Haggai 2:1-9 God of the Past, Present, and Future

The Church’s Core Values and the Authority of God’s Word

Of Recast Church from Attawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsek preaches from his series on the book of Haggai, Realigning Priorities. Let's listen in.

Well, good morning and welcome to Recast Church. I'm Don Filsek, I'm the lead pastor here, and I'm really glad to be together with all of you this morning. 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 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, 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 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. 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.

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

We believe that his word is the capital T truth that reveals our 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 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.

So I'm gonna be introducing us to a text from God's truth this morning. We've been marching through the book of Haggai just this month. It's a short book, just two chapters, four sermons, we're gonna see where we've been.

But even if this is your first time with us, I'm confident that God's gonna meet you here in this place and he has some things to speak to you this morning. I think that's why you're here. But I wanna get us thinking about a question.

How many of you have ever run out of steam? 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 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, true story. I did not run in high school or in my 20s. So I ran my first 5K and I remember kind of falling in love with running. Weird thing, but it was actually through triathlons.

I was a biker. 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 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.

How many of you know about the Kalamazoo Classic? Handful of us know about the K Classic. It starts on the top of the Maple Street Hill, winds its way around down Bronson Boulevard and ends at the bottom of the hill.

And how many of you know that running downhill helps? Like I should have been able to PR and this is a PR course. This is the one that you personal record when you run this race. And I was geeked, I was pumped up, I had practiced, I was out running a lot and I was ready to roll on this beautiful, beautiful, I think it was a Saturday morning.

The gun goes off, feeling good. My goal was to be, and this is gonna be maybe either shameful, shameful to some, impressive to others, but I was trying to get under 23 minutes, not super amazing times, especially for those of you, yeah, yeah, some of the younger people are laughing at me right now.

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

6 .30 on my first mile. I had gone out way, way, way too fast. 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, second mile was brutal.

I ran out of steam. It was hard, hard to keep running. I mean, I literally wanted to walk that second mile. Second mile, some people could walk at this pace, eight minutes for that second mile, eight minutes for the third mile, going down a steep hill.

And then that last 10th of a mile at eight minute pace, I finished at 23 minutes and 30 seconds. 30 seconds above my, yeah, oh, some of you, oh, thanks for feeling bad for me. 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 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. 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.

In this context, they're discouraged about the project he has given to them. And we find that in this context, 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, 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 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.

I think this is gonna be a message that's gonna impact all of us where we're at. So I want you to open your Bibles or your devices to Haggai chapter two. We're gonna read the first, verse one through nine in Haggai chapter two.

And I wanna remind you like I do every 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. This is what he wants to say to us, church, this morning.

Haggai chapter two, verses one through nine. In the seventh month, on the 21st day of the month, the word of the Lord came by the hand of Haggai the prophet. 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 remnant of the people, and say, who is left among you who saw this house in its former glory?

How do you see it now? Is it not as nothing in your eyes? Yet now be strong, 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 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. Fear not, for thus says the Lord of hosts.

Yet once more, in a little while, 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 Lord of hosts.

The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, declares the Lord of hosts. The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts. And in this place, I will give peace, declares the Lord of hosts.

Let's pray. 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.

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.

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, 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. 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. 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 compassion, for empowering, for hope, and for salvation.

Father, we thank you for the cross of Jesus Christ that gives us hope, that 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.

But now we have a little glimpse, a little opportunity to praise you and to worship you together. So Father, I pray that you would be with our worship, be honored, and be lifted up in Jesus' name. 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. No stress on my part if you need to get up.

The Discouraged Temple Builders in Haggai’s Day

Haggai chapter two, verses one through nine, I encourage you to re-find your spot there if you lost it, if you 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 I'm saying, the structure, the order is coming straight from the text.

And I wanna catch you up a little bit on kind of a reminder where we're at. 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.

Babylon conquered them, destroyed their walls, destroyed their temple and carted them all off wholesale to live among the Babylonians. Now, they've come back in the land and God has rebuked his people for disobeying him.

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.

But through the first message of Haggai, we saw a couple of weeks ago, the people considered their ways, they repented and had begun the pathway of obeying God by getting back to the temple project. 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, 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. So a little less than a month has passed since they began the project. It's hard work, they're removing rubble, they're quarrying large rocks and I can only imagine that that's pretty physical labor and that's all set in.

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

What is their running out of steam looking like? They're going, this isn't that great, is it really worth it? 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 gonna look like with the skill and available labor that we have here today with us.

This is not gonna be that great, is their concern. Now, some of these people have never seen the glory of the former temple. 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. So again, you gotta remember that a lot of years have passed since this all happened, about 65 years, 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. As a matter of fact, they have some epic examples of quality construction, because where are they coming from? Babylon.

They're coming from Babylon. Many of these have beheld actually with their own eyes 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 archeologists uncover, and they're like, this is just this massive undertaking that was done there in the city of Babylon.

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

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

This is not good. So the people are discouraged, and I wanna 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 am confident that each one in this room has.

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. We are meant to be built up and strengthened in our seasons of discouragement by the things that the 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 God, serving family, serving each other.

We know that our relationship with God sometimes runs out of steam. 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.

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.

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

Remember His promises. The third is trust Him with the future, verses six through nine. So that forms a bit of a way of thinking and wrapping our minds around. I mean, it's actually a structure. It forms an acronym.

If you wanna 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 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.

Assess, remember, and trust. That's our outline. It's good for us to start by assessing because 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?

Like you're just 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, I haven't had a second to reflect on why I'm doing the things that I'm doing.

I'm just surviving, 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 moving toward God in any meaningful way. So assessing the present, I love that this passage starts here for us because it's often overlooked by what I would suggest are the most spiritual of people.

Spiritual people don't worry about circumstances, right? 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.

We are told from even our youth, we're supposed to rise above the wind and the waves, allow no circumstances to affect us, stiff upper lip, right? We're told to tough it out, grin and bear it and let nothing move you.

That's the spiritual stance, right? If you're really in love with God, then nothing's gonna impact you, nothing's gonna be hard, nothing's gonna be difficult. But here in our text, in the seventh month of the 21st day of the month, the word of the 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. It's interesting that that specific day of the year is a specific celebration in the Jewish calendar. It's the final day, the culmination of a week-long celebration called the Feast of Booths or the Feast of Tents.

I don't know why we translate that booths, maybe it's a more technical word. Kind of lean to is the idea there. This is a culmination of a national festival of camping. Like maybe this, I don't know if that's the 4th of July for us or Memorial Day, maybe Labor Day, some of you are gonna go camping on Labor Day, some of you.

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. I say celebration, if you don't like camping, this was not gonna be super fun for you.

But everybody left their houses to set up tents and lean tos 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 God brought the people out into the wilderness to camp on their way to the promised land.

That's what the Feast of Booths was all about. And that last day culminated in a festival, maybe just celebrating going back to their own bed. I can't, some of you know what I'm talking about. And so at this point, when the people are forsaking their own homes, remember that that was part of the problem, right?

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 and now they're celebrating like, hey, remember, you don't really need that much.

Remember how God provided for you, God brought you through, you're gonna be okay. And they're contemplating the historical faithfulness of God to deliver them from the bondage of slavery. 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.

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

Like God doesn't just speak to me and you gotta 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. But you can understand it too, amen?

You can dig into this, you have access to it. 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. He wants all the people to hear, all the people to be encouraged.

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

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? 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, especially the second question even emphasizes more so that the expectation is that there are some. Now just to do a little bit of math, 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 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.

Yes, we beheld the glory of Solomon's temple. The second question, mine's a little bit deeper. 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. 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, like, you know, stories above any other edifice in Jerusalem.

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 Lord there and the sacrifices.

And how does what we're building today compare to that? And he's asking, assess, assess, consider your work today. And how does it compare? And the third question could be a little misconstrued as even taunting.

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? Isn't this like, I understand why you wanna give up.

I'm getting it because this just doesn't look that great. 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.

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? 10 years ago was better than today.

Why can't we just rewind the clock and go back to when things were really good? And that's what the people are struggling with here in this text, a desire for the old glory. But God is not taunting them.

God is not mocking them. He is assessing with them. He's not ridiculing their work as we're gonna see in the coming verses. Instead, he is actually validating their concerns. God's validating their concerns.

He is indeed with them in this project. He is indeed telling them to continue on in this project. 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.

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 Solomon's temple.

Now burned, now destroyed, now a pile of rubble. So Haggai agrees with them that the past was better. 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.

I can see how this might hit some and strike some ears as discouragement, but I find encouragement in this. Sometimes in the midst of a crisis, all I wanna hear is, man, that does suck. That is terrible.

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

That's not a good friend. A good friend who just leads off with, man, don't you know about the kids in Africa? You know what I'm talking about. At least they didn't die slow. You can always get another dog.

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. 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. God will encourage you to assess where you're at. He's not afraid for you to lean into the discouragement. He's not afraid of that, but rather here he's saying, take a moment and assess.

Let's get that over with. Let's get that out of your system. God knows and agrees with us in our low points. He doesn't agree with lies. If you're telling lies to yourself in those moments, God doesn't really love me.

It'll never get better. It can never improve. I'm just here for the long haul. And if you eeyore the thing, God's not gonna confirm you in lies. But he is gonna say, yeah, your circumstances, 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. 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.

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.

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

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

And he enters that situation to agree with their assessment. Yes, this is disappointing. 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. Instead, he comes alongside us in compassion for the purpose of help.

You see, empathy is a word I've grown to hate, and I don't use the word hate very often. I do not love the word empathy at all. I try to avoid it. I don't even really use it. And you're gonna go like, what?

I might ruffle some feathers here, but I'd love to have a dialogue with you afterwards because I don't wanna make that the main point, 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. 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.

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

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

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, oh good. And the lifeguard sees the person drowning and associates with their plight, and immediately goes, I'm here, and jumps in.

But not to save, but just to feel with them. 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.

How dare you be arrogant enough to assume you've got something to offer to the drowning person. So you offer no help. That would be rude. So the lifeguard just gives them a nice hug so that they can experience the drowning together.

The end. Empathy was invented, that word was invented, to convey that kind of drowning together. Get in there, just get in there and feel the feelings with them. Don't offer any solutions, don't offer any hope, 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. But the Bible has no category for unhelpful help. The biblical word compassion or sympathy, the one 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, feeling with them.

And one hand, maybe on something stable, like I would suggest the word of God, something stable to bring into that situation to help them both float to safety. Now, it doesn't mean that the first answer is that when you see somebody suffering, you go, Bible, smack.

That's not what I'm saying. Not saying that at all. I know how to save you here. Hold the Bible as they're drowning. I don't know, that's not the answer. You do want to feel with them. Compassion does feel, sympathy does feel, but not only that, there's more to it.

God will affirm our affliction. He will agree that our predicament is perilous. He will confirm that our day in and day out is monotonous. That 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, 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. 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.

And he is faithful to remind us, and that's our second movement toward realigning in worship, to remember his past promises, verses four and five. He comes in, he feels with them, he helps them assess.

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

Yet now be strong, Zerubbabel. Be strong, Joshua. Be strong, all you people of the land. Declares the Lord, declares the Lord, declares the Lord of hosts. He's speaking. He reminds them. Be strong, be strong, be strong.

And then he commands them to work. He commands them to work, even as he reminds them of a promise he issued to them just about a month ago in the course of history. He reminded them through Haggai, I am with you.

He's already said that at the start. Really, about two months ago, he said, I'm with you. Go handle this because I am for you is another way that could be translated. I'm on your team, I'm here, I'm guiding, I'm directing, I'm empowering.

He is present with his people for strength and encouragement 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.

You see it there in, is it in verse five? Verse four. 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.

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

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 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. Those moments of, man, I just can't, I can't handle this. I'm gonna have to change something. He says, come along.

He comes along and says, remember, I am with you. I love you. I am for you. You can do this with my strength. God says, work because I am glad to be with you. I am present with strength, protection. I am present with hope and with help.

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

Look with me at verse five to see how clear this hope-filled reminder of the past is found here in the book of Haggai. He says, I will be with you. I, the commander of all the armies of heaven, that's what the word of hosts means.