God Speaks | Lesson Eight

Show Notes

Donna Gaines teaches from Haggai 2, where God encourages His people to keep rebuilding the temple and promises to be with them. She connects their call to obedience with a question for us today: Whose kingdom has priority in our lives?

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This week, we studied courage for the next step. And the truth that we concluded our study with was the God who calls us to obey, promises his presence, supplies his power, and accomplishes his purposes. We can rest in that, even on an election day, that he is absolutely sovereign, and that he will put the people in place that are according to his purpose and plan for these end days in which we are living. So, we trust the sovereignty of our God. Now, last week, you studied Haggai chapter one, when the prophet was given a word from God in the second year of King Darius on the first day of the sixth month. And we know that the people responded in obedience about rebuilding the temple. They began working on the house of the Lord on the 24th day of the sixth month. So, by the end of that month, they were working on constructing the temple. Now, almost two months after that, the word of the Lord comes to Haggai again, and that's what we're gonna pick up on in Haggai chapter two. And it's a special message, especially for Zerubbabel the governor, Joshua the high priest, and the remnant of the people that had come back to reestablish Jerusalem. So, let's look at verses one through five. On the 21st of the seventh month, the word of the Lord came by Haggai the prophet, saying, speak now to Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua, the son of Jehoshaddak, the high priest, and to the remnant of the people, saying, 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? But now take courage, Zerubbabel, declares the Lord. Take courage also, Joshua, son of Jehoshaddak, the high priest, and all you people of the land. Take courage, declares the Lord, and work, for I am with you, declares the Lord of hosts. As for the promise which I made you when you came out of Egypt, my spirit is abiding in your midst. Do not fear. He is reaffirming his word to the people. And when he tells them three different times, take courage, take courage, take courage, do not fear, they would have remembered that's exactly what God said through Moses before they went into the promised land, as he tells them three different times, take courage, take courage, take courage, and then we get into the book of Joshua when they're going into the promised land, and what does he tell Joshua three different times? Take courage, take courage, take courage, why? Because I'm with you, because I am going before you, because I will not leave you nor forsake you, so we too can take courage. Because as we've been seeing every semester as we study the word of God, the promise is what? His presence. The promise is his presence. There is a temptation for all of us to look back and compare the past with what's going on right now. There could have only been a handful of people that would have seen the Temple of Solomon that were still alive at this point, but evidently there were some, and there were also a lot of stories about the grandeur of Solomon's temple, and they were looking at the foundation they had laid and the supplies that they had, and they were grieved, thinking it's not going to come close to being like the Temple of Solomon, but what is God telling them? I am with you, do what I have called you to do, I am doing a new thing in your midst, and he's telling us the same thing. All of us sometimes look back and think, I wish I could recapture a moment. There's probably a time if you're a parent in your children's ages that you look back and think, oh, I wish I could go back and live one of those days again, just kind of freeze that moment in time and experience it once again. Or maybe you look back with longing because you've experienced a great loss, and maybe it's a loss of a loved one, maybe it's a loss of health, difficult health diagnosis, maybe it is a financial disruption, but you look back and think, oh, longingly for a previous time, but we can't do that. It's okay to look back, we can't live back there, because we have to understand God is with us now, and he still has work for us to do, just as he did for the Israelites. Well, I was in D.C. last week with Allie and her family, got to spend the week with them and their five kids, and they get to walk to school, they live five blocks from the capsule, it's so fun. Got to be there to celebrate Emory's birthday, and it was just such a sweet time, but coming back home hit me harder than I thought it would. Coming back to an empty house is just hard, when I live in it on a day-to-day basis, I do great, but when I leave and come back, it's so glaring. And so, when grief hits you, sometimes it's like a wave, sometimes it's a gentle wave, sometimes it's a tsunami. Saturday felt like a tsunami. And some of us, we process grief differently, and that's fine, you don't need to suppress it, you need to process it, you need to take it to the Lord, you need to be honest about what you're dealing with, but I have to do something with mine. I know some people take to the bed if they're grieving. Some people take to shopping if they're grieving. They truly believe in retail therapy. I take to baking or deep cleaning. I have to do something. So I baked, I baked Saturday afternoon. If you've never tried the Levain chocolate chip cookie recipe, Google it. The Levain Bakery is in New York City, they also have one in DC. We did have some while I was there last week. But they're humongous. I mean, literally, each cookie's almost half a pound. You roll up the cookie dough and put the balls down, the cookie sheet will only hold either four to six. I mean, they're huge. Well, I doubled the recipe. But I did take them somewhere, I did not keep them at my house and eat them all. Although that's tempting. But Steve and I have always gone over, and Halloween, since Bethany and David have been married and had kids, to their house, and they have some other young couples come over with all the little kids. And they have a nice neighborhood, they can go back in and take the kids trick-or-treating. And so we've typically gone over and helped with the food and walked around with the kids. And so I did that Saturday, so I baked all the stuff to take over there. And went over there and spent time with them. They got ready to go trick-or-treating, and I just, I couldn't go. I was just like, I just can't do it. I said, you know what, y'all go have fun, I'm going home. I got in my pajamas, warmed up my leftover food, and sat in my bed and watched an old movie. That was part of my therapy as well. But then we've got to press on. And fortunately, came to church Sunday, and we had a wonderful, meaningful worship service. And the call to prayer and the worship time just so ministered to me. And then when the service was over, a precious woman from Bible study walked up to me, and I did come back with a cold, walked up to me and was trying to share something with me that the Lord had impressed upon her while I was having a coughing fit. Finally calmed down enough to be able to hear what she was saying. And she said, I felt like the Lord wanted me to tell you that he sees, that I see. Thank you for continuing to teach. He sees you, I see you. And she just hooked me and walked off. How tender of the Lord, after having such a challenging weekend, that he said, I see. I want you to know this morning, he sees you. Just like he was with the Israelites here, and he's speaking directly to their needs, he is speaking directly to us this morning. And he does that through his Holy Spirit who now lives within us and speaks directly to us for our specific circumstance. And just as we studied a couple of weeks ago how much he loves us and delights in us, I want you to know this morning, he sees and he cares. Isn't it beautiful that Hagar, the Egyptian handmaiden of Sarah, is the first person to give God one of his compound names, Jehovah-Roy, what is it? The Lord who sees. The Lord who sees me. And I want you to remember that, that he sees you. Well then I saw a reel of Ann Voskamp from Carrie Newhoff's podcast. Listen to this quote and see if it's just not perfect. She said, for me, it is the last words of Jesus on the cross. Into your hands, Lord, I commit my spirit. I have to live in a surrendered posture. I commit this all into your hands. How would understanding the reasoning for suffering matter more than knowing God himself who stands with us in it? For me, I went from needing to understand to just taking deep comfort in the fact that in the midst of me not understanding, God stands with me. He is the with us God. And we need to constantly remind ourselves of that. So when we look back at Habakkuk 2, what is he saying to them? Take courage, do not fear. Why? For I am with you. He is with us. And what did Jesus say to the disciples just before he left in John 14 and John 15? He said, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. I will ask the Father and he will give you another helper that he may be with you forever. That is the spirit of truth, the Holy Spirit, whom the world cannot receive because it does not see him or know him, but you know him because he abides with you and will be in you. What we have that the Israelites did not have, they had God's presence with them, but we have God's presence, not only with us, but in us to strengthen us in our inner man, to enable us to face whatever it is we're facing or dealing with. Then in John 15, he said, if you abide in me, what does that mean? It means to rest in, to be in me.

apart, to draw your life from the vine as a branch. That's what he's saying, you've got to abide in me and draw your life from me, and my words abide in you. Ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be my disciples. Just as the Father has loved me, I have also loved you. Abide in my love. Rest, draw your strength from his love. These things I have spoken to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full. We have said before that sorrow and joy can hold hands, and they truly can, because our joy is not in our circumstances or our situation, our joy is in the Lord, and he never leaves us nor forsakes us. So that means that joy can be constant, regardless of what's going on. Haggai, very likely, could have been thinking about some of the words from the prophet Isaiah, when he said, a redeemer will come to Zion, and to those who turn from transgression in Jacob, declares the Lord. As for me, this is my covenant with them. Now what's he doing? He's promising the redeemer is coming, and he's coming to Zion. But here's my promise to you. My spirit, which is upon you, and my words, which I have put in your mouth, shall not depart from your mouth, nor from the mouth of your offspring, nor from the mouth of your offspring's offspring, says the Lord, from now and forever. That is the verse I have prayed over our children and our grandchildren, Isaiah 59, 21. If you don't pray that one, I would encourage you to add it to your arsenal. Okay, let's pick back up in Haggai 6 through 9, and look at God's promise for their future. For thus says the Lord of hosts, once more, in a little while, I'm going to shake the heavens and the earth, the sea also, and the dry land. I will shake all the nations, and they will come with the wealth of all the nations, and I will fill this house with glory. Now we know that he did that, do we not, when Jesus came, and what does John tell us? That the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld what? His glory. Yes, we beheld Christ's glory. His glory would come, and he would fill the house with glory, says the Lord of hosts. The silver is mine, the gold is mine, declares the Lord of hosts. The latter glory of this house will be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts, and in this place I will give peace, declares the Lord of hosts. So Herod did glorify the temple during his time before Christ came, and it was quite a spectacle during the time of Christ, but it wasn't the physical glory that God was talking about. He was talking about God coming in the flesh, and coming into that very temple, and bringing the glory of God into that temple, and then pouring down his glory through his Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, and filling us who are now his temple. We are his temples, and it is his glory in us that draws other people to Christ. In Hebrews, he talks about this shaking. See to it that you do not refuse him who is speaking, for if those did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less will we escape who turn away from him who warns us from heaven. And his voice shook the earth then, but now he has promised saying, yet once more, once more, he's telling us, I'm going to shake, not only the earth, but also the heaven. This expression, yet once more, denotes the removing of those things which can be shaken as of created things, so that those things which cannot be shaken may remain. What cannot be shaken? Only those things that are eternal. So he's going to shake everything that can be shaken. All the temporal things we know are going to be tried by fire. Those things are passing away, but the eternal, the things that cannot be shaken will remain. Therefore, since we receive a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude by which we may offer to God an acceptable service with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire. Christ is coming again, and everything will be shaken. But for those of us who are in Christ Jesus, not only will we not be shaken, we will be caught up in and brought into the glory of all that he has prepared for us. And because we know this, we need to live a life of gratitude and awe and service to him. That's what Romans 12, one tells us when we offer our bodies to him as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable, which is what? Our spiritual service of worship. We serve him by offering ourselves to him and being willing to do whatever it is he has for us to do to advance his kingdom, the eternal kingdom, not this kingdom, not our own kingdom. God spoke through his prophet of a time when the promised one would come and the temple would be filled with his glory and Jesus came to provide the way to the father. Those who reject are choosing the curse, but we who are in Christ have had our curse taken away. We are blessed because we're in Christ. And then he moves on in verses 10 through 19 to a call to holiness. And this is going to be another message coming from God to the people. Pick up in verse 10. On the 24th of the ninth month, in the second year of Darius, the word of the Lord came to Haggai the prophet saying, thus says the Lord of hosts, ask now the priest for a ruling. If a man carries holy meat in the fold of his garment and touches bread with this fold or cooked food, wine, oil, or any other food, will it become holy? And the priest answered no. Then Haggai said, if one who is unclean from a corpse touches any of these, will the latter become unclean? And the priest answered, it will become unclean. Then Haggai said, so is this people and so is this nation before me. What is he saying? Because of your disobedience, you are unclean. This nation is unclean before me. And so is every work of their hands and what they offer there is unclean. But now do consider from this day onward before one stone was placed on another in the temple of the Lord, from that time when one came to a grain of heap of 20, came to a grain of heap of 20 measures, there would be only 10. And when one came to the wine vat to draw 50 measures, there would be only 20. I smote you and every work of your hands with blasting wind, mildew, and hail, yet you did not come back to me, declares the Lord. Do consider from this day onward, from the 24th day of the ninth month, from the day when the temple of the Lord was founded, consider, is the seed still in the barn? Even including the vine, the fig tree, the palm granite, and the olive tree, it has not borne fruit yet. From this day on, I will bless you. So what is God saying? They brought them back, they came back to rebuild in the return, and they came back with the rubble to build a temple first. That was what God called them to do, reestablish worship in the land that God had given them. And they laid the foundation, but then they got distracted and they focused on building their houses and reestablishing the city, and Nehemiah came in and they rebuilt the wall, and the people never got back around to working on the temple. So they couldn't worship God the way he had called, and God is saying, did you not notice that you weren't harvesting what you thought you were going to harvest? Did you not notice that your trees were not producing fruit? I did this. Now, why did they not recognize it? So often, we're so distracted, focused on ourselves, and trying to make things work, that we don't realize we're actually working against ourselves, because we're not working with and for the Lord. God told them in Deuteronomy 28 through 30, he told them in Leviticus, he gave them all the blessings and all the curses. If you do these things, if you obey me, all these blessings will come upon you. If you do these things, all these curses will come upon you. They're all promises, the blessings and the curses. God says, if you do this, then this will happen. If you do this, then this will happen. They knew, and God's reminding them, this is why you were not harvesting what you expected. This is why your fruit trees were not producing. But because you've gotten back to the work, because you're honoring me now, from this day forward, I will bless you. God is promising to bless them because of their obedience. Now, let's look at Haggai 2, 20 through 23. Then the word of the Lord came a second time to Haggai on the 24th day of the month, saying, it's the same day, he gets a second word. This one, though, is just for Zerubbabel. Speak to Zerubbabel, governor of Judah, saying, I am going to shake the heavens and the earth. I will overthrow the thrones of kingdoms and destroy the power of the kingdoms of the nations. And I will overthrow the chariots and their riders and the horses and their riders will go down, everyone by the sword of another. In other words, their enemies would destroy each other. On that day, declares the Lord of hosts, I will take you, Zerubbabel, son of Shealtiel, my servant, declares the Lord, and I will make you like a signet ring, for I have chosen you, declares the Lord of hosts. Now, we learned this week in our study that the signet ring represented authority. And quite often, the king would give a signet ring to his second in command who could send out edicts and commands from the king, and these edicts would be sealed with wax, and the signet ring would be the stamp in that wax that would harden to prove it came from the king. It gave it authority. Now, what he's saying here is, Zerubbabel, you are going to be my signet ring. I have chosen you, and what we realize is that Zerubbabel is actually in the lineage of the redeemer, of the promised one. In his use of the word servant,

Haggai is invoking Davidic associations. His point is that Zerubbabel represents a restoration of the Davidic line of promise. As a result of this divine initiative, what was lost by the tragedy of the exile will in the future be regained in a manner that exceeds expectations. In fact, like many other Old Testament promises, these predictions had both a near dimension and a more distant one. Haggai's promises given to Zerubbabel while true of him in a limited way find their ultimate expression in a greater Zerubbabel who was to come. It is not surprising that in the genealogies of Jesus provided by Matthew and Luke, Zerubbabel is mentioned as part of the Messianic line. We too are his signet ring. We have been marked by the image of God at creation, but we've also been marked by his Holy Spirit and sealed for the day of redemption. And Jesus Christ himself said before he left to ascend to the Father, all authority on heaven and earth has been given to me. Go and make disciples of all the earth. He's authorizing us to go as his ambassadors, his representatives, his signet ring to take the good news of the gospel everywhere we go. Now listen to what was recorded in the book of Ezra about Haggai. Ezra 6, 14 through 15. And the elders of the Jews were successful in building through the prophesying of Haggai the prophet and Zechariah the son of Iddo. And they finished building according to the command of the God of Israel and the decree of Cyrus, Darius and Artaxerxes, king of Persia. This temple was completed on the third day of the month of Adar. And it was the sixth year of the reign of King Darius. Now, when did they start back? The second year of Darius's reign. So in the sixth year, they're finally completing the temple. So it took four years for them to complete the temple, but it was completed. And what does Ezra say? Through the prophesying of Haggai the prophet and Zechariah the son of Iddo. We need men in our day who say, thus says the Lord, who walk closely with God and are able to speak for him to his people and to be leaders among us. And we need to pray that God will raise up those type prophets. I remember Steve used to pray for a Samuel. It said everybody knew that Sammy was a prophet from Dan to Beersheba, from the north to the south. Everybody recognized God's hand is on him. We need a prophet like that today. We need a prophet in our nation. We need prophets to call people to the Lord. Now I wanna just close this morning looking at some questions that we need to ask every text. And I wanted you to have these and you don't have, you've got the questions, you don't have the answers. Some of the answers will be on the screen for you because I want you writing because you remember better when you write. I want you to write down some of these things. So if you've got a pen, pull it out so we can talk through some of this because when you open the Bible, every time we open the Bible, we need to ask, what is God revealing about himself? What does this text reveal about God? Now I want us to think about as we've been looking at these minor prophets, what are some of the truths that we have gleaned about God? First of all, God is holy. God is holy and he will only be approached by us in the way that he tells us to come to him. We know on this side of the cross, we come through the blood of Christ. We come by repentance and calling upon the name of Jesus to be saved. And after you are saved, you become a child of God and you have free access to the throne room of God anytime you mention his name. He has welcomed us to come into his presence, but God is holy. God is also absolutely sovereign. Have we not seen that? Guys, in the midst of an election day, God will sovereignly put people in place, sometimes for our well-being, sometimes because it's what we deserve. But he is sovereign and all of it is working together toward his ultimate end, which we know is Christ coming back again. So we surrender and trust. We do our duty as a citizen, but then we trust God because he is absolutely sovereign. God is just. God is just. And you can be sure the judge of all the earth will do right. God is love. And oh, how we basked in that a couple of weeks ago in Zephaniah 3. And his great love for us, that he delights in us, that he sings over us. God is patient. Look how long he waits on his people and how many opportunities, how many prophets he sent them to speak the truth to them for them to turn back to the Lord. God is patient. And God is relational. He works through people and he desires to be with us. From the very beginning, God's desire has to be with, has been to be with us. That's a theme all the way through scripture. And then we also need to then ask, what does this text reveal about man? Because we're all basically the same. We all deal with the same things. Number one on my list is man is a rebel. We rebel. We want to go our own way. Man's heart is deceptive. We can convince ourselves we're right because we want something regardless of what God says. Basically, man does not know and therefore does not honor God's word. That's why we study the word of God. That's why we immerse ourselves in it. That's why when you open your workbook to study a particular book of the Bible, we will say, read it in its entirety or read these two chapters in one sitting. Why? We need to immerse ourselves in the word. Read it through several times. That's why we have five days of homework. So every day we give you an opportunity and I realize some of you sit down and do the whole thing at once. I know that. I know that. But some, I'm hoping you're still getting into the word these other days, that you have a Bible reading plan that you get into every single day, even if you do the Bible study all at once. That's fine. But you need to be in the word every single day. Every single day. And asking these kinds of questions because it helps you understand the big story of scripture. It helps you see where you've seen it before. It reveals to us our own hearts and how the enemy comes against us so that we recognize his schemes. So man, we've got to know his word. Man elevates his own reasoning above God's word. We always think we know better or that there's a shortcut, right? And man's inclination that we see from the garden is to do what is right in his own eyes. The theme of judges, unfortunately, is the theme of most of our lives. So after we've asked the text, what is it revealing about God? The most important question, because we have to know him to trust him and love him. Then we're gonna ask, what's the Bible revealing to us about man? What do we see about mankind? Because it helps us understand our own hearts. And then we need to ask, what's this text reveal about sin? We know that sin is always tempting and pulling us away from God. It's that constant pull of the world to the thinking of the world, to the flesh, our enemy, pulling us away from God. We know that sin brings a curse because this Bible tells us and shows us over and over and over that sin brings a curse. Sin also causes separation. It separates us from God. It separates us from people. And sin turns us inward. We turn in on ourselves and all we can see is ourselves when we're bound by sin. And when we give in to sin, the sin is what binds us and controls us. We are no longer in control. So after we've asked, what does this reveal about God? What does it reveal about man? What does it reveal about sin? Then we need to ask the connection question. Where have I seen this before? So as we're talking about the message of the prophet to the people to turn back to God, to obey God, to do the work of God, we need to ask the connection question, where have I seen this before? Sin began in the garden in Genesis 3 when Eve listened to the wrong voice. She listened to the voice of the serpent instead of the voice of the creator. And we do the same thing when we listen to the voice of our flesh, the world, or the enemy. We must listen and go to the word of God. How many times have I said before you guys and said, this is truth? Feelings are not truth. Now, I'm not telling you not to feel. I'm telling you to not feel. Now, I'm not telling you not to feel. I'm telling you don't be controlled by your feelings. This is true. The joy of the Lord is my strength. Yes, I go through periods of grief, but ultimately I get back to joy in the Lord because I know my God and I get in his word. And you know what happens? Then my feelings start lining up with what is true. But I must make choices based on the truth of God's word because we are all easily deceived. Sin has permeated every era or time period of scripture. You can stop me. We just said the garden. Go to the patriarchs. Abraham was a liar. Twice he throws Sarah under the bus and some foreign king takes her in. It's like, oh, Abraham, come on. Look at all that God has promised you. And yet we see ourselves in him as well. We wanna self-protect instead of trusting God. And then God prepared his people with his promises. He told them what was to come. He promised that he would be with them if they would just obey. He gave them all these.

blessings all these things he wants to lavish upon them. It's like a good parent who desires to bless their child and yet the child is disobedient and ungrateful you're not going to give it to them because you're reinforcing the wrong behavior and yet your heart's desire is to bless your children. Well think about God who is the perfect father and how much he delights and loves us that he desires to bless us but we must obey so that we can handle the blessing and then Deuteronomy 28 through 30 has the blessings and the curses and if you haven't read those in a while write that down and go back and look at them because obedience always precedes blessing. I'm not saying life of comfort and ease because he didn't promise us that. He said in this world you will have tribulation but what be of good cheer full of joy because I have overcome this world. There will be tribulation but in the midst of it we can have joy because we know our God because he is with us because he is in us and because he is absolutely trustworthy. But we have to ask ourselves okay like the Israelites they weren't seeking first the kingdom of God they were seeking first their own kingdom building their own houses. They had just left the temple of the Lord. They had not completed the task. God may be asking us this morning are you seeking first my kingdom or are you focused on your own? Whose kingdom has priority in your life? Is the Lord convicting you about living for yourself instead of for him? Are you living for the eternal kingdom? Are you living for what is to come? Are you trapped in the moment? Remember when we obey we experience his presence, his power and his purpose and it is his presence. His presence brings it all. Let's pray. Father thank you, thank you that you are always faithful. Thank you for your word. Thank you that is living and active. Thank you father that we see you on every page. We see your grace. We see your love. We see your holiness. We know God that you are absolutely sovereign and that we can trust you and rest in you because you will not leave us or forsake us. We know that you will meet every need we have as we seek first your kingdom. That's what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount. God when he said look at the lilies of the field who do you think clothes them? Who feeds the animals? Your father does. Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be added unto you. The things we seek will be the things you provide if we instead choose to seek you. So father would you help us today to choose to seek you and your kingdom above all knowing that you will provide everything else we need. Father we love you. We thank you and we give you praise in Jesus name. Amen.