God of the Past, Present, and Future

ReCAST Church of Mattawan

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You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church from Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak preaches from his series on the book of Haggai, Realigning Priorities.

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Let's listen in. Well, good morning and welcome to Recast Church.

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I'm Don Filsak. I'm the lead pastor here, and I'm really glad to be together with all of you this morning.

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We've been brought together by our sovereign God who desires for us to be together. It is His will that has brought us together to praise

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Him, to hear from Him, and to reflect Him to each other. And those are all components of what it means to be a church, that we come together in the knowledge of Him.

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We need to grow in our faith. We need to grow in community. We need to grow in our service toward one another. The name

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Recast is a weird name for a church, and I like to say occasionally up here that it's an acronym for our core values.

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Now, those of you who got donuts probably had your focus on the donuts, but if you had lifted your eyes a little bit higher, on the wall is a list of those core values on a little plaque back there.

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Replication, community, authenticity, simplicity, and truth. And that's what we stand for here.

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Replication, community, authenticity, simplicity, and truth. And it's our value of truth that guides us in the way that we gather every

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Sunday morning. We believe that His Word is the capital T truth that reveals our

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God and His plan for us in the world. And so that's why we spend a good chunk of our time walking through the

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Word together, so that we might hear from Him, and that by His Spirit we might be moved to be transformed and changed, and live according to that Word throughout the week.

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So I'm going to be introducing us to a text from God's truth this morning. We've been marching through the book of Haggai just this month.

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It's a short book, just two chapters, four sermons. We're going to see where we've been. But even if this is your first time with us,

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I'm confident that God's going to meet you here in this place, and He has some things to speak to you this morning.

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I think that's why you're here. But I want to get us thinking about a question. How many of you have ever run out of steam?

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Raise your hand if you can think of a time where you've just run out of steam. I was a soccer player, and I ran middle distance in track when

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I was in high school, meaning that I really didn't like to run any more than a mile ever at any given time. And it wasn't until I was in my early 30s that I ran my first 5k.

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True story. I did not run in high school or in my 20s, and so I ran my first 5k.

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And I remember kind of falling in love with running. Weird thing, but it was actually through triathlons. I was a biker.

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Some people here that are probably in the room actually encouraged me to try a triathlon. I enjoyed it, and that was my introduction into running, and then

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I started running 5ks. There was one particular race that I was hoping to get a personal record in, and it's a good race.

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How many of you know about the Kalamazoo Classic? A handful of us know about the K Classic. It starts on the top of the

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Maple Street Hill, winds its way around down Bronson Boulevard, and ends at the bottom of the hill.

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And how many of you know that running downhill helps? Like, I should have been able to PR, and this is a

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PR course. This is the one that you personal record when you run this race. And I was geeked.

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I was pumped up. I had practiced. I was out running a lot, and I was ready to roll on this beautiful, beautiful,

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I think it was a Saturday morning. The gun goes off, feeling good. My goal was to be, and this is going to be maybe either shameful, shameful to some, impressive to others, but I was trying to get under 23 minutes.

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Not super amazing times, especially for those of you, yeah, some of the younger people are laughing at me right now.

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This is my 30s, everybody. Trying to get under 23 minutes. I got to the first mile marker, and they were calling out the times.

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And some of you are going to recognize this time as an uh -oh moment, but it was 6 .30. 6 .30

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on my first mile. I had gone out way, way, way too fast.

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Just juiced in the moment, excited, just completely, you know, the weather's great. Running with the crowd, trying to stay up near the front, and 6 .30.

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Second mile was brutal. I ran out of steam. It was hard, hard to keep running. I mean,

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I literally wanted to walk that second mile. Second mile, some people could walk at this pace, eight minutes for that second mile.

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Eight minutes for the third mile, going down a steep hill. And then that last tenth of a mile at eight -minute pace,

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I finished at 23 minutes and 30 seconds. 30 seconds above my, yeah, oh, some of you, oh, thanks for feeling bad for me.

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I ran out of steam. I was in the middle of it, and I ran out of steam. I had spent myself, and whether it's running, or it's a work project, or it's a relationship that doesn't seem worth fighting for anymore, or even a spiritual discipline of getting up in the morning and reading your

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Bible and praying, all of us, at times, have been tempted to give up. All of us, at some point in our lives, have been tempted because we're running out of steam.

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We know what that means. We see in our text the word of the Lord sent to His people at a time when they have corporately run out of steam.

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In this context, they're discouraged about the project He has given to them, and we find that in this context,

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God reveals Himself as the God, meeting them in their moment of weakness, meeting them in their moment of disillusionment, meeting them in the moment of their discouragement.

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In the midst of running out of steam, He says, I am the God of the past, I am the God of the present, and I am the

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God of your future. He reminds them what He's done for them, reminds them that He is with them in the calling that they're facing that day, and He reminds them that He has a glorious, glorious future plan that surpasses any of their present struggles.

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I think this is going to be a message that's going to impact all of us where we're at. So I want you to open your

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Bibles or your devices to Haggai chapter 2. We're going to read the first verse 1 through 9 in Haggai chapter 2, and I want to remind you, like I do every

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Sunday, that this is God's holy word, to give it our attention, to follow along as I read it, because this is the voice of God to us.

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This is what He wants to say to us, church, this morning. Haggai chapter 2 verses 1 through 9.

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In the seventh month, on the 21st day of the month, the word of the Lord came by the hand of Haggai the prophet.

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Speak now to Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua, the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, and to all the people and say, who is left among you who saw this house in its former glory?

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How do you see it now? Is it not as nothing in your eyes? Yet now be strong,

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O Zerubbabel, declares the Lord. Be strong, O Joshua, son of Jehozadak, the high priest. Be strong, all you people of the land, declares the

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Lord. Work, for I am with you, declares the Lord of hosts. According to the covenant that I made with you, when you came out of Egypt, my spirit remains in your midst.

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Fear not, for thus says the Lord of hosts, yet once more, in a little while,

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I will shake the heavens and the earth, the sea, and the dry land, and I will shake all the nations, so that the treasures of all nations shall come in, and I will fill this house with glory, says the

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Lord of hosts. The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, declares the Lord of hosts.

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The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts, and in this place

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I will give peace, declares the Lord of hosts. Let's pray.

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Father, I rejoice that you are a God who meets us in our moments, the highs and the lows and everything in between, and we are a people that are prone to run out of steam in our worship, prone to run out of steam in our day -to -day, prone to get disillusioned and discouraged in the midst of the race that you have set out for us.

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I thank you that you meet us in your word, that we have here in Haggai an example of you speaking into the moment of discouragement, even assessing their present circumstances, identifying your past promises, that they might remember, and giving them a trust in your future plan.

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Father, I pray that you would meet us here in this place, wherever we are at. I recognize that there are people here who are kind of at a high point, and they're going, yeah,

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I'm not in the middle of the struggle. I'm at that starting line ready to go out and do a 630. I'm just jazzed and ready to go, and some are at that finish line just feeling like laying down and sucking wind.

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Others are in the middle and just kind of going, why am I out here? Father, I pray that you would meet each one of us as individuals.

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Thank you for this corporate body. I thank you for the gathering of your people where we are encouraged to be together, but also meet us to a person here for encouragement, for correction, for empowering, for hope, and for salvation.

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Father, we thank you for the promise of a better future, that promise of a better glory, that promise of a pure worship from hearts right now that can't even understand that, that we're so corrupted by sin that the brokenness and the darkness in our own hearts is not able to break through to a knowledge or an understanding of what it would be to stand before you perfect and holy.

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But now we have a little glimpse, a little opportunity to praise you and to worship you together.

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So, Father, I pray that you would be with our worship, be honored, and be lifted up in Jesus' name.

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Thanks to the band for leading us. Yeah, I can go ahead and get back to your seat, but if at any time during the message you need to get up and get more coffee or juice or donut holes, take advantage of that.

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No stress on my part if you need to get up. Haggai chapter 2 verses 1 through 9,

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I encourage you to re -find your spot there if you lost it. If you've got a paper copy of the Bible or a device, navigate back over there so that you can follow along in the text and see that the things

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I'm saying, the structure, the order is coming straight from the text. And I want to catch you up a little bit on kind of a reminder where we're at.

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God spoke through the prophet Haggai to his people. They had been moving back into Israel after about 65 years of exile in the foreign land of Babylon.

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Babylon conquered them, destroyed their walls, destroyed their temple, and carted them all off wholesale to live among the

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Babylonians. Now, they've come back in the land and God has rebuked his people for disobeying him.

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When they came back in the land, they were supposed to be rebuilding the temple and instead they become diverted into all kinds of their own self -centered personal home improvement projects and they've been building their own house while the temple itself remains in rubble.

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But through the first message of Haggai, we saw a couple of weeks ago, the people considered their ways.

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They repented and had begun the pathway of obeying God by getting back to the temple project.

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And they're doing so after a time of considering their ways, thinking about their heart, thinking about how life is going for them, and saying, we need more worship.

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We need more obedience to God. That's in our best interest that we worship God, in our best interest that we live his way.

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So, a little less than a month has passed since they began the project. It's hard work. They're removing rubble.

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They're quarrying large rocks. And I can only imagine that that's pretty physical labor and that's all set in.

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And it isn't merely the manual labor that has the people discouraged. I think that they were kind of used to that in that day, in that era.

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But it's the unimpressive quality of the structure that they are building that has them second guessing.

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What is their running out of steam looking like? They're going, this isn't that great. Is it really worth it?

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For all the work, it is unimpressive to their eyes. The fact that they're only one month into the project should inform us that they are not disappointed with a finished product, but they are rather disappointed by extrapolating out to what this is going to look like with the skill and available labor that we have here today with us.

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This is not going to be that great, is their concern. Now, some of these people have never seen the glory of the former temple.

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As a matter of fact, the majority of them have never seen the glory of Solomon's temple. It was destroyed as the Babylonians ransacked the place.

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So, again, you got to remember that a lot of years have passed since this all happened, about 65 years.

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And so many of them have never seen that glory. They still, I would suggest to you, have a point of reference of quality construction.

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As a matter of fact, they have some epic examples of quality construction because where are they coming from?

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Babylon. They're coming from Babylon. Many of these have beheld actually with their own eyes.

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One of the seven wonders of the world is the hanging gardens of Babylon. One of the greatest and epic structures in the palace of the king of Babylon that ancient archaeologists uncover and they're like, this is just this massive undertaking that was done there in the city of Babylon.

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Great temples to the Babylonian gods and goddesses that these guys beheld with their own eyes.

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So, as they're building this structure for Yahweh, for Jehovah, for the God that we serve, they're like, this doesn't hold a candle.

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This is not good construction. They had lived in an opulent and extravagant pagan culture.

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Now, they live there as servants, but they beheld these things throughout their lives. They knew quality and as they're working on this temple, they're going, this is bootleg at best.

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This is not good. So, the people are discouraged and I want to encourage all of us to let our minds wander back and forth between the text about the people, this ancient people of Israel and their discouragement and our own modern contemporary journey with discouragement that I'm confident that each one in this room has.

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Their lives in many ways parallel ours and God's response to them is here in the pages of Scripture for our benefit here in 2023.

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We are meant to be built up and strengthened in our seasons of discouragement by the things that the

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Almighty says here in this text. And so, our outline this morning forms a helpful way for us to think as we encounter discouragements, as we are tempted to run out of steam in the middle of serving

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God, serving family, serving each other. We know that our relationship with God sometimes runs out of steam.

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Sometimes our will to obey Him runs out of steam. Sometimes our will and our hunger and our desire to turn all of our daily lives into worship to Him runs out of steam.

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And so, here are three things we need to do, three things that the text kind of outlines for us that happen to realign our priorities toward the day -to -day rhythms of worship to God when things don't feel so good.

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The first is assess the present, verses one through three. An assessment, an accurate assessment about what's going on in your life in the here and now.

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The second is remember His promises, verses four through five. Remember His promises. The third is trust

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Him with the future, verses six through nine. So, that forms a bit of a way of thinking and wrapping our minds around.

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I mean, it's actually a structure. It forms an acronym. If you want to remember this and you're looking for a way to remember these steps of realigning your life when you feel like you're losing steam, when you feel like your life with God is starting to run out, or you feel like your will to obey and follow

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Him in your family, in your relationship with your kids, with your spouse, with your parents, whatever it might be, when you feel like you aren't this thing, assess, remember, and trust.

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Assess, remember, and trust. That's our outline. It's good for us to start by assessing because it, oftentimes, how many of you would admit that sometimes you feel a little skewed and you're not quite sure what's going on in your life?

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Like you're just like living day -to -day, moment -by -moment, and it's like, wait, what am I doing again? And those can be some of the most discouraging times where you just realize a month or two has gone by and I haven't had a moment,

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I haven't had a second to reflect on why I'm doing the things that I'm doing, I'm just surviving,

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I'm just doing. Raise your hand if you've been in seasons like that, where it's just kind of like life is happening to you, but you're not, you're not moving toward God in any meaningful way.

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So assessing the present, I love that this passage starts here for us because it's often overlooked by what

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I would suggest are the most spiritual of people. We are, spiritual people don't worry about circumstances, right?

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Spiritual people don't take the time to assess what's going on around them because they're just living for God, they're just doing their thing.

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We are told from even our youth we're supposed to rise above the wind and the waves, allow no circumstances to affect a stiff upper lip, right?

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We're told to tough it out, grin and bear it, and let nothing move you. That's the spiritual stance, right?

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If you're really in love with God, then nothing's going to impact you, nothing's going to be hard, nothing's going to be difficult. But here in our text, in the seventh month of the 21st day of the month, the word of the

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Lord came through Haggai to the governor, to the high priest, and to the people. God is breaking into their circumstances and he picks a great day.

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It's interesting that that specific day of the year is a specific celebration in the

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Jewish calendar. It's the final day, the culmination of a week -long celebration called the

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Feast of Booths or the Feast of Tents. I don't know why we translate that booths, maybe it's a more technical word.

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Kind of lean to is the idea there. This is the culmination of a national festival of camping.

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Like maybe this, I don't know if that's the fourth of July for us or Memorial Day, maybe Labor Day. Some of you are going to go camping on Labor Day, some of you.

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I mean, we kind of have these camping things too, right? But this was very specific, a specific holiday week -long celebration for the people.

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I say celebration, if you don't like camping, this was not going to be super fun for you. But everybody left their houses to set up tents and lean -to's out in the countryside to sleep out there and spend their time out there as a week for a national reminder to Israel of the exodus and how

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God brought the people out into the wilderness to camp on their way to the promised land. That's what the

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Feast of Booths was all about. And that last day culminated in a festival, maybe just celebrating going back to their own bed.

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Some of you know what I'm talking about. And so at this point, when the people are forsaking their own homes, remember that was the part, that was part of the problem, right?

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Part of the problem is that they were tricking out their own, they were tricking out their own digs while they were not paying attention to God's house.

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And now they're celebrating like, hey, remember, you don't really need that much. Remember how God provided for you.

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God brought you through. You're going to be okay. And they're contemplating the historical faithfulness of God to deliver them from the bondage of slavery.

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It's into that context. They're worn down. They're doing all these work projects. They're now following God and doing this celebration.

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And he speaks not only to the leaders, but he speaks to the people as well. This is not a message only for leadership.

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And hear me, church, like I'm grateful that we're in a church tradition where you have a copy of the Bible available to you.

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Like God doesn't just speak to me and you got to come to me on Sunday morning and hear. Now, I study it so that I can stand up here and hopefully help us all to understand it.

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But you can understand it too. Amen? You can dig into this. You have access to it.

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God doesn't just speak to the leadership. God speaks to the people here in this text. And I think it's important that we see that.

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He wants all the people to hear, all the people to be encouraged. But the line of questions are the assessment in verse 3.

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So, really the assessment is centered on verse 3. If you look down at it for a second, verse 3 is where we get an accurate assessment of the work that the people are engaged in as their act of worship to God.

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Now, God first questions, he asks the first question, who's still alive among you who saw with your own eyes the glory of Solomon's temple?

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Who's alive among you, says Haggai as he's speaking on behalf of the Lord? The question implies that some were there who would remember it.

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Especially the second question even emphasizes more so that the expectation is that there are just to do a little bit of math,

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I'm not super mathy, but it would be very few who survived into their 70s, but you would have to be at least 70 to have been old enough at the exile to have remembered

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Solomon's temple. So, we're talking about 72 years and older. If there's anybody in that crowd, anybody there among the people who have been brought back into the land after exile, they would be the ones who could answer affirmative.

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Yes, we beheld the glory of Solomon's temple. The second question, mine's a little bit deeper.

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How many of you can remember it? First question, second, how does that compare to what we're building today? Look at our current construction and look at that old temple.

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Those of you that can remember, what does it look like to you? So, he's asking for a comparison. Compare that glory of Solomon's temple with gold, gilded, stories above any other edifice in Jerusalem.

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Standing up on a hill, you could see it from anywhere in Jerusalem. You could behold the temple during this era. This glorious thing that was this imposing structure of remembering and the glory of the

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Lord there and the sacrifices. And how does what we're building today compare to that? And he's asking, assess.

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Assess. Consider your work today, and how does it compare? And the third question could be a little misconstrued as even taunting.

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Is God taunting the people? He says, isn't the outcome of your labor here? You've been working for a month on this, and isn't it like nothing in comparison to the glory of that old temple?

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Isn't this like, I understand why you want to give up. I'm getting it because this just doesn't look that great.

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And how many of you would raise your hand and say, I have a little bit within my own chest of nostalgia, like those old days, the way it used to be.

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Am I the only one with my hand up? Or some of you are just like, man, why couldn't it be more like, and it can even just be personal, like, man, five years ago was better than today, right?

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Ten years ago was better than today. Why can't we just rewind the clock and go back to when things were really good?

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And that's what the people are struggling with here in this text, a desire for the old glory.

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But God is not taunting them. God is not mocking them. He is assessing with them.

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He's not ridiculing their work as we're going to see in the coming verses. Instead, He is actually validating their concerns.

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God's validating their concerns. He is indeed with them in this project. He is indeed telling them to continue on in this project.

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He is acknowledging that there is indeed a shift from that old glory to what they're being tasked with here in the present, and He is addressing them.

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God has an accurate assessment, and here His line of questioning shows that He knows that this new temple that they're building, this project, doesn't hold a candle to the gold -gilded, silver -encrusted, carved, ornate, and impressive structure that was

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Solomon's temple, now burned, now destroyed, now a pile of rubble. So Haggai agrees with them that the past was better.

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God agrees with them that the past glory was better. And I don't know about you, but there's something that I find encouraging in this, and you can kind of go like, oh yeah, like I can see how this might hit some and strike some ears as discouragement, but I find encouragement in this.

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Sometimes in the midst of a crisis, all I want to hear is, man, that does suck. That is terrible. Do you know what

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I'm talking about? And if you just kind of sometimes like, you just want somebody to come along and say, yeah, that's bad,

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Don. That's no fun. I'm sorry that's happening. This is terrible. The worst is when someone comes into the midst of your hardship, the midst of your discouragement, and disagrees with you.

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It's not really that bad, Don. It's not really that bad at all. How many of you have had a friend like that?

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That's not a good friend. A good friend who just leads off with, man, don't you know about the kids in Africa?

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You know what I'm talking about. At least they didn't die slow. You can always get another dog.

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Fortunately, God gave you two arms. I don't know whatever it might be, right? Like, I don't know whatever a person might lean into and say in that moment that's like, but my arm's gone, bro.

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Like, I don't have a left arm anymore. And it's like, well, at least you're right -handed. God knows where you're at.

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God will encourage you to assess where you're at. He's not afraid for you to lean into the discouragements.

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He's not afraid of that, but rather here he's saying, take a moment and assess. Let's get that over with.

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Let's get that out of your system. God knows and agrees with us in our low points. He doesn't agree with lies.

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If you're telling lies to yourself in those moments, God doesn't really love me. It'll never get better.

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It can never improve. I'm just here for the long haul. And if you eeyore the thing,

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God's not going to confirm you in lies, but he is going to say, yeah, your circumstances,

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I see that. I know that. And here in the text, it's about the temple. And he says, yeah, that temple's like nothing compared to that old glory.

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So let's take a moment, church, and assess our own situation. Some of us have experienced loss and our lives will not and have not been the same since.

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Some of us have come to see and know things that we wish we didn't know. Some of us are tired and wondering if it's worth continuing on in prayer, continuing on in marriage, continuing on in study, continuing on in worship, even maybe continuing on in the darkest moments with God at all.

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Some of you might be up against wondering, is this really all worth it? And some of you are just coming back to church.

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I know you. You're coming back to church after years of hurt and you wish you could just go back to the times before the pain and the hurting started.

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I know. God doesn't look at you and say, well, you don't have it as bad as that poor family in Africa, so suck it up.

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No, he enters into the exhaustion and discouragement of his people over something as small as a building project.

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And he enters that situation to agree with their assessment. Yes, this is disappointing.

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But I am so glad that we serve a God of sympathy and not a God of mere empathy. He doesn't just feel with us.

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Instead, he comes alongside us in compassion for the purpose of help. You see, empathy is a word

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I've grown to hate, and I don't use the word hate very often. I do not love the word empathy at all.

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I try to avoid it. I don't even really use it. And you're going to go like, what? I might ruffle some feathers here, but I'd love to have a dialogue with you afterwards because I don't want to make that the main point.

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But it is significant that God sympathizes with us, but he does not empathize with us. You see, empathy is a word that was invented.

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And when you go back to its history, it has a specific intentional meaning. It was brought into the English language, invented by psychologists to basically demonstrate the woeful, lacking nature of the word sympathy.

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So we had a perfectly good word in English, sympathy, to feel along with. And we took it and we changed it to empathy, to only enter in the pain.

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But sympathy has with it the desire to fix, the desire to help, the desire to bring forward some kind of conclusion or assist.

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And that was not sufficient for psychologists. So the distinction matters because the word was brought in to convey that sympathy is not good enough.

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It's not enough to enter into someone's pain, to feel with them with the intention of seeking a solution.

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If I can offer a simple caricature of these two words, imagine someone is drowning and crying for help and the lifeguard, there's a lifeguard there.

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Oh, good. And the lifeguard sees the person drowning and associates with their plight and immediately goes,

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I'm here, and jumps in. But not to save, but just to feel with them.

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To offer help, well, that would be to do injustice to them. That would be to imply that you're arrogant, that you've got a place of strength, that you have something to offer.

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How dare you be arrogant enough to assume you've got something to offer to the drowning person.

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So you offer no help. That would be rude. So the lifeguard just gives them a nice hug so they can experience the drowning together.

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The end. Empathy was invented, that word was invented, to convey that kind of drowning together.

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Get in there. Just get in there and feel the feelings with them. Don't offer any solutions. Don't offer any hope.

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Don't offer any help because that would just be unjust. Just feel with them. Modern psychology sees this as one of the highest virtues.

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But the Bible has no category for unhelpful help. The biblical word compassion or sympathy, the one

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Latin, the other Greek, is for the good lifeguard who throws a lifeline, jumps in with his flotation tube, and holds the drowning person to air while feeling with them.

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Feeling with them. And one hand, maybe on something stable, like I would suggest the

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Word of God. Something stable to bring into that situation to help them both float to safety.

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Now, it doesn't mean that the first answer is that when you see somebody suffering, you go, Bible smack!

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That's not what I'm saying. Not saying that at all. I know how to save you. Here, hold the

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Bible as they're drowning. I don't know. That's not the answer. You do want to feel with them. Compassion does feel.

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Sympathy does feel. But not only that. There's more to it. God will affirm our affliction.

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He will agree that our predicament is perilous. He will confirm that our day in and day out is monotonous.

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He will confirm that in our work or in our families or in our church or in our places that we are relatively ineffective and that the results are always a bit sketchy because we're human.

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We're people. Just like that janky temple that people are working tirelessly to build. He's like, yeah, it's kind of not that great.

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But God doesn't leave it there. Here He comes to help us in the mundane. He meets us in the daily struggle to keep living for Him.

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And He is faithful to remind us, and that's our second movement toward realigning in worship, to remember

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His past promises, verses 4 and 5. He comes in. He feels with them. He helps them assess.

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He says, yes, I feel that with you. I feel that disappointment. I feel that discouragement. I understand where you're at in life.

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Now remember my promises. After a proper assessment of their present circumstances, God now commands them three times to be strong and even reminds them three times that He is talking to them, verse 4.

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Yet now be strong, Zerubbabel. Be strong, Joshua. Be strong, all you people of the land.

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Declares the Lord, declares the Lord, declares the Lord of hosts.

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He's speaking. He reminds them. Be strong, be strong, be strong.

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And then He commands them to work. He commands them to work even as He reminds them of a promise

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He issued to them just about a month ago in the course of history. He reminded them through Haggai, I am with you.

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He's already said that at the start. Really, about two months ago, He said, I'm with you.

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Go handle this because I am for you is another way that could be translated. I'm on your team.

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I'm here. I'm guiding. I'm directing. I'm empowering. He is present with His people for strength and encouragement.

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So His command to be strong flows out of the promise to be with them, strengthening them. Consider the flow of this command of the people to work.

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You see it there in, is it in verse 5? Verse 4.

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Work, for I am with you, declares the Lord of hosts. Consider the way that that works as it comes after His covenant promise and after the promise of His presence with them.

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And this is the direction this goes in the new covenant for us as well. We can only be sustained in work and worship if we first have the knowledge of His strength and support with us.

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Knowing God is with us and for us with grace and mercy and help and strength is the energy behind our work, church.

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It must be the energy, the knowledge that God has rescued, that God has saved, that He's entered into our hearts and relationship with us, that He sent us

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His Spirit, that He is here present with us. That is where the work comes from. That's where the ability to be sustained in those dark moments of not feeling like we can go on anymore.

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Those moments of, man, I just can't, I can't handle this. I'm going to have to change something.

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He says, come along. He comes along and says, remember, I am with you. I love you.

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I am for you. You can do this with my strength. God says work because I am glad to be with you.

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I am present with strength, protection. I am present with hope and with help.

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This is the very engine of the gospel. This is the engine of the Christian life. Remember what I've done for you. Now be strong and contend.

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Now be strong in worship. Now be strong and build. Now be strong and live a life of worshipful obedience to me, says

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God. Look with me at verse 5 to see how clear this hope -filled reminder of the past is found here in the book of Haggai.

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He says, I will be with you. I, the commander of all the armies of heaven, that's what the word of hosts means.

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I, the commander of all the armies of heaven, will be with you according to the covenant I made way back in history, way back before any of you were born, when your ancestors came out of Egypt.

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I promise to your people to always keep a remnant alive and you're that remnant. He's already said that earlier.

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So here God is hearkening back to an ancient promise he made to the people through Moses. He reminds us of what he has promised in the past to strengthen us and encourage us in the present.

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And he promises to never leave or forsake us. Jesus promised to be with his followers until the end of this age.

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Until he returns on the clouds of heaven, he will be present with his people. Find encouragement in that.

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Find strength in that. He promises that his spirit remains in their midst so they can stop being afraid is a really good translation of the two words fear not in the

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English standard version. Stop being afraid. The verb tense implies they already are afraid and they need to cut it out.

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And he says my presence with you. I'm here. I'm with you. Stop being afraid.

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How many times do you see that in scripture? Have you noticed it? How many times is the first word on the lips of an angel or on the lips of God Almighty?

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Fear not. What does that imply about us? The strongest man in this room is prone to fear.

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All of us. Our hearts are put together that way to fear and only God can assuage our fears.

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Only the Almighty in his presence coming in and saying cut it out. I'm here. I got you.

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I got you. You don't have anything to be afraid of. And now he ties this call to fearlessness not merely to past promises but in our third movement in the text to a future reality.

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So the third movement toward realigning our lives to worship a third step for us to take is to trust him with the future.

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We can assess the present. We can remember his past promises and now we are free to trust him with our future.

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The commander of the armies of heaven says suddenly and in a short time I'm going to shake the cosmos.

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Says there's a future date coming that everything's going to change. Speaking to the Haggai people in that age.

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He's referring to much more than an earthquake but rather he's speaking to a cosmic shift in the way he's going to relate to humanity.

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He says I've done that before. I'm going to do it again. The idea of shaking heaven and earth, sea and dry land is a figure of speech centered on earth shattering changes in the cosmos.

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Earth shattering ways of God dealing with mankind. There's been a lot of debate about what he did in the past that was like this but most scholars because of the covenant made when they were coming out of Egypt identifies the same thing that I do and then it's also a question mark of what he's going to do in the future that's like a shaking like that.

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I loosely believe that the previous shaking was the deliverance of his people from Egypt through the exodus.

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A radical shift in the way that God was working with humanity. This is held up as the salvation event of the

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Old Testament. So many passages in the in the Old Testament referring back to that exodus, referring to that passage through the water on dry ground.

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God carving out a people for himself, the giving of the law, all of that. Delivering his people, providing for them in the wilderness, giving them the land of promise and that amounts to a major global shift when

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God begins to work specifically with the people of Israel. But the future event in verse 7 has many possibilities but I think

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Haggai might very well have a double entendre, double meaning to this passage and unfortunately we reserve double entendres mostly for crass or juvenile humor in our culture but they can be used by prophets to divide out a near future fulfillment or far -reaching fulfillment so that the text as the prophet speaks it both has a present interpretation for them where they live but also in a double meaning has something yet future, far future that he has in mind, that God has in mind.

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The radical nature of the shaking of the cosmos terminology makes me conclude that something more is intended here than merely just having the nations provide gold, silver and stuff to trick out the temple and make it really shiny, right?

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So shiny. I thought maybe three people would get that. The earliest commentaries and Martin Luther and John Calvin and all those ancient smart dudes with long beards follow a more literal interpretation of verse 7 that places this second shaking of everything on the arrival of the

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Messiah. What is the earth shaking event that he's speaking to the people in Haggai's time? In the future

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I'm going to do this radical shaking. I'm going to shake the heavens. I'm going to shake the earth. I'm going to shake the sea. I'm going to shake the dry ground and nothing's going to be the same after that.

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It's the arrival of the Messiah. The reason is that the word in Hebrew translated as treasures in verse 7 is actually a more generic general word meaning desires so that God will shake out from among the peoples of the world the desires of the nations which will come in and fill this very temple with his glory.

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There's a future plan for this building. They're discouraged. They don't want to keep going and he says

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I got plans. Oh man you cannot conceive of the plans I've got for this building.

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This ramshackle. Yeah it looks like nothing to your eyes and the glory of God will come into it.

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They don't realize it but his very son and flesh will go to that building. Don't give up.

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I've got a plan says God. Trust me. Trust me. I've got glory that you don't relate to church.

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Glory that you don't understand. Things in the future for you and through the work that you do in the mundane day in and day out like what's the value of changing a diaper for a kid?

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What's the value of serving at the door and greeting people? What's the value of preaching?

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What's the value of sharing your faith with somebody? What's the value of serving well at your work doing the best for the glory of God?

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We don't know and I can't stand up here and tell you but what

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I can tell you is to trust the God who's in it. Trust the God who's called you to it that he's going to do something glorious in and through you that you can't even conceive.

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You don't even know but can you trust him with it? That's what he's saying to the people here.

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There is glory coming into this building that would blow your mind to understand.

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You just couldn't fathom it. I think the people building this ramshackle temple and relative discouragement are here being encouraged on one level that all the gold...

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What did they get out of it in that day and time? Well, look at verse 8 and look at verse 7 coupled with verse 8 that all the gold and silver are his it says and a day is coming when that temple will indeed be blinged out by the pagans.

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It's true and it actually happened. Quite literally be fulfilled by Herod and just before Jesus he's going to take the very bones of this temple.

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It's got built up good bones don't need to add more stone to it we're just gonna we're gonna trick it out and he takes the bones of that temple built by Zerubbabel Joshua and the people in Haggai's time and trick it out far beyond the glory of Solomon's temple using

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Roman wealth. The Roman money is what goes into fixing up the temple to its glorious far...

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Herod's temple? Solomon's temple doesn't hold a candle to Herod's temple. Herod's temple had colonnades and courtyards and Solomon's portico where the church first met.

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It's just this glorious paved area that was far far far vastly probably as superior to Solomon's temple as Solomon's temple was to this temple that they're building in this day and age.

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So what do they get out of this? Well they might have just thought well yeah the glory is going to come in and it's going to get blinged out and it is indeed going to be shiny.

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But God is indeed offering encouragement to them and to us that we have no idea what our work for Him is going to become.

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He may well confirm that our work is mundane. He might say yeah I get it I recognize your day -to -day feels pretty routine.

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It doesn't feel that special. It doesn't look like that. As a matter of fact to you it feels like nothing.

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It seems like nothing in the present but only time will show the true glory of what will be built on the acts of obedience and worship rendered to Him in the here and now.

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We need to realign our lives to the hope of the future glory that God has for His people and that is also according to the text a future of peace.

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Shalom. In verse 9 God tells them that the latter glory of this janky house will be greater than the former and that actually transpired and further in this very place of Jerusalem a kingdom of shalom will arise after the glory comes in.

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There is something going on here in this text that goes deeper than a mere building project. The future promise that He will shake the very cosmos and from the nations will come our desires is so clear to me and to many of the ancients that He's speaking about the arrival of our

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Messiah. What glory will one day fill that house that they're building? What desire of nations will come in that results in earth -shattering change?

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And in what way is that shaking of the cosmic order and ushering in of shalom not just absence of war but a restoration to the way that things were meant to be?

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That's the word peace in Greek and in Hebrew. The restoration of things to the way that they are meant to be is the future.

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You cannot convince me that this is a passage of from God merely pointing to the finishing of the temple as the earth -shaking event.

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And here's why as we land on our time, land our time together rather at the feet of our Lord and Savior at the cross, a day is coming when the temple will be no more.

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That's not the point. We know that it's not the point. As a matter of fact, we don't have a temple today. So how in the world is

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God pouring so much energy and time into this unless it means something else and there's more coming?

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Let me encourage all of us to be satisfied to work on what God has right in front of you today. Work on that.

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And do that work in the present in light of His past promises, but also do that work knowing that He will be glorified even more and a day is coming when peace will reign in the place of His temple.

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Speaking of the new Jerusalem and this eternal kingdom of peace, the

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Apostle John writes this in the book of Revelation. Revelation 21, verse 3, we are so close to the end of the

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Bible when we're reading this. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.

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He will dwell with them and they will be His people and God Himself will be their

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God. The promise to be with His people now is a promise to be with us for eternity.

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We will be His people and He will be our God. He will be with us.

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But look at what John also records for us later in that same chapter. Revelation 21, 22 says this, and I saw no temple in the city.

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It's talking about the eternal state. This is talking about the eternal city, the city that comes down, the new Jerusalem.

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And I saw no temple in the city for its temple is the Lord God Almighty and the

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Lamb. No need for a temple. We'll be right there with Him and He will be right there with us.

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Jesus Christ is the completed fulfillment of the Old Testament temple and all of its sacrifices.

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In Christ we meet with our God and through Him our sins can be dealt with once and for all through His willing sacrifice for us.

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The temple will be no more. Haggai and his people worked hard in this world to bring

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God glory. And even in working for His glory, the best they could produce was that which will not last.

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Rocks fall apart and the wind and the rain has its way with things and rust and corruption.

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And so as the end result, just don't bother. Just don't work. Stop building houses.

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Stop delivering packages. Stop teaching kids. Stop working because it doesn't really matter. No, that's not it at all.

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The remnant were strong. They stopped fearing. They took comfort in His empowering presence and they worked with hope for the greater glory of God in the future, trusting

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Him with the results. So church, what's left for us to do here? Let me encourage you all to work boldly in the present.

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Work boldly in the monotony. Work boldly even if you're just kind of like, man, I just don't know about the quality of this.

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I don't know if I'm doing it well enough. Keep at it. Be strengthened by His past promises, encouraged by His future promise of restored shalom.

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His promise to rescue anyone who would come to Him and turn from their sins and ask Him for forgiveness and accept

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Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. And if this defines you, then I encourage you during this next song to come to the tables during communion.

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Take the cracker that reminds us of His body broken for us and take the cup of juice to remember His blood shed for us.

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You can take those back to your seat if you would like. He died in our place to bring us reconciliation with the

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Father. The sacrifices of the temple no more because Christ, our sacrifice for us.

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So eat and drink in remembrance of Him. And please, if you're able, I encourage you to stay after communion for a short baptism service.

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We're going to have a communion song, then we're going to have another song, and then we're going to have some people come in here that are going to take that next step of baptism.

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But you can go pick your kids up immediately after you take communion. Come back in here. We're going to sing extra songs as those being baptized have time to prepare.

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If for some reason you're not able to stay with us, don't feel any pressure to do so. We do want as many people to take this in as possible.

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But if you need a bolt, I would just ask that you do us all a favor. Take any conversations that you're going to have out into the parking lot just so that we can we can have the baptism in here and everybody can hear and participate.

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So let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for the grace that you have given to us, that you see us in our hard places, and you are more than willing to help us in our assessment of our situations.

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And you're even willing to say, yeah, these are not good circumstances. I'm with you in that. I recognize that.

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But then you call us to trust in your past promises to us, and you also give us hope for a future that the seeds that we sow here, the seeds that we sow in our lives, the seeds that we sow to you will not come back empty.

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We trust you with that. We hope in that. And I ask that this would be a message that empowers all of us to walk more boldly in the day -to -day.