05.27.2012 Haggai, p2 - God is WITH US!

Lord, today is Pentecost, when we are reminded that You came to live among us, and as a result of sending Your Spirit, You came to dwell in us. Help us to allow You to live through us – that we can do all things through You who strengthen us. Help us to be on mission to bring You to the world – to bring You to people who don’t know You – that we might see lives changed. Teach us through Your word this morning – remove obstacles and things that distract that we might hear from You.
We are looking at Haggai – the book is fairly short – and its focus is on rebuilding the temple after the exile and return to Israel – about 20 years. Haggai challenges the people to get back to work – to rebuild the place where God revealed His glory to the world – and His mission flowed from and out of. It is the center of the Jewish community and religious/spiritual life. It is the place God made Himself known to Israel and the world.
As a result of Pentecost, we are the place where His glory dwells and He makes Himself known. Paul said – it is no longer I who live but Christ living in me. As we look at this story – we will transfer this into our story – they had a building – we are building a community – a family – a church.
Israel responds with faithful obedience.
Haggai 1: 12 Then Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and Joshua the son of Jehozadak, 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. 13 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."
Haggai comes with God’s word – and it is a reproof – You are not fulfilling your responsibility as My people. And they respond right – and God returns with a word of encouragement – a promise – what we are committing ourselves to do – He will be with us – “I am with you” is throughout the Bible – starting with Abraham. He promises that He will be with them as they go about doing His work. This is essential for all the other promises. It begins with Him being with us. God is with you. In the New Testament – in the Great Commission – and lo, I am with you, even to the end…
Nothing has changed – these simple four words tell us that the creator of all things is with us. He is there, right next to us and inside of us. He gives assurance, comfort and encouragement in whatever task we are asked to perform. For them, it was rebuilding the temple, for us, it is the Great Commandment – the Great Commission – being a parent, being an employee – and He is promising to be with us – an assurance that God is there working for us – it is an assurance of His guiding merciful presence. He is leading you through the circumstances you face. You are not alone in facing this – you are not alone in whatever task He has for you.
It is an assurance of His help and support in whatever task you have to accomplish. He is there – a part of that. So often, we get the sense that God has left us to do the job on our own. He has not left us alone. He told the disciples, I will not leave you as orphans, but sending a helper to reside in you and be with you always. It is an assurance of God fulfilling all His promises.
After the promise:
So the Lord energized and encouraged… 14 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 of hosts, their God, 15 on the twenty-fourth day of the sixth month in the second year of Darius the king.
He is on our side – He is for us.
The Lord energized and encouraged – when He gives us this task – our calling0- our mission – and for the Jews, the job was to build the temple, He is saying that He is the source of the task AND the source of the energy to accomplish it. This is really My task. This is not really YOUR thing – it is MINE – and you need to understand that I am the one to accomplish it.
He who began a good work in you will bring it to pass, finish it, accomplish it – until the day of Christ. Your salvation started with Him – and He had a plan to bring you to Himself.
And the people responded by working. You must have hope – or you will stop working. And that is what we see continually happening in the Old Testament – the people would give up on the promise that God is working on their behalf – and they stopped doing the work. But when you realize that He is bringing it about – it encourages us to work.
Work out your salvation with fear and trembling… Why? Because God is at work in you. He gives the strength to accomplish it. But the call is for us to get going. We are placed on this earth to work. Paul referred to working to the point of exhaustion. “I worked more than all of them – yet not I, but Christ working in me.”
From the beginning – Adam and Eve were called to work – Work! Get to it! The Christian life requires significant effort – and the more you realize it is God doing the work, the more you will work.
So the challenge is for us to work hard. If you just showed up at your job when you wanted to and when you felt like it, how long would you work there? Not long, unless it is for the government! Sorry – that was a low blow.
But when we are working for God – being consistent and faithful – He fulfills His promises. When we go about being faithful to Him, we experience the resources necessary to do what He calls us to do.
A bit less than a month passes:
2:1 On the twenty-first of the seventh month, the word of the Lord came by Haggai the prophet saying, 2 "Speak now to Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, and to the remnant of the people saying, 3 'Who is left among you who saw this temple in its former glory? And how do you see it now? Does it not seem to you like nothing in comparison?’”
They go to work – and another word comes to him – within a month – they were already discouraged – it took 27 days for them to get discouraged with the work – but from God’s perspective/ Haggai’s perspective – a good leader will experience discouragement – expect roadblocks to discourage you – that is what is happening here – a loss of motivation – like taking a trip with kids – We used to drive to California – like 16 hour days – and the kids would turn into zombies by day two. The first hour or two was okay – but then the questions come – are we there yet?
We get excited for God – I’m going to have quiet times – I’m going to start this new ministry – I’m going to teach Sunday school, or whatever – but then you get down the road and start getting discouraged – and the Lord knows this and brings a word to lift them up with great insight.
Is there anyone here who remembers the old temple? There were some old folks who would have remembered – it was about 60 years, so there were probably a handful who could remember – and He is understanding that one of the tendencies is to look back with nostalgia to past highpoints – and to long for that in life. It may have been a time when your spiritual life was doing its best – and you try to recapture those feelings or that event. But the problem is that God does not live in the past – those are over – don’t try to recover, recapture, or reproduce them. But God is present with you now – and God has something brand new hat He wants to do! This temple will be different – don’t go back there – stay out of that – it is so easy to look back and think it was better then – but God wants to do something better NOW.
Another thing we do when disappointed – we want to buckle down – just get more spiritual – we think we were much more spiritual back then – and now we want to become more rigid – and we would implement things that we thought used to work. There was a group who would do that – the Israelites – and the religious leaders of the Jews created these rigid rules to regain what they had in the past – and they thought that if they made everything extremely strict, they could regain that. But there is FREEDOM – we work best when we are free – not in the ‘could’ and ‘should ‘ of life – all things for me are free – all things are lawful! Think about him saying that! We could list all kinds of things that aren’t but when we are called to freedom – it is not a life of guilt – but of freedom to love and serve Him – it is a life of freedom and service – freedom to love one another.
A life enslaved to rules will never love. Love – real love only comes with real freedom.
Back in Iraq – they had an election for Saddam Hussein – and a reporter told a taxicab driver – Amazing – Saddam Hussein got 100% of the vote! Did you vote? No, but they knew what was in my heart, the taxi driver responded.
When we get discouraged, we try to make up for our deficiencies with technique.
God doesn’t copy – he didn’t stick people in a copy machine – but He created each of us unique. We all have unique plans. Back in the day we went through Experiencing God – God is the initiator and our job is to join Him in that work – God can use any technique in any program – and He is looking for people to be involved in His work.
So often, we look at style over substance.
4 'But now take courage, Zerubbabel,' declares the Lord, 'take courage also, Joshua son of Jehozadak, the high priest, and all you people of the land take courage,' declares the Lord, 'and work; for I am with you,' says the Lord of hosts. 5
Work is key to overcoming discouragement – but work flows out of the promise that He is with us. But we tend to stop trying – and we fail and get discouraged and stop working at it.
But God is saying – what you are trying to change – what you are working on – I am with you!
5 'As for the promise which I made you when you came out of Egypt, My Spirit is abiding in your midst; do not fear!' 6 "For thus says the Lord of hosts, 'Once more in a little while, I am going to shake the heavens and the earth, the sea also and the dry land. 7 'And I will shake all the nations; and they will come with the wealth of all nations; and I will fill this house with glory,' says the Lord of hosts. The temple was nothing like the original – and it never was – Solomon’s temple was amazing – and this was ‘meh’ – but God provides for what He orders and commands – and he provides exactly what is required for that plan.
His provision comes when you start working – and often not until then. We might think – I have everything I need – now I can go. But other times – He is asking us to take that step into the Jordan.
Provision comes as needed – sometimes at the last moment.
8 'The silver is Mine, and the gold is Mine,' declares the Lord of hosts. 9 'The latter glory of this house will be greater than the former,' says the Lord of hosts, 'and in this place I shall give peace,' declares the Lord of hosts. "
Before Jesus comes – King Herod expands on the temple – and it was magnificent – not as magnificent as Solomon’s – but so magnificent that the disciples asked Jesus, “Do you see these stones…” – Jesus said he would tear them down and rebuild it. There was another temple on its way.
God is not content with THIS temple – this story points to Jesus – and someday, the earth is going to shake – and all nations will come and that all happened in Christ.
50 days later – today – the disciples came together and the spirit of God came to dwell in them – and God’s dwelling is now with man – so the latter glory – now sits in this room – the temple He has created in us is so much more than silver, gold, and all the wealth that went into Solomon’s temple. Everything is changed forever.
Galatians 3: 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
All of these things have come together as one. This is saying that there is a new race of people – a whole new type of person – do you understand that you as a Christian are a new type of person, a type that did not exist until that point at Pentecost – a race that has the Spirit of God living inside of them. And we have a temple to build – not a building, well, a spiritual building – a holy race, a nation – not Americans, not whatever, not Caucasian or Asian or African American – but this new race called Christian.
Let’s pray.