Good morning. We're going to be in Haggai 1 again today. I want to begin with the word of prayer. Lord, we thank you for this morning. We thank you for the opportunity to gather here as your people. We can spend time singing and praying and encouraging one another. As we have opportunity now to look in your word as well, we pray you'd be speaking to us through the words we see here in Haggai. We pray our hearts would be well-prepared soil that would take the seeds you plant in us and they would grow and bear good through our lives. We pray you'd guard the things that are said as I'm preaching that they would be accurate to your word and Christ be glorified well through the things we share here today. We pray all this in Jesus name and for his glory. Amen. So have you ever taken something apart, and then you realize it's going to be hard to put back together? Maybe you opened up a box of something that was packed real densely, and then you realize, oh, I don't think I can get all this back in that box. Or maybe you're working on your car, you tear apart the dash, and it's like, oh, there's a lot of pieces. I had a cell phone one time that was broken. I watched some YouTube videos and think, oh, this isn't going to be too hard to fix. And you just pop the back off, take the battery out, slide that screen off of there. Easy, easy fix. Well, it wasn't. You get partway into that. And you're understanding a lot more about how the cell phone works. Like, oh, that button touches this thing on the back and all that. But then you realize you can't get it back together. And pieces start getting broken. And it's not good. You can't put it back together. Well, that made me think a little bit of studying Haggai this week. There's a lot of pieces, and the more we get into it, the more pieces we find, and like, this is great. Oh, I see how this works. I see how this connects to that piece. But hopefully we can get it put back together here for you in the sermon today, so you can follow along in it. And it works again. We can take it out, and it works in our lives, application that God has for us. So we're going to begin by reviewing where we were last week. Let me get here to Haggai, Haggai chapter 1. Again, slaying the Old Testament right between the other two books that start with Z. So in Haggai, remember last week we started by introducing the book and we said, why do we have this tool in our toolbox? Why does God give us the book of Haggai? And we were starting to look through Haggai and we summed up the overall message of Haggai. The summary, if you're taking notes on your bulletin, the summary is that God calls his people to join in the great work that only he can accomplish. God calls His people to join in the great work that only He can accomplish. So that's what we're going to see in Haggai. As we work through the prophecies of Haggai, we're going to understand that the theme here in Haggai is that it's about being the people of God. Haggai is about being the people of God. And what does the people of God look like? Haggai is going to paint that picture for us as we're working through it. And as we started into chapter 1 last week, and we didn't get all the way through chapter 1, so we're going to go there again today. We said the theme for chapter 1 is don't focus on the gifts, pursue God Himself. And you'll remember the people were starting to focus on the good things they had from being back in the land, but they were forgetting to focus on the God who has given them those gifts. So let's read through the text, and then we'll move on from there. Haggai chapter 1. In the second year of Darius the King, on the first day of the sixth month, the word of the Lord came by the prophet Haggai to Zerubbabel, the son of Sheltiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua, the son of Jehozavah, the high priest, saying, Thus says the Lord of hosts. This people says, The time has not come, even the time for the house of the Lord to be rebuilt. Then the word of the Lord came by Haggai the prophet, saying, Is it time for you yourselves to dwell in your paled houses, while this house lies desolate? Now therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts, consider your ways. You have sown much, but harvest little. You eat, but there is not enough to be satisfied. You drink, but there is not enough to become drunk. You put on clothing, but no one is warm enough. And he who earns, earns wages to put into a purse with holes. Thus says the Lord of hosts, Consider your ways, go up to the mountains, bring wood, and rebuild the temple, that I may be pleased with it, and be glorified, says the Lord. You look for much, but behold, it comes to little. When you bring it home, I blow it away. Why, declares the Lord of hosts, because of my name, which lies desolate, while each of you runs to his own house. Therefore, because of you, the sky has withheld its dew, and the earth has withheld its produce. I called for a drought on the land, on the mountains, on the grain, on the new wine, on the oil, on what the ground produces, on men, on cattle, and on all the labor of your hands. Then Zerubbabel, the son of Shelteel, and Joshua the son of Jehoshaphat 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 people showed reverence for the Lord. Then Haggai, the messenger of the Lord, spoke by the commission of the Lord to the people, saying, I am with you, declares the Lord. So the Lord stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel, the son of Shelteel, governor of Judah, and the spirit of Joshua, the son of Jehoshaphat, 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 twenty-fourth day of the sixth month, in the second year, of Darius the king. So we're going to follow the same flow that we saw last week. We're going to first look at the text. We'll see what that meant for the people in Haggai's day. And we're going to see how's that, the principles we see in the text points to Christ, and we'll consider Christ, and then we'll finish up with application. What does that mean? What are those principles as we see them fulfilled in Christ? How do they apply in our lives? How should this text affect our lives today? Reviewing back through briefly where we were last week, remember we saw in verse 1 of Haggai, he gives him this familiar setting, everything we would expect to see at the beginning of a book like this. He tells him the time, he tells him the sender, it's God giving the message. We see the messenger, it's Haggai, and we see the audience. It's written to Zerubbabel, the governor, the Persian governor, he's probably Jewish, but set up by the Persians to be governor, and Joshua, the high priest at the time. And then we saw in verse 2, the people were procrastinating for building the temple. Remember he says, they were saying, the time has not come, even the time for the house of the Lord to be rebuilt. We saw procrastination again in verse 10 and 11. They were procrastinating and it was resulting in punishment. God was sending a drought and the crops were failing, livestock was struggling. Everything is falling apart because they're neglecting the work that God had given them to be doing. And from that, we drew the first principle. And that was that God's people should always be doing God's work. God's people should always be doing God's work. That was the first principle we saw last week. And then we looked also at verse 3 and 4. And remember, that's where God is saying, is it time for you yourselves to dwell in your pound houses while this house lies desolate? Remember, the people were content to be building their own homes, and they weren't working on the temple of God. They're leaving the temple in ruins. We saw that same idea again in verse 9, the second half of verse 9, where God asked them another question that, again, shows their wrong priorities. He says, Why declares the Lord of hosts? Because of my house, which lies desolate, while each of you runs to his own house. Again, instead of working on a temple, they were working on their own projects. These verses show they have the wrong priorities, and we drew from these verses our second principle, which was that God's people should give God's work top priority. God's people must give God's work top priority. And then last week we paused there and we considered how those principles point us to Christ and application in our lives. So now we're going to jump in where we left off and I want to show you four more principles we can see from this passage today. So the next principle we're going to look at is that God's people cannot be satisfied by anything less than God himself. God's people cannot be satisfied by anything less than God himself. I understand, I noticed that blank is a little bit short where you write satisfied. That's because I was having trouble keeping it on one line. God's people cannot be satisfied by anything less than God himself. Look with me at Haggai verses 5 and 6. Chapter 1 verse 5 and 6. Now therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts, consider your ways. You have so much to harvest little. You eat, but there is not enough to be satisfied. You drink, but there is not enough to become drunk. You put on clothing, but no one is warm enough. And he who earns, earns wages to put it into a purse with holes. So verse five starts with that signal phrase we've been looking at, thus says the Lord or the the Lord of hosts, and we've seen that kind of introduced in each section as we've been moving through this prophecy. So we see it again here, just like we saw in verse two and verse three. So it tells us we're moving to another section. God tells them, consider your ways. So remember, they're procrastinating for building a temple. They're focusing and giving the priority on their own projects. And God says, how is that working out for you? Are you happy with the results that you're getting from that? And then, you know, what are the results? Well, verse six tells us what's happening. It says, you have sown much, but harvest little. You eat, but there is not enough to be satisfied. You drink, but there is not enough to become drunk. You put on clothing, but no one is warm enough. And he who earns, earns wages to put into a purse of holes. Imagine what that would be like. So you're a farmer. You spend weeks getting your crop planted and you got your corn and soybeans in the ground. And then and then throughout the summer, it's hot, it's dry, it's windy. And by the time you get to harvest, there's nothing worth cutting. It's a failed crop. Or, you know, have you ever had someone pack a lunch for you? You get out to the field, you get to work, and you open it up, and you realize, like, oh, one peanut butter and jelly sandwich isn't going to be enough. I'm going to eat, but I'm not going to be satisfied. I'll still be hungry. Or even worse, you're out in the pasture on a hot afternoon. You go to your jug, get a drink of water. it's almost empty you know you get a couple gulps of water but it's not enough your thirst is almost worse now than it was before you got to your jug and so um everything they're pursuing is not satisfying them you know he talks about clothing you put on a jacket because you're cold and you put your jacket on you expect to be warm again but it seems like they keep layering up but you're not staying warm or have you ever been camping you're trying to sleep but it's cold and you don't have enough layers and so you can't rest you can't be comfortable um We see that everything they're pursuing is not satisfying them. Kids, you could think about, he talks about, you earn money and put it into a purse with holes. Imagine your mom's purse had a hole in it. So everywhere she goes, she's walking across the parking lot, there's money falling out and blowing away. She gets to the checkout line in the grocery store, not how many money left to buy groceries. The people are, they're trying to be comfortable, they're trying to be satisfied, they're trying to get ahead in life, but it's all, it's leaving them empty. They're not satisfied, because God's people cannot be satisfied by anything less than pursuing God himself. We can see the same problem mentioned again in verse nine. God says, you look for much, but behold, it comes to little. When you bring it home, I blow it away. So that first part of verse 9. Again, they're hopeful when they're planting, but when they come to harvest time, there's not much to bring home. And what they do bring home, God says, He's blowing it away. It's not just that things are going poorly, it's that God's even causing this trouble for them. We're going to see He has a reason for it. God's making sure that they're not satisfied with any of the temporal things that they're wanting to focus on. He's making sure that those things leave them empty, because that's going to prepare them well to obey Him in the next commandment He gives them. So now we'll move to verses 7 and 8. And from these principles, we're going to see that God's people pursue God by heartfelt obedience. God's people pursue God by heartfelt obedience. As usual, we're going to see it starts out with another declaration that the Lord is speaking. Look at verse 7 and 8. Thus says the Lord of hosts, consider your ways. Go up to the mountains, bring wood, and rebuild the temple, that I may be pleased with it and be glorified, says the Lord. So again, he tells people, consider your ways. You're procrastinating and not giving the temple high priority. I'm blowing away everything you bring home. So you're not satisfied in anything besides me. So what should you do now? What should the people of Haggai do now? He tells in verse eight, he says, go up to the mountains, bring wood and rebuild the temple. Throughout all of Haggai 1, he doesn't give them any instructions on what they should do. He tells them to consider your ways a couple times, but when it actually comes to action, verse 8 is the only one that says what you need to do. You need to go out, go up to the mountains, bring wood, and rebuild the temple. God gives them a command, and that's an opportunity for them to obey, an opportunity for them to show their love for Him. But that's not the end of the verse. He also prescribes their motivation. Why should they go out and do these things? He tells them, so that I may be pleased with it and be glorified. God doesn't want them just going through the motions. He also wants their heart to be engaged with the work. Rather than focusing on their houses, their crops, He wants their cheap desire to be in pleasing Him. They should be seeking that God be glorified and that's why they would go out and build the temple. You know, notice what's not their motivation. He doesn't say, um, go build a temple and then I'm going to send some rain and then you guys have plenty to eat again. You'll have your crops. You'll have, you know, you'll be successful or go out and build a temple. And I'm going to bless you guys economically as a nation. Or, go out and build a temple because King Cyrus told you to do that, and then King Cyrus will be pleased. Or, he doesn't even say, go out and build a temple, and then I'll give you your independence from the Persian Empire. All these things that they might have been desiring, that's not the reason to build a temple. God says, it's not about building temples so they can have better lives. It's about building temples so that God will be glorified, so that God will be pleased. They want to see God smile. If God's people want to be truly satisfied, if they want to delight in God and self instead of blessings, then they need to pursue God with heartfelt obedience. Now before I leave verse 8, I want to look at one more detail, and this is going to help us see the pattern in chapter 1 of Haggai overall. I mentioned last week I would talk about that some more, so that's what we're going to talk about here. So verse 8 closes with the phrase, it says, So I am glorified, says the Lord. So the last phrase in 8 is, says the Lord. And now if we look at that, it doesn't look like very much, but it gives us a clue to the pattern of how Haggai 1 is laid out. Look back at the beginning of verse 7, he also says, Thus says the Lord of hosts. So, we've been following, each section is opening with this statement that comes before the next part of the message, Thus says the Lord of hosts, or Thus says the Lord. Now here at verse 8, he opens with Thus says the Lord, but he closes with Says the Lord. So, verse 8 is sandwiched between those two parts of the statement. When I first saw that, I thought, oh, maybe there's a chiasm here. A chiasm, maybe you heard Dan or Matt talk about, it's this structure where it's like A, B, C, D, C, B, A, that pattern that points towards the middle. Chiasm is spelled C-H-I-A-S-M if you're writing notes. Maybe there's a chiasm here. And so, when we step back and take a look at the passage as a whole, if we think maybe there's a chiasm going on here, and we say, what else do we see? Are there some patterns? Is there a pattern here? Well, let's look at the very beginning of the chapter and the very end of the chapter. And in the very beginning of the chapter, Haggai opens with a date. He says, it's the second year of King Darius. It's the sixth month. It's the first day of the month. Well, if we flip back the page now and look at the last verse in chapter 1, verse 15, He sure enough, he gives him another date. Now it's the 24th day of the 6th month in the second year of King Darius. So different translations will change the order of those dates around a little bit. They might say it's the 6th month, 24th day, or 24th day of the 6th month. But if we look at a literal translation, like Jung's literal translation where he tries to keep everything exactly where it happens, we can see that those dates are in exactly opposite order. So in the beginning, he gives him the date He gives him the year, the month, the day, well at the end he gives him the day, the month, the year. It's following that pattern we would expect to see in a chiasm. I think John Ziller is the one who pointed that out, actually, when we were preaching class. It was a good observation. Helps to build an argument. We have a chiasm here. Now we can look at the rest of the passage, and if we look at the message, we'll see that same pattern here. In verse 2, we see the people procrastinating. They're not willing to build the temple. They're saying it's not the right time to build the temple. Well, in verse 10 and 11, we see the match to that. They're getting punished because they're procrastinating. So there's the procrastination. Again, in verse 3 and 4, God's asking them a question that shows their wrong priorities. He says, should you be living in your houses while the temple lies in ruins? That pairs to the second half of verse 9, where He again asks them a question to show their priorities. He says, why? Because of... Why He declares the Lord a host? Because of my house, which lies desolate. So that pairs, verse 3 and 4 pairs to the end of verse 9. And then as we come towards the middle now of verse 6, which we just looked at, we saw that they're not satisfied by anything. They're working hard, but they're not satisfied. Well, we have that again at the beginning of verse 9. You look for much, but behold, it comes to little. When you bring it home, I blow it away. The chiastic structure of that pattern is narrowing us down to the very center. It shows the emphasis on verse 7 and 8, where God is telling them, go up to the mountains, bring wood, and rebuild the temple, that I may be pleased with it, and I may be glorified. When I saw that pattern, I was just impressed again by God's wisdom. Not only He tells them these things, it's God's speaking message to them, but even the way He inspires Haggai to write it down, Haggai to say it and someone wrote it down. There's even a pattern in that which is really interesting. It just shows God's creativity and that poetic beauty that he included in his word. So again, God's calling people to action. What they're doing right now is not working. God wants them to start building the temple and tells them the motivation should be so he would be pleased, so he could be glorified. Wrapping up back to the principles we're going through, God's people must pursue God by heartfelt obedience. Now we also see the people obey that command if we look at verse 12. And it says, Then Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, and Joshua, son of Jehoshadak, 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 showed reverence for the Lord. says they obeyed, and they showed reverence for the Lord. That's exactly what they were supposed to do in the command. They get started building, and they showed the reverence. So, so far we've seen that God's people cannot be satisfied with anything less than God Himself, and God's people pursue God by heartfelt obedience. And we've covered everything up through verse 8, and then we showed that verses 9 through 11 are part of that chiasm. We've already been looking at those as we went along. We're going to skip down to 12. We just talked about 12. That's where we see the people obeying the commands of the Lord. So now we're ready to talk about verse 13. Now in verse 13, just if we were following that structure, remember in the very first of Haggai 1, we saw he gives them the time, the sender, the messenger, and the audience. The last few verses of Haggai are just going to follow that in reverse order. Now we're going to see the audience and their action. Then Haggai, the messenger of the Lord, spoke by the commission of the Lord to the people, saying, I am with you, declares the Lord. So after the main body of the prophecy that God gives through Haggai, He gives them one more word of encouragement. Once Haggai tells the people, I am with you. So that must have been a real encouragement to Zerubbabel and to Joshua and the people. From this verse, our next principle is going to be God is with His people. God is with His people. If we think back over Biblical history, we can see the significance of this statement. When God created the people and put them in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve, He was with them there. He took a walk with them. Well then, we also see in Exodus, as Derek read for us today, when they're at Mount Sinai, they're getting ready to travel to the wilderness. God says, I'm going to send you on your way. I'll send an angel with you, but I'm not going to go with you." Moses is like, no, we don't want that. We want God to be with us. And we see him pleading with the Lord that the Lord would be with them, that the Lord's presence goes with them. So again, that emphasizes that God would be with His people. We see also in Joshua, right as they get ready to enter into the land, The Lord tells them, have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not tremble or be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. So that's a hallmark of God's people throughout history, that God is with his people. And so it must have been very encouraging for the exiles to come back from Babylon. They just kind of just kind of judged in a way. They've been they've been out of their land, but they're back. And then God says, when you build a temple, I'm with you. OK. We said God is with you. Now, the last principle I want to look at is God enables obedience. God enables obedience. And we'll see that in verse 14 of our text today. It says, So the Lord stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and the spirit of Joshua, the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, and the spirit of all the remnant of the people. And they came and worked on the house of the Lord's host, their God. So here we're saying the sender in his action. God is the one who's caused the obedience. It says he stirred up their spirit. If we didn't have that verse, we might read that God gives a command and then Joshua and Zerubbel really rise to the occasion. They step up, they obey God. We think, wow, those great fellows, they really cleaned up their act. They got together and really did a good job. But this verse shows us the secret to their success. Why is it they did so well? It's because the Lord stored them up. The Lord enabled them to obey Him well. We also might think back to when the first tabernacle was built, the tabernacle at Mount Sinai. The Lord similarly stirred up men to build the tabernacle. We can see in Exodus 31 verses 2 and 3, the Lord is talking to Moses and he says, See, I have called by name Buzalel, the son of Uri, the son of Herb, of the tribe of Judah. And I have filled him with the Spirit of God, and wisdom, and understanding, and knowledge, and all kinds of craftsmanship. Remember, that's the man that the Lord would use, kind of the head craftsman as they're building the tabernacle. And the Lord has given His Spirit on that man to build the tabernacle, help build the tabernacle. Here the Lord is storing up his people again to rebuild the temple. So to summarize those four principles, we said God's people cannot be satisfied by anything less than God himself. God's people pursue God by heartfelt obedience. God is with his people, and God enables obedience. So we've seen that God's people need to stop focusing on the gifts and instead pursue God himself. God is with his people and enables them to obey his commands. Now we're going to look at how does Christ practice these or how does he fulfill these principles. So the first one. Jesus was not satisfied with anything less than God himself. Jesus was not satisfied with anything less than God himself. So in Haggai's day, remember the people were looking at their crops, their food, what they would be drinking, what they would be wearing, looking at their money. That's the things they were looking for that they might hope would satisfy them. So what kind of things would Jesus focus on? Would Jesus be grasping for those things? Of course not. We see in Matthew 4, Jesus is in the wilderness and he's just been baptized. He comes up in the wilderness. The devil tempts him there. If we look at that third temptation, the final temptation, in verse 8 and 10 of Matthew 4, it says, Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, All these things I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me. Then Jesus said to him, Go Satan, for it is written, You shall worship the Lord your God, and serve him only. It shows him everything the world has to offer, anything that might be hopeful to bring satisfaction. But Jesus won't settle for anything less than worshiping God, seeing God glorified. He maintains that he will worship God alone. He maintains that he will worship God alone. You can also see that Jesus is devoted to pursuing God's glory. He wants to see God glorified. Think about the story of Lazarus. Jesus is going to raise Lazarus from the dead. And the story starts out in John 11, verse 4. The word comes that Lazarus is sick, and they're asking him to come heal him. And Jesus tells his disciples that this sickness is not to end in death, but for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified by it. So he's thinking, here's an opportunity where God can be glorified. He starts making preparations to go, but remember, he delays a little bit. And there's that discussion with the disciples saying, we need to get over there. Jesus is preparing to go and the disciples know a problem in verse 8 They said the disciples said to him rabbi the Jews were just now seeking to stone you and are you going there again? So they're like this is pretty dangerous. They're trying to they don't like you over there And if you go back over there, you might get hurt might get stoned and sweet Jesus is not we see that Jesus is more interested in seeing God glorified than even in pursuing his own personal safety. So again that That's priority there. He's focused on God's glory and as his top priority. Now we also see in the second principle, Jesus perfectly practiced heartfelt obedience. So if we look at Philippians 2, we can see Jesus' humility, where he's laying aside his own interests for the sake of obeying the Father. In verse 8 of Philippians 2, we read, being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. So we see that Jesus practiced perfect obedience. He was even willing to die for the sake of carrying out his father's plan. We can see that just like the people's obedience in Haggai needed to be heartfelt and be sincere, Jesus' obedience was heartfelt. We can look at John 17. This is after the Last Supper. Jesus is talking with his disciples and we can see that his main desire is that God be glorified. He says, Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that the Son may glorify you. That's John 17. Even as he looks towards the betrayal and the cross that's ahead of him, in that evening and the next day, his focus is that God be glorified. And we can see that he did it willingly. If we look at Hebrews 12, we can read there, we're to fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despised the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. He didn't go begrudgingly, he wasn't trying to get away from it, he went willingly. It was for the joy set before him, his heartfelt obedience. We can also see that in the next point there, Jesus is God with his people. You can see where this point is going, Jesus is God with his people. In Matthew 1, when the angel tells Joseph that Mary is pregnant with the coming Messiah, Matthew gives us this commentary, which really draws out this point. He tells us in Matthew 1, 22 and 23, Now all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet. Behold, the virgin shall be with child and shall bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel, which translated means God with us. Jesus is God with us. We can also see Jesus teaching his disciples that same principle in John 14. As he's visiting with the disciples, he said, I'm going to go away, and they're confused. And then Philip asks him, Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us. Jesus said to him, have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, show us the Father? They should understand Jesus with them is God with them. So we've seen that Jesus is God with his people. And lastly, we can see that Jesus depended on the Father for his strength to obey. So I'm trying to show here that Jesus relied on the strength he received from the Father in order to carry out his ministry. Look with me at the... where Jesus is baptized in Matthew chapter 3, right at the beginning of his ministry. In chapter 3, verse 16 of Matthew, he says, After being baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water, and, behold, the heavens were opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove and lighting on him. And, behold, a voice out of the heavens said, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. So even from the beginning of Jesus' ministry, it's really marked out as being filled with the Holy Spirit and doing the work that is pleasing to God. So even in Jesus' earthly ministry, he was relying on God to give him the strength needed in order to obey. We can see that in the frequency that he often went out to pray. In Luke 5.16, it says Jesus himself would often slip away to the wilderness and pray. It wasn't something he was relying on. He had the authority and strength, but he was relying on the Father to do that. We can also see that if we look at the passage in Matthew 26 at Garden of Gethsemane when it's come just before Jesus' betrayal. I'll read a few verses here and it shows how he's relying on God for the strength to continue obeying well. In Matthew 26, Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane and said to his disciples, sit here while I go over there and pray. And he took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee and began to be grieved and distressed. Then he said to them, my soul is deeply grieved to the point of death. Remain here and keep watch with me. And he went a little beyond them and fell on his face and prayed, saying, my father, if it is possible, let this cup pass for me, yet not as I will, but as you will. And he came to the disciples and found them sleeping and said to Peter, So, you men could not keep watch with me for one hour? Keep watching and praying that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. He went away again a second time and prayed, saying, My father, if this cannot pass away unless I drink it, your will be done. Again he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy. And he left them again and went away and prayed a third time, saying the same thing once more. So we can see that Jesus is in this great distress, but how does he handle it? He goes to the Father in prayer. He's praying. He said, keep watching and praying. They may not enter into temptation. He tells the disciples, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. So we see that Jesus is depending on the Father for the strength to obey well. Okay, so now we're going to go to the application. We'll consider how do these principles apply to us. So like the people of Haggai's day, number one, we cannot be satisfied by anything less than God. So Romans 1 warns us about not settling for anything less than pursuing God himself. It talks about in verse 25, those people who were worshiping the creation instead of the creator. It says, they exchanged the truth of God for lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator. So those people were starting to worship the physical things instead of worshiping the God who made those things and giving them those gifts. In 1 Timothy 6, we can also see a warning to not be longing after money. Paul tells Timothy, but those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a snare, and many foolish and harmful desires which plunge men into ruin and destruction. But the love of money is the root of all sorts of evil. And some, by longing for it, have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. They say, if you try to find your satisfaction in the things you hear in the world, it's going to cause a lot of trouble for you. It could even shipwreck your faith. So don't be pursuing those things. On the positive side, Colossians 3 tells us what we should put our focus on. It says, Therefore, if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. Our hope isn't in the things here on earth, but our hope is in Christ. applications and for us, you know, we go through life and we see things that disappoint us, things that we like, Oh, I hope that trailer would last a little longer before it started rusting out around the fenders. Or on this one this week, I had a pickup truck with a cracked windshield, just sitting in the sun, came back like, Oh, it's cracked now. So like, that's disappointing. The things in life are going to continue to disappoint you. You can probably think of things, maybe this last week that were disappointing. They didn't hold up as well as you hoped, or they didn't perform as well as you hoped, or didn't last as long as you hoped. Those are opportunities that God gives us to not be satisfied with those things, but to remind us, where should our true hope be? Hope should be in what He's doing, or in the life we have in Him. So that's an application of that. And also, our next principle, we must pursue God with heartfelt obedience. Now, in Haggai's day, that message was pretty clear. God wants people to go out and build the temple. He tells them what they should be doing, Go get the wood, bring it down, and build the temple, so I'd be pleased, so I'd be glorified. But what's the command that God wants us to obey in our days? A lawyer asked Jesus a very similar question in Matthew 22, 35-33. One of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, testing him. Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law? And he, Jesus, said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend the whole law and the prophets. So, Jesus commands people they should be loving God, they should be loving one another. And that's good, but that's still pretty broad. We know that somehow what we're supposed to be doing is going to fall into that range, but more specifically, what should we be doing? I think a good verse that we can consider, as we're thinking, what is the will of God, is the Great Commission, Matthew 28. In Matthew 28, verse 18, Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I command you, and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. I thought this verse was really interesting compared to Haggai 1.8 at the center of that Haggai passage. We see how it starts out. Remember in Haggai, God keeps reminding his people, I'm the Lord of hosts. I'm the Lord of hosts. I have all of heaven's armies at my disposal. I'm the Lord of hosts. And then here in Matthew 28, what it just says, all authority of heaven on earth has been given to me. So that similar starts out by like, look who is with you. And then he tells him in Haggai, he gives him a three part action. Go up the mountains, bring wood, rebuild the temple. Well, in Matthew 28, he gives him a command that has three parts to also go make disciples, baptize them and teach them all that I command you. And then how does he finish out in Matthew 28? It says, Lo, I am with you always, even at the end of the age. Very similar to Haggai 1, where God encourages people through Haggai and says, I'm with you. So that pattern is similar. It's not saying it's exactly matched there, but it's close. And I think that's gives us a good understanding of what God wants us to be doing today. As we're building up, as we're carrying out the Great Commission, we're building up the church, just like the people were to build up the temple. We can see a couple of references where the writers of the New Testament see the church as the temple of God. If we look at 1 Peter 2, verses 4 through 5, we can read, And coming to him as, that's Jesus, as to a living stone, which has been rejected by men, but is choice and precious in the sight of God, you also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. So Peter tells him, as a church, you guys are being built up as this spiritual house, as a temple to God, where God will be worshiped. Paul makes even clearer in 1 Corinthians 3, verse 16-17, he tells the church, Do you not know that you are a temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If any man destroys the temple of God, God will destroy him, for the temple of God is holy, and that is what you are. He tells the Corinthians, don't be tearing each other apart, because you guys as a church are the temple of God. And so, we can see Paul really saw the church as the temple of God also. So when we work out a great commission, we're part of that building the church of God. And just like in the command of people in Haggai, you know, it's a big project, but it all happens in very small, you know, your part in that role might seem small. So in Haggai, you know, Think about the guys, they had to go out and, how are we gonna cut down this tree? How are we gonna get the branches off it? How are we gonna get this down the mountain? Little pieces all fit together to accomplish the whole project. It might be similar in your case. It's like, well, I don't have a significant role to play, but whatever the role is that God's given you in that overall care of the Great Commission is what you can be doing. So maybe that looks like having a conversation with a client or a coworker. Maybe it's explaining a principle to one of your children to understand the Bible better. Maybe if you're younger, explaining it to one of your siblings, Bible stories, so they understand more about God's words. Maybe at times it looks like studying God's words, so you're ready to be able to teach it well, to understand it well, and explain it to those, or apply it well if someone needs counseling. All those seem like small steps, but they all are part of that bigger, that's how we can be carrying out the work that God's given us, and doing it heartfelt. We also see that. We can also see, as we're talking about wholehearted obedience, that Paul is rejoicing over the Romans and the Roman church. In Romans chapter 6, verse 17, he tells them, But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed. Having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. You catch that line, he said, you became obedient from the heart. That's exactly the kind of obedience that we're called to today, similar to what the people in Haggai were called to. So lastly, we now see God is still with his people today. Actually, second to last. God is still with his people today. Think about, again, the end of Matthew, where Jesus, given a great commission, he says, Lo, I am with you always. That should be encouragement to us as we are pursuing the work that God has given us. We can see a similar in John, chapter 14. Again, this is that conversation, same conversation, Jesus is telling his disciples he's going away from them for a time, and then he tells them, I'll ask my father, he will give you another helper, that he may be with you forever. Kind of that same conversation, chapter 16, verse 7. But I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away. For if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. Jesus is promising to send the Holy Spirit, be in believers. So, people in Haggai's day were encouraged that God was with them. He would dwell in this temple where they were building. But now, in an even better way, God will actually dwell in the believers, in the followers of Christ. We can see this should be an encouragement to us as well. In 1 John chapter 4, John is writing to the church and talking about the conflicts they will have with the false teachers around them. And it refers to Antichrist. And then he says in verse 4, you are from God, little children, and have overcome them. Greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world. So it wasn't being encouraged. God is with you. And that's a stronger power than any of the forces and spiritual battles you're going to face in the world around you. Now someday, after the battles are all finished, we have a great hope that we will again be close with God. And we read in Revelations 21, verse 3, And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and he will dwell among them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be among them. So kind of going back, clear, full circle, we had the Garden of Eden, they're with God, they lost it. Now, again, God is with his people and this time will be secure, last forever. Something we can have our hope in and look forward to. So whatever challenges we might be facing as God's people, we know that God is adequate, God's there with us and helping us through them. Now our last principle, our last application principle, is that God still enables obedience today. God still enables obedience. Remember that the Lord stirred up the people in Haggai to obey, and likewise, Christ depended on the Father's strength that He would obey and carry out His ministry. Why would we suppose that's anything different for us? We can think about this in two aspects. We can think, first of all, in our initial salvation, that we depended on God to bring us to obey, to bring us to respond to Him rightly. If we look at Ephesians 2, he starts out in verse 1 and says, you were dead in your trespasses and sins. It's not something that we thought, oh, I think I'll try and get saved. We were dead in our trespasses and sins. And then he talks about that for a few verses. He gets to verse 4. But God, being rich in mercy. So it's not that we took the initiative. God's the one who starts that. But God, being rich in mercy because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved, and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that, in ages to come, He might show the surpassing riches of His grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. So we see that it's not by our own strength that we're saved, but it's God that enables us to believe, enables us to respond to His grace. We're not saved as a matter of works, and so we have nowhere to close. for anyone here that's not a believer in Christ, if you realize, oh, I'm not part of God's family, I haven't turned from my sin, this is good news, in a way, because it means you don't have to try to be good enough to earn salvation. You don't have to try to make yourself clean up or good enough that you can join to this. God can enable us, God can stir us up to believe. Ask God to give you the right heart and call it in repentance and belief. And He'll welcome you in. He'll be with you. He'll welcome you to be part of this work He calls people to be part of. So that would be the right response if you're not of the family of God. Now, if you are the family of God, there's application here for you as well. We see that we also rely on God to stir us up to enable us to work. And in Christ, we have been enabled to be free from sin and free to obey. In Romans chapter 6, again, beginning verses, it says, What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? It may never be. How shall we who have died to sin still live in it? So in Christ, we've died to sin. We don't have to live in that anymore. We're free from that. And he goes on through that whole chapter talking about we're not under the power of sin, but we're under the power of righteousness, to be slaves to righteousness. So we can see that God enables our obedience through that. So in conclusion, the book of Haggai continues to tell us more about what it means to be the people of God. As God calls us to engage in his great work, he does so for our good. We cannot be satisfied by anything less than God. We should pursue God with heartfelt obedience to his commands. This can be a daunting task, but God reassures us that He is with us. Furthermore, although we are called to exert real effort and endeavor, we find that ultimately it is God who stirs us up and enables us to obey His commands. Therefore, we can rest on the knowledge that the work will ultimately be completed. Paul anticipates that, and we'll close with the verses in Philippians 1, verse 6. For I am confident of this very thing, that he who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for the book of Haggai and for the things you teach us from it. We pray that you would give us a clearer perspective on the things that the world offers that appear satisfying at times, that the people around us might be running towards for satisfaction, people around the world. I pray that we would not fall for that, but that we would see that our soul is going to be satisfied by running after you. We pray you would show us the things you want us to be obeying, the opportunities that we can be part of the work you're doing. We would engage with those with heartfelt obedience. We think that you're with us, that you encourage us, that you've not left us as orphans, but you've come to us and with your Holy Spirit be working through us day by day and that we ultimately can look forward to being even closer with you at New Heaven, New Earth, New Jerusalem. We thank You that it's not dependent on our strength to accomplish Your work, but You give us the strength, You strengthen us and prepare us to obey well. So we thank You for that. We pray You'd help us to remember these things as we go out and encourage one another with the truths we've heard today. We pray all this in Jesus' name. Amen. Okay, now we'll open up for questions, comments, other things that are encouraging to share. Okay, great. Turn it over to Brian.