Haggai 1:3-5 Consider Your Ways

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Start making your way to Haggai chapter 1, verses 3 -5 for this week.
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Haggai chapter 1, verses 3 -5. Haggai chapter 1, verses 3 -5 for today.
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Before we read this text, let's just open up with a word of prayer as we are looking here at this text.
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Let's pray. Lord God, I just would first, Lord, ask you,
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God, just for this people here, this particular people, these believers underneath this roof,
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Lord, those that you have called, those that you have redeemed, Lord, God, I pray that each one of us would recognize sin in our lives, recognize the sin that is even in this text,
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Lord, and that we would apply it in a way to have urgency to share your gospel, to have urgency to advance the kingdom of God, Lord, to have urgency to know more about you, to be having urgency for our neighbors and just love for this text,
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Lord. God, just help us with understanding you today.
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Lord, be glorified by the reading and the teaching and the preaching and the hearing of your word today, Lord, as we come here to worship you, and we just say these things in your name,
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Jesus Christ, amen. Brothers and sisters, this is a wonderful text.
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I would ask you to please open up whatever way that you can, whether it be a Bible or it's a respective device, and follow along with us as we look here in the book of Haggai, this short, wonderful book here.
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Haggai chapter 1, verses 3 through 5. Again, this is just a short portion of the text, as this is a short book, and so I want to make sure that we spend the appropriate amount of time in this book and understand what's going on in this day and in these ways.
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So let us read. Then the word of the Lord came by Haggai the prophet, saying, it is time for you yourselves, is it time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, while this house lies desolate.
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Now, therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts, consider your ways.
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Let's pray over this text specifically. Lord God, I would echo what was just uttered to you just a moment ago,
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Lord. God, I pray that each one of us today would consider our ways,
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Lord. Consider the way that we serve you, consider the way that we love you, consider the way that we care for our friends, our neighbors, consider the works of our hands, and Lord, when we consider these things,
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I would pray that our eyes would just be continually upon your cross, as we just sung, turn your eyes to Jesus, Lord.
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God, let us be a people that are just shouting reconciliation out to this world,
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Lord. God, we just say these things in your name, Jesus Christ, amen. Again, this is a short text for the short chapter in the short book.
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And I want to go through it in this way so that we understand really what is going on, the sin and the depth of what's happening in this day, many, many years ago, roughly 2 ,500 years ago.
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Again, this is written in that year of 520 BC. It is written 20 years after they had been released from captivity.
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And not only this, but all that's laid for them as a temple is a foundation.
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All that they have done for God living in this new land is a foundation. Just a foundation, that is it.
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But we can see, as we mentioned last week, that once this message had been given to the people of Israel, they go and they build the rest of the temple, and they get it done in five years.
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They went from taking 20 years to just lay the foundation, to now having a light lit underneath their bottoms, and has made them have an urgency to building the house of Yahweh.
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They built the house of the Lord in 515 BC, five years after this text was uttered for them.
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So let us look here, and let us start to understand a little bit more about what these people are saying in the year of 520
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BC, and let us recognize some things in this text. But we need to understand that these kind of people have been a lazy, people that are tarrying way too long to obey
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God, they are being slothful servants, they are not doing what
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God has commanded them to do. As we saw two weeks ago, as we read from Ezra chapter 1, verses 1 through 3,
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I believe we were in there. But we know that the command of the Lord that came about through Cyrus to go back and build the temple has taken place, and they have not done it.
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They are slothful, slow, lazy servants right now. So let us look here at verse 3. It says, after again, this comes after verse 2, it says,
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The time has not come even for the time of the house of the Lord to be rebuilt. After God has said that He knows what the people are saying,
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He knows that they're being slothful, He knows that they're having excuses, He knows that they're saying, it's not time yet.
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It's not time yet. It's not time yet. If Bob the Builder was there and wanted to build, the whole country is saying, no,
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Bob, the time hasn't yet happened. Do not go and build the temple. We still have X, Y, and Z things that are needing to be done before we do this.
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And so after God knows that these things have happened, it says, Then the word of the
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Lord came by Haggai the prophet, saying,
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Then the word of the Yahweh, again, that's that explicit name of God, Yahweh Himself, Yahweh.
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Now this right here is a claim by the prophet of Haggai that this book deserves to be where we have it right now, between your two covers of the
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Bible. When we open up this text, we need to understand that this is inspired.
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It's not contradictory. If somebody came up to you today and you said, how do you know that the book of Haggai deserves to be one of the 66 books of the
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Bible? It's kind of an interesting question, is it not? Do you have a reason or a response to say back to them other than just it's in the
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Bible? That's a lot of times what Christians will do is, it's just in the Bible, so that's why it deserves to be in the
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Bible. That's not a fitting answer. That's just circular reasoning. That's not a legitimate answer. The answer is, is that this prophet claimed to have received a message from Yahweh.
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It's internally coherent. It's not contradictory to the rest of the word. And not only this, but it's prophetic and fulfillment in history.
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It's self -evident that it is the word of God and it deserves and belongs in our
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Bible. Now let me just turn real quickly. You don't have to follow me. You're more than welcome to if you would like to, but just 2
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Timothy chapter 3, verse 16, 2 Timothy chapter 3, verse 16.
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I'll read verse 15 to 17. It says, and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings, which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus.
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All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.
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Last week, I hope you remember, we opened up to Hebrews chapter 13 and we just read a short portion. We only made mention of it for a moment, but we saw the individual good things that we could do today to worship
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God and God, according to this has said that his word has been given so that we can be equipped and adequate to do every good work.
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We're able to do these things. God has given us the means and the ways for us to do this. Now when we look at this, 2
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Timothy chapter 3, we have to understand how long ago was Haggai written before Timothy?
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Was Haggai written before Timothy? Yeah. Yes, it was. When it says that all scripture has been inspired by God, it is including the book of Haggai that was already in the canon according to the
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Jews in that day. This is what Paul, who's writing to Timothy in that day, he's referring to all these books that we have here in our
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Bibles as scripture inspired by God. And not only this, let me open it up back there for a moment.
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It says in there in chapter 3 verse 16, it says that it is inspired by God and profitable for teaching.
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Though this message was written in 520 BC in the book of Haggai, it is profitable for teaching.
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And so we see that the word of the Lord came to Haggai, the prophet, and it's going to teach us something.
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It's something that we need to understand in our own lives, whether it be just only historical or whether it be applicable, whether it be typological, it is beneficial no matter what to us as believers, us as the followers of God.
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So we see here, how did this word come about? Again, we can't just say it's in the
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Bible, it's the Bible or it's deserves to be in the Bible because it's in the Bible. That's a lazy, wrong, slothful answer to give.
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It'd be like the people in this day that this was written. You need to be educated enough to give a solid answer for why this book is in here.
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It is not enough to just say it is in the Bible. We then say that the word of the
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Lord came by, what means did this happen through? Did God, did Haggai just wake up one day and there was a book laying next to him and that was what we have here?
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No. It came about through a man named Haggai, that the prophet spoke through him, that the prophet was given a revelation to how to reveal the word of the
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Lord. Which is interesting when we consider that the Greek Septuagint, that is a translation from the
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Hebrew from which this was originally written in, into Greek, that they translate that word, the word, as logos.
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Now that should bring up some pretty big alarms for us if we understand John 1, 1, in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was
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God. Logos, the logos, the logos. We understand what were prophets for as we talked about last week, they were meant to reveal who
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God was, who God is and who God is going to be.
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And so when we have Jesus Christ who is the express image of God, the one that has revealed the invisible, the visible of the invisible, that he is the express image of the father, we understand that he is the very word, the logos.
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Very interesting. So we see that the word of the Lord in 520
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BC, 520ish years before the birth of Christ, he has been giving and revealing himself through the words of the prophets.
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Verse 4, it says this, is it time for you, this is
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God speaking in this text, speaking through the prophet of course, is it time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses while this house lies desolate?
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This is a question. This is a question that's being posed from God through the prophet
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Haggai. This is a question. Is it time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses while this house lies desolate?
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This should tell us a couple very, very clear things from this text. First of all,
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I would say that this is somewhat of a sarcastic question. Is it not?
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Is God our priority? Is our needs our priority? God is always deserving and needing to be our individual priorities, including back in this day for the people of God.
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And so it is a somewhat of a rhetorical, sarcastic question saying, is it time for you to go and build your house while God's house lays in ruin?
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The answer is, of course, absolutely not. Absolutely not. It's this rhetorical question that's being asked by the prophet
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Haggai here. It says, is it time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses while this house lies desolate?
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Now, I would ask you to put your feet in the Israelite shoes 2 ,500 years ago.
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In fact, let's put it many, many years prior. Let's put it maybe 3 ,000 years ago in the national, the ethnic
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Jew's shoes. Is this nation accustomed to living in houses?
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That's a strange question. No, they're not. They were tent dwellers.
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They were people that set and pitched a tent and they lived in those things. That is how the ethnic
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Jew lived many, many, many years ago. In fact, we would have Abraham in Genesis 12 verse eight.
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He's living in a tent. We have Isaac in Genesis 26 verse 17.
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He's living in a tent. In Jacob in Genesis 33 verse 18, where is he living?
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Not in a paneled house, in a tent. I want to read real fast from first Kings 12 verse 16.
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First Kings chapter 12 verse 16 says this, it says, when all
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Israel saw that the king did not listen to them, the people answered the king saying, what portion do we have in David?
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We have no inheritance in the son of Jesse to your tent. So Israel now look after your own house.
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So Israel departed to their tents. What's changed?
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They were a people of tent dwelling and now they're a people of house, paneled houses.
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You see what's taking place in this text is excuses is a priority of comfort over the priority of obeying
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God's command. If it was the day of Abraham, guess what?
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Were they still been sinful? Would they still pushed off building the temple? Yeah, absolutely. They might've said, well, the time has come for us to patch the tent, not to place the tent or the tabernacle for God.
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They would still make excuses. Do not get me wrong. It's not just the situation, but we're talking about the sinful nature of man right here.
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They used to be used to living in tents, but now their priorities have shifted for their own comfort more than the obedience of God.
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Where was the priority of that Israelite in that day? They were just in captivity in Babylon where they had no prosperity in this way.
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They didn't have the luxuries that they have now in their day.
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They were disobedient in that day. And now that Cyrus has told them to go back to their land, sending them home richer than what they went in captivity with and giving them the command from God saying, go back and rebuild.
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What did they go back and build instead? Paneled houses, paneled houses, paneled houses.
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We would have to think that that would include the foundation of their houses. So they were able to build their foundations in those 20 years.
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Not only this, but were they able to build their paneled homes, their walls, their roofs, whatever it would look like in that day.
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Did they do those things? Yes, they did. And they did it in the 20 years that they were commanded to build the house of Yahweh.
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And how is the house of Yahweh still standing that day? Or how was it looking in that day? It was lying desolate.
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Now again, this is really, really interesting language that we would see in the Old Testament. Whenever it talks about desolate, it's saying that the presence of the
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Yahweh, the presence of God himself is not there. That's why when we would go to Matthew chapter 23, and at the end of the seven woes that Jesus gives to the
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Pharisees, he says to your house, I leave you desolate. Your house is desolate now.
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It's not a place where God dwells. It's now desolate. And then at the crucifixion of Christ, as we read last week, the veil is torn in half.
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That's not the presence of God. That is not the dwelling place of God. So what is going on in this text?
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God does not have his unique dwelling place right now. If you were a
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Patterson, or if you were a caste family member, if you were an Emerson family member, whatever family member you are, you could say that the
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Rooney household has walls. The Rooney household has a ceiling. The Rooney household has a place to dwell.
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Yahweh, though, in this text does not. The people that used to live in tents have put off the tent building, the tent pitching, and have switched over to changing their comfort and priorities over the obedience of God.
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Now what is the application that we can see from this kind of text? Church, where are your priorities at?
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Tell me if this is true, because I know it is, because I do it often. How many times do you go to the store and talk to the cashier when you're going through their line?
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Pretty often, right? They ask you, how's your day going? Did you find everything? Do you have your Fred Meyers reward card? I used to be a cashier.
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I know how the lines go, right? You can respond and talk back to them, right? Do you have any issue answering what they ask you?
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Do you have any issue saying, oh yeah, no, I found it, or no, no one asked me, I wasn't able to find the milk.
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If you don't know where the milk is in the grocery store, you do need some help, but you should be able to know where those things are. But maybe you were looking for that really obscure item, you couldn't find it.
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You're able to answer and have a conversation with somebody, though, is what I'm saying. We have conversations all day long, but when it comes to telling them about Jesus Christ, how does the conversation go?
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It doesn't even happen. We get scared, and what do we do?
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We put our comfort and priorities above the uncomfortable conversation itself.
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It happens all the time. I do it all the time. You see somebody and you know that you want to tell them about Jesus, and you don't.
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And how dare us do that, slothful, lazy servant.
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We cannot look at this text and see ourselves as superior in any way, because we do this daily, consistently.
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I want to really quickly go to Matthew chapter 22, verse 36 through 40, and read this for us.
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Matthew chapter 22, Matthew chapter 22, verse 36 through 40, and Matthew chapter 22, verse 36 through 40 says this.
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Teacher, which is the greatest commandment? I want to pause there. Was it a commandment of God for them to rebuild the temple?
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Yes, it was. Yes, it was. It was a decree to go and rebuild the temple.
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Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law? And he said to him, you shall love the
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Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.
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This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it.
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You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments, the whole law, depend the whole law and the prophets.
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Now when we consider that this is the greatest and foremost commandment, let us consume this.
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Let us consume this text right now and see if we are being obedient like the people of Israel 2 ,500 years ago were being obedient.
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We already explored the conversation with the cashier. We can have a conversation with the cashier, but we can't have the conversation with the stranger about Jesus or with our friend about Jesus.
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We fail. We fail, we fail, we fail. Let me ask you this.
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When you go to the restaurant with your lovely spouse and you get served your meal, what's the first two words that we say to the server when they come up?
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Thank you. Thank you. How many of us have thanked our
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God for the very breaths that we're breathing right now today? How many of us have thanked
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God for the clothes that we have, the comfort of our lives today? How many of us have thanked
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God for the sun shining upon the sinner, oh myself, and it is still shining outside right now?
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We thank the server for bringing us the meal, but we don't thank God for giving us the animals.
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We fail. How many of us go throughout the week and we sit in our cars and our vehicles and we hit the play button on the radio and we sing along to that fantastic new rap song that's come out?
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Maybe we don't listen to rap. Maybe it's a new country song that came out. Maybe it's a new this or that song that comes out.
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However you like to sing, do you sing along with the lyrics sometimes? I would hope you do.
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It's interesting and fun to do that, right? You get into the groove. How many of us sing worship to God?
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We've done it today, so we're good on that in that sense. But do you sing worship to God?
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Do you praise Him continually, in private, in corporate, as a family, with your wife, your spouse, your husband, whatever your life looks like, do you do this?
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Do you read a text message? If Marilyn was sitting in church and she gets a text from Andy, do you read the text message?
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Maybe not during church, maybe during, that's okay, he's sick right now, so I hope you would read it if you get a text message from him.
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Do you read a text message from your loved one? Yeah, you do.
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Do you take it to heart and understand what it is? Do you respond immediately, depending on who the person is, of course?
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Do you respond immediately for those that you care for? Yeah, you do.
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Do you guys open your Bibles daily to read the text from God? Not text messages, but the very
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Word of God here. And do you respond accordingly? I hope that we are,
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I hope that we are. I feel it this daily, though, too. Not only this, but do you obey the speed limits outside?
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And when I say that, I'm meaning when the cop, the state patrol officer, the really, really ones that are gonna write you a ticket no matter what when they pull you over, they're not ever gonna let you go.
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Do you obey the speed limit when they're behind you? Yeah, Emily saw that happen to me,
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I think, two days ago when we were driving back. Yeah, my left blinker on my van outside is kind of broken, and so I realized
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I needed to make a left turn and I was very, very worried about making a left turn in front of the state patrol officer. So you went right instead.
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So I went right instead. You can make three rights and you found yourself going left. The point of this is, do you obey when you are being watched?
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Yeah, you try to. Do you obey the commandments of God?
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We fail continually at doing this. I hope that from thinking through these kind of things that when the wife tells you to throw away one of your t -shirts, you try to be obedient to her.
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That comes from a Bible study we recently had. We try to be obedient to God, but we fail at these things.
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We fail at these things. Ron, how long have you been a Christian for? A lot of years.
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A lot of years. I'm assuming it's been more than 20 though, right? Have you obeyed
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God completely for those many, many years? I can't lie.
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Yeah, I appreciate that. You were just obedient right there by answering like that, right?
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The point of this is though, is that we fail many, many, many, many more years than just 20.
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Like we are seeing these people fail at obeying and building the house of the Yahweh, the house of the
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Lord. Now, let us now consider it like this. Do you love your neighbors? Do you talk to yourself and encourage yourself when you look in the mirror?
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I hope that you don't do this often because this would not be a good thing to be doing, but do you fix your hair in the mirror and you say, okay, that's looking better now.
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Thank goodness it looked a lot worse when I just woke up in my bed. You're encouraging yourself in your mind, trying to make yourself seem like you are looking better than what ...
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I realize that I don't look the best when I look in the mirror, but I fix my hair to make myself think better, make myself feel like I'm presentable that day, right?
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Have any of us encouraged in that sense, and I'm not saying that you need to turn to the person in church right now and tell them they look lovely, that is not what
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I'm saying. What I'm saying though is in the same way that you would encourage yourself when you need the encouragement, are you encouraging your brothers and sisters in Christ daily?
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Lazy, slothful servant. That's what I see myself as in this text because I fail at doing this.
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Not only this, do you go to Bible study and you tell the world, your neighbor, your friends, your family about what you learned at Bible study because it's evil and wrong to keep this truth and the loveliness, the treasures of God to yourself.
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Be like taking a talent and putting it in your pocket or hiding it in the ground and not sharing it with your friends or your neighbors or investing it in that way.
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I had a lovely conversation with a sister in Christ yesterday about that. If you have truths about God, you better be sharing them with your neighbors.
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Not only this, but what gifts do you have that you do for your own household?
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You wash the floors, you mop, you clean windows, you might have ways that maybe you make an excellent, excellent carrot cake.
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You're able to do things for your own household. Are you doing those things for your neighbors? The laundry list of these things go on and on and on in respect to glorifying
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God, loving Him and also loving your neighbor. This is a long list and are we failing at it or are we keeping it?
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We are very, very much failing at this. I am, you are, we all are.
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We're Christians. I hope you're trying your best to be obedient, but at the end of the day, how merciful is
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God? We can read this text of the book of Haggai and we can be blown away and say, wow,
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God is merciful that He did not just strike these people down in those 20 years, which, amen, He is merciful to them.
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They were a slothful and lazy people. They did not obey or they did not deserve in any way the mercy of God, yet when we say that, we better be looking in our own mirrors and saying, lazy, slothful servant.
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I am so undeserving, yet God is so merciful and good because I don't deserve any of this.
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Whether it be the little graces that we have outside or whether it be the ones of salvation in Christ Jesus Himself, we are so undeserving of everything we receive from the
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Lord. And so we would see here back in the book of Haggai, chapter 1, verse 4, the house of God lies desolate.
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Our priorities in life need to change, and I hope that they've changed when we were born again and we start to see, okay, we sung in that song, what song was it, the privileges of life grow strangely dim.
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Yeah. Turn your eyes to Jesus. Turn your eyes to Jesus. In there, when we walk through our life, these priorities and these things will become ever the more clear.
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We have to be going about our daily lives, our daily walks, in such a way that our intentions and our priorities are growing more and more towards the direct and the rightful place that those things should be looking at, and that is
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God. That is God. Our priorities have to be meant to glorify, obey, worship, love, and adore the
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God we are so undeserving of. They have to be that way. Would the people of Israel this day, 2 ,500 years ago, would the house of the
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Lord in 520 BC lie desolate if they had their priorities correct?
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It would have been rebuilt. It would have been rebuilt very, very quickly if their priorities had been on track.
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Now I hope that the direct application of this, brothers and sisters, is that you and I need and must always be placing the correct priorities because the intentions, the desires of our hearts tell us a lot about what your hands and your works will do.
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The desires of your heart should be manifest in the way you act, in the way you behave, in the ways that you use your hands, and what is the desire of every
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Christian's heart? Glorify God. And I promise you, if you seek to do this, you will enjoy
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God forever. I promise you that. You will never be disappointed. Your priority must be on glorifying
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God. Building His household. Whatever that looks like today for you in your own individual life, being obedient to that Matthew chapter 22 verses 36 through 40, be obedient to Christ and glorify
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Him. Do not be lazy and slothful servant any longer. Do not do that any longer.
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Verse 5 in this text. Now therefore, thus says the
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Yahweh of hosts, that's the second time that this phrase will be used in the book of Haggai out of the 14 times, the
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Yahweh of hosts, the one that is above all things, including you and I, whom should we always place the priority in?
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The one that is above all things, including you and I. The Yahweh of hosts.
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The Lord of hosts. He is deserving fully of everything that we do should be always directed towards Him for His glory, for His purpose, according to His will, being obedient to His law.
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It should always be like this, though we fail daily at it. It should be to the Yahweh of hosts.
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And this is what God says. Now therefore, thus says the Yahweh of hosts, consider your ways.
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I'm pretty sure that we understand why now God is saying that. Consider your ways.
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Consider what you are doing. Consider your thoughts.
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Consider your speech. Consider your ears. Consider your hands. Consider your feet. Consider the way that you are perceived by the world and act accordingly to God's command.
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Consider your ways. I would imagine that whenever we get into our vehicles, where are you driving to?
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Where are you going? You're considering your way. Would it be wise to listen to Siri sometimes when it tells you to take a right and there's a lake right next to you?
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Would it be good to take a right and go right into the lake? You're not considering your way if you do that.
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You must consider where you are going, how you are acting, the way that you are driving.
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You consider your ways. Consider your ways.
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A hunter that goes and hunts in the wilderness and doesn't have any understanding of navigation or where he's at whatsoever, what is going to happen to him?
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He's going to be lost. You as Christians are in a foreign world, have been sent by the kingdom that is not of this world.
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You are ambassadors here. Do not become lost in it.
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Your priority must stay on God and you need to be considering your ways daily.
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This book, after it was written, after it was spoken to the people of Israel, the people of Israel considered their ways and the temple was built.
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If you want to advance the kingdom of God, you need to consider your ways, get your priorities straightened out, and God will build his kingdom.
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He has done it already, as Hebrews said, that he has built his house. This comes through, according to Hebrews chapter 13, through the blood of the eternal covenant, through the everlasting shepherd,
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God himself living the life that you and I cannot live, the one that we have violated and broken.
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It is only and solely through the gospel itself that we are saved and we are covered by the righteousness of Jesus Christ.
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Let me read just as our final mention of a text, Psalm chapter 118, it's where we did our call to worship out of earlier.
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Psalm 118 verses 8 -9, 8 -9 says this,
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Psalm 118, 8 -9, verse 8 -9 says this,
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It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man.
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It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in princes.
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This trusting of man that is spoken of there is also including of yourself. It is better to trust in the
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Yahweh, the one that has built his house, than to trust in yourself as we have clearly seen today.
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As we fail to obey God, we place our faith in Yahweh who has obeyed
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God fully in the flesh, in the work of Jesus Christ. Let us go ahead and pray.
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Lord God, I thank you, Lord, for this text. I thank you for the house of God that we are in.
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I thank you for the adoption, Lord, that has happened in our lives. Lord, I thank you for the trust that we have in you,
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Lord. I thank you for the refuge that is in you, God. Lord, if anything today,
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Lord, in the failure of our obedience, Lord, I would ask that none of us would ever consider any ounce of our obedience to be any means of salvation or merit that would happen in the internal inheritance that we would receive in what you have done,
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Lord. Let us only look to the cross today for the perfect obedience, and therefore let us act accordingly with priorities set on you, and let us always, when we fall short of your glory, continue to be placed on our knees at the heel of Calvary, Lord.
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Let us glorify you today in a final song and moment, and let us walk home considering our ways.
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Let us drive home considering our ways. Let us go about this week considering our ways,
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Lord. Be glorified by each one of us today. Be glorified corporately today, and let us just love one another and love you as well,
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Lord. And we just say this in your holiest name, Jesus the Christ, the one that paid the price on the cross of Calvary.