishments to their own homes than to rebuilding God's temple. God revealed to the people through the prophet Haggai that they were unable to excel or even accomplish their goals in life because he had prevented them from doing so. No matter how hard they tried working at achieving their life's dreams, he was the one frustrating their plans. He did so because he was not the priority of their lives. And as such, they ignored or put God in the background, if you will. Who is the true source of satisfaction? God is the true source of satisfaction and happiness for any human being. The people of God had traded God in for their personal comforts. And God had enough. It was time to get their attention and have them deal with their sins. As we mentioned last week, there may be times when we are living lives quite similar to what the people of God were doing back then, replacing God as the priority in life for other pursuits. We would take things that are good and wholesome and turn them, even them, into idols taking the place of God. Are you there? Are you there today? Are you struggling with similar situation? Have you neglected God in your life? Do you find yourself frustrated and wonder at times, why is God stopping me? Or why isn't he blessing my efforts in life? Or are you asking yourself, why am I not experiencing my best life now? It may well be that he is trying to get your attention and have you consider your ways. His message was essentially put me first. There shall be no other God before me. His mandate was get to work. What should be their response? That's where we left off. Would they ignore God's word through his prophet? Would they repent? And if they did truly, really repent, what would be needed in order for that to happen? What would that look like in their lives? What would be the evidence of true repentance? Would you please rise as we read through God's holy word from our passage today, which is from Haggai chapter 1, verses 12 through 15. This is the word of God. Then Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, and Yeshua, the son of Jehozaddek, the high priest, with all the remnant of the people, obeyed the voice of the Lord their God, and the words of Haggai the prophet, as the Lord their God had sent him. And the people feared the Lord. Then Haggai, the messenger of the Lord, spoke to the people with the Lord's message. I am with you, declares the Lord. And the Lord stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel, the son of Sheol, governor of Judah, and the spirit of Joshua, the son of Jehoshadak, the high priest, and the spirit of all the remnant of the people. And they came and worked on the house of the Lord of hosts. their God on the 24th day of the month in the sixth month, in the second year of Darius the king. This is the word of God. Amen. Please be seated. Join me now as we pray to the Holy Spirit to grant us illumination. Holy Spirit, the Bible teaches us that the very words that come out of God do not return empty. but that they accomplish that which they were purposed and always realize the things for which it was sent. Be with us now as we hear and listen and study the word. We ask that you would stir our minds, then our hearts, individually and corporately, as the people of God, to do for what it was purposed. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. So verse 12 begins by identifying that every element of the covenant community, political, religious, or laity, responded to God's call with obedience. When we consider our ways, reflect upon our lives, and hold it up against the word of God, what should we want? What we should want is to repent and obey. So let's take a look at this passage and see how it is that this comes about. The first thing I'd like to do is to have an understanding of the remnant or the remnant motif. You may not be surprised that there is a remnant concept that runs throughout the scriptures of the Old Testament. But what you may be surprised to hear about is that the meaning of the motif was not ubiquitous throughout the Old Testament period or throughout the history of redemption. Obviously, what is relevant is the era that we find ourselves in. However, I think it's instructive to take a quick, and I do mean quick, walk through the ages, only to highlight some of the distinctions. Remnant simply means those that are left over, set apart from a larger group. But it implies that the larger group has suffered some sort of a great loss. But I also want to add, not necessarily always. Sometimes a remnant is referred to as those who are left over from whom God has judged, such like the remnant that went into exile into Babylon. And in our text for today, the remnant referred to a subset of that which came down to Jerusalem or came up to Jerusalem for the rebuilding project of God's temple. The remnant in Haggai's generation serves as a bridge between previous generations who have been judged and destroyed by Yahweh and future generations who will be a community prepared for the Messiah, the anointed one who will deliver his people and the promises of God to inhabit the temple. Given the results of the Roman Empire's destruction of the temple and the city of Jerusalem in the first century, a Jew, a non-believing Jew, non-Christian Jew, would have had to conclude that since the Messiah had not come, that they were still in exile and that they were the remnant. But for the New Testament writers, they would have seen things in an entirely different light. The Messiah had come and inaugurated the kingdom of God and who would one day return to consummate it and bring about Judgment Day. However, the way that they viewed themselves was that they were no longer in exile. The kingdom was everywhere, so you couldn't possibly be in exile. And secondly, Jesus said that he will be with us until the end. That is Emmanuel to the end. So the response of the leadership, the political and the religious, along with the remnant, when they received the rebukes from God, was that they obeyed the Lord. When we consider that the office of the prophet in broad biblical history, we can quickly see that Haggai's predecessors did not experience the same positive response by the people of God. Well, you see, if they heeded the prophet's warnings to repent and obey God's word, they would have been in no need. They would have been at no need for Haggai's ministry to them to rebuild the temple. They would have avoided that heartache they brought upon themselves in the first place. Humanly speaking, that still applies to us today. Sin brings on its own consequences. It raises walls between ourselves and our heavenly father. If we don't repent, it could bring about serious and painful consequences in our lives, as well as in our loved one's lives. We no longer have prophets who deliver a fresh new word from God as the canon of scripture is closed. Hebrews 1, 1 and 2 reminds us that there are various ways in which God spoke to us. his people, but the Lord Jesus is the one who speaks to us now directly, and he does so by speaking to us through his word. The prophetic ministry of foretelling, the informing of what will happen in the future is complete, and ceased, as the scriptures say, we have everything that we need for salvation and faith and life. However, the ministry of forth-telling continues. Forth-telling is when a prophet would remind the people of God, God's word. It was the thou shall and thou shall nots of what was already given to them, calling the people of God to repentance. God's rebuke over the centuries would be taken to heart by some of God's people, but not all. The distinction of Haggai's ministry is that the remnant has seen the discipline of God for their covenant disobedience. That was a great lesson for them and also a great lesson for us as God's people today that we need to take God's word seriously and that we need to consider our ways and repent so that we may not fall into the very same trap. It's fair to ask, what undergirded their obedience to the Lord? The passage tells us that they feared the Lord. Other translations use the word revere. And the book of Proverbs tells us at the very beginning, chapter one and verse seven, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and they despise instruction. We tend to have a struggle between fearing men and fearing God. These two compete for our attention and at some point always come to conflict with one another. Our fear of God must not be displaced by the fear of men. That will only lead to idolatry and pain. When the people of God considered their ways, they placed God first. above their fears of those who threatened them. Additionally, it placed God's revealed will over their personal aspirations. The safest place, the joyful place, is to submit our desires and our goals to that of God. What causes God's people to take on projects to glorify God? at the expense of their own comfort. What causes you to take on projects to glorify God at the expense of your personal comfort? Well, one thing is to know that God is protecting you, right? God is with you. God is going before you. All these things are important. Well, the false prophets, for example, in Jeremiah's time, got several things wrong and misled the people. After all, that's what false prophets do, right? But one thing they got right, and sadly used against Jeremiah, was that they argued that they had nothing to worry about. Because as long as God was with them, Emmanuel, meaning in the temple, No harm would come to the temple. No harm would come to Jerusalem because God was with them and protecting them. Well, when the glory of the Lord left the temple, the protection of God was also removed. That's when Babylon came and sacked the city, if you recall. The people needed to know that God was with them. They realized that they suffered because God was not with them. We're told in this passage that God would be with them in this project of rebuilding the temple walls and roof. This gave them comfort that they would succeed in what God called them to do. Now, the Lord telling them that he would be with them for the rebuilding should not be misinterpreted that he was going to return to the temple immediately after, as we know that that wasn't the case. The people were waiting, even in the first century, for the one that would make smooth the highways so that the Lord would return to his temple. Suffice it to say, they were encouraged and emboldened to be obedient, knowing that the Lord was with them. But is that normally all it takes, knowing that you have to be obedient? Oftentimes, we, you and I, we obey because we know that we have to. We know that the Lord has commanded it. But do we always do it out of a heart filled with zeal? Out of a heart that is filled with sorrow for our sin? Even as Christians, we have to be honest and say, not all the time, right? What must happen internally in addition to having knowledge that God is with us? And this takes us to verse 14. We are reminded again that we can do all things for God because it is he himself that it is superintending our works and efforts. As Philippians 2.13 states, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. God, in this verse, we read, stirred up the entire community to action. The verb in the Hebrew for stirring is used for stirring a person out from his sleep, for example. Unless God moves, granting us grace, grace of repentance, we will sit idly with spiritual laziness and continue to pursue our own desires. And before we move forward on repentance, we must not limit this stirring of God exclusively to repentance. It could be to inspire a person or a people to do things, and not just those within the covenant community. So, for example, we see in Ezra chapter one and verse one the following. The Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, the pagan king of Persia. In Chronicles 21.16, sorry, 2 Chronicles 1.16, we see that a people were stirred by God to move against Israel. It reads, and the Lord stirred up against Jehoram the anger of the Philistines. And this is not the first time that the Lord has stirred this very same community that we're reading about, because in Ezra 1 in verse 15 we read, Ben rose up the heads of the fathers, house of Judah and Benjamin, and the priests and the Levites, everyone, here it is, whose spirit God had stirred to go up to rebuild the house of the Lord that is in Jerusalem. John Calvin states of this work of God as not only confirming a free volition upon the soul of man, but also God producing a willing mind among the people. Zechariah 4.6 is very helpful here. Not by might, not by power, but by my spirit, says the Lord of hosts. But here in our passage this morning, it was not simply to inspire people to action, but repentance was required. One that put God first in their lives. They needed to consider their ways. God moves us, you and I, to repentance by the power of the Holy Spirit, along with his holy word. And so what does this mean for us? It means that repentance is a grace of God. No matter how hard we try on our own power, in order for it to be a genuine change of the heart, it must be initiated by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit needs to stir us up. There are different types of repentance, as you may well know. The first one is that we're sorry that we got caught, but there is no real sorrow for our pain, the pain we cause others. The displeasure it brings our Heavenly Father. This is a false type of repentance. The type of repentance that leads unto life is one that has a genuine sorrow that leads to a change from within. It is not whitewashing from the outside, which we're quite capable of doing. Pretending, if you will, to be someone that you really aren't. Now, when a person receives the gift of repentance, it doesn't mean that that person isn't going to repeat his or her offense ever again, although in some instances it can. It means that they're in the process of change that may take some time. And we have to be patient and gracious for those that are around us that are trying and putting into effect God's grace in their lives. What I mean is when someone is repentant and they fail by repeating the sin and ask for forgiveness, as long as they are trying to correct their sinful behavior by God's grace, we are called to forgive, not seven times a day, but 70 times seven times a day. Having learned that repentance is a gift of God, just like faith, what must we do? we must pursue the means of grace. We should be in the word constantly. We should ask God through prayer to change us into the image of his son, Lord Jesus. The thing about repentance is that sometimes we don't realize or remember that it is a gift of God. We know the difference between right and wrong, and we try, perhaps even with good intentions, to conform to God's will. But we fail sometimes, over and over again. This can lead us to think that maybe we're not genuine believers. But for those that are elect, the issue is not about being saved. It's about being sanctified. That would be sort of like a misdiagnosis. We must remember that without God, there was no hope of a new life. And a changed life that becomes more and more holy is a work of God also, lest we should boast. So brothers and sisters, if you know you are sinning and you are trying and have been for a long time, Consider not your ways, but reconsider how you are trying to change. In whom is your hope for change? You alone, or in God granting you the grace to change? If you have been sinned against, and someone is asking for forgiveness, in what are you relying upon? Their ability to change? Or your hope is in God granting the grace for them to change? The equation changes dramatically when you understand this. So what's the outcome? How do we know that this is true repentance? The result of the people considering their ways, concluding they were wrong, repenting from their ways, and all of this initiated by the Spirit of God, stirring them and inspiring them to repentance, and action results in the people restarting the construction of the temple. Now, according to the dates between the first message, Haggai 1-1, and the first part of verse 15, it just took a little more than three weeks for the people to actually begin working on the reconstruction of the temple. Although it may have been three weeks to mobilize and get a willing people to restart the construction, let's remember that it had been 16 years since they touched the temple. And within those 16 years, God has been presenting them with economic difficulties, famine, to what? To get their attention. All of this has prepared them to be receptive to God's prophet Haggai and the warning that he provided them. C.S. Lewis said, God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world. Is there a part of your life that he is shouting to you about where you need to consider your ways, to grant you the grace of repentance, you must ask, you must seek him out, whether it's in prayer, whether it's in the study of the word, or what we're about to do now, and that is to take the Lord's table. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we indeed ask that you would help us to be reminded of your grace, not just of faith, but also of repentance. We thank you, Father, that you have provided all things for us, and you continue to provide all things for us, for holiness and the practice of righteousness. But we are responsible for taking advantage. And so we ask that you would stir us more and more to take advantage of the means of grace so that we may not only consider our ways, not only recognize that what we're doing is wrong and want to change, but not rely upon ourselves. And we're not able to pick ourselves up from our own bootstraps. And we can do no different in becoming holy. We need you and your grace to change our heart. And we ask that you