God’s Promise to Zerubbabel (Haggai 2:20-23)

Good morning.

Good morning.

We're on.

Haggai’s Final Oracle and the Call to Holiness

Good to see each one this morning, invite you to open your Bibles back to the prophet Haggai as we wind up our study through this little prophecy. Before we look at these final few verses, let's commit our time to our Lord and ask his blessing on our study this morning.

Father, we do know it's a privilege and it's by your grace that we are even able to be here today to gather together to study your word. And we pray that you would accomplish every divine purpose that you have for us here today by your spirit, through your word.

And we just thank you for all you're doing in our lives. And we just thank you in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, last time, week number three, we looked at God's promise of future blessing that was in chapter two, verses 10 through 19.

And we saw the problem, which was unclean worship on the part of the Israelites who had returned to Judah. And then we saw the promise of undeserved blessing at the very end of chapter two, verse 19. So were there any questions or thoughts you had on what we looked at last time?

Okay.

How about page 10? How about some questions? We saw that holiness is not communicable, but uncleanness or defilement is. How can this principle be applied in our spiritual lives? Any thoughts on that?

Probably more ways than any of us could enumerate. And I only gave you two lines there, so certainly there's lots of principles here. Anybody have any thoughts on that? Okay. Number two. The above principles are applied by Yahweh to his people.

Can you identify defiled or unholy worship or doctrine in the broader church? We might call it Big Eva.

Care to name names?

Paul did in 1 Timothy 1 .20, and that should say 2 Timothy 2 .17 there in your notes because 1 Timothy 2 only has 15 verses. So if you chased that around this week, I'm sorry, should have been 2 Timothy 2 .17.

Can you identify defiled or unholy worship in the broader church of our day? And again, I only gave you two lines, and I know I've restricted your...

Okay.

1 Timothy 1 .20, Paul says, Hymenaeus and Alexander, he named names. You're also shy. You don't want to go on the record, I understand. But we are swimming in an ocean of apostasy nowadays, are we not?

And yeah, that would definitely be an example of unholy worship.

The above principles of holiness is not communicable, but uncleanness or defilement is, are applied by Yahweh to his people in chapter 2. You remember he said, after those two questions to the priest, Haggai answered and said, so it is with this people and with this nation before me, declares the Lord.

And so with every work of their hands and what they offer there is unclean. And we went back to Ezra and we saw that the first thing they did when they got back into Judah was not rebuild the temple, which is why they came back and why Cyrus sent them back, but they got busy making the sacrificial system again.

And we were basically noted that it was, they got busy with external religious ritual and neglected the internal spiritual reality that should have been there. That's kind of the basic dichotomy. And there was nothing wrong with what they did.

This was prescribed by law, but they neglected the best for that which was merely good. You can see that all through contemporary evangelical churches, ministries, much of what they do. Very good. All of that stuff is good.

But if you neglect the priorities of the word of God, the proclamation of the word of God, as we are commanded to do, preach the word, Paul told Timothy, that's a forceful command and to teach sound doctrine in churches.

If you neglect that for more, as many would say, practical things, all good things. Maybe they have food banks, maybe they have help ministries. And usually those churches have all these different ministries set up.

They call them target ministries because when somebody comes in the church, they can immediately plug them in and they get them busy doing things. And yet you can go to a church like that for months or even years and not hear anything concerning your internal spiritual condition.

And I think that's what, yeah, yeah, yeah, Brian.

And that would just be the starting point. Yeah, he's just, and it was Romans 15, Romans 15, 16 verses 17 and 18. The idea that the command by Paul to note factious or divisive people in the church. And the reason is they are leading the people astray with false doctrine and that type of.

Thing.

And that's exactly what God through Haggai is rebuking the returned Israelites for. No matter what they did, it was tainted with the sin of disobedience. And my point here in saying care to name names, I don't have a list.

I mean, only what I kind of see and observe like you, but Paul did name names and he specified like Alexander the coppersmith did me much harm. But then what did he do? He didn't say, and I'm going to get a baseball bat.

And of course, they didn't have baseball back then, but he didn't take the name of. He didn't take the vengeance on himself. He named him and he urged Timothy who was pastoring churches or working with churches avoid such a one.

And then he let it go at that. He turned them over to God, but he still named them and he pointed out what they were doing wrong, much like he did in Romans there.

Okay.

I think that's an important principle. There's not just a doctrinal issue here. There's also a pastoral issue and all sound doctrine is also pastoral. Is it not?

Okay.

Number three, if the Jewish exiles responded to Haggai's first oracle favorably and they did return to work on the temple and enjoyed the presence of Yahweh. How was it that they still had to endure the chastening of God for past sins?

Can you state a principle based on scripture that expresses this truth? Consequences for sin.

Okay.

So a full statement might be obedience may not, obedience today may not guarantee that there will not be consequences for past sin. Anybody else have a thought on that? I kept thinking of the thief on the cross.

He was justly condemned and nailed to that cross for being a thief, right? And yet he came to Christ before he died. The other thief didn't, but he did and we know that because Christ said, you will be with me this day in paradise.

And yet he still died the death of a thief hanging on that cross. And so that's just one example and you can certainly think of more. In his grace and in his providence, God may mitigate the effects of a lifestyle lived that might have been detrimental in some way, shape or form physically and that person comes to Christ, but they may not be fully healed of everything, right?

We know that. But that would be in the providential working of God as to whether or not he does that. So obedience now may not stop the consequences for past sin. It guarantees salvation, but it does not guarantee other things that are oftentimes promised by some of the false teachers that we were just talking about up in 2 and 3.

Well then number 4, how is the sovereignty of God seen in the details of how he deals with the Jews? It gets down kind of granular, right? Down as to how much food do you have or how much grain do you have in that pile of grain?

So can you think of any other ways the sovereignty of God is seen in how he dealt with the Jews or with anybody? He is sovereign, of course. And that was one of the lessons they had to learn that even the weather patterns are controlled.

By God.

The weather patterns that control how much crops they have and how much food they eat. And then number 5, the promise of Yahweh in 19b is an example of his pure, he says, I will, from this day on, I will bless you.

When God blesses us, is that a trophy for us, pat on the back? That's pure what? Grace. That's what we're looking for there. And his faithfulness and his power to accomplish what he has promised he will do.

Well, then I think you mentioned 1 Samuel here, here at the bottom. This is directed to Saul, maybe one of the more famous verses from a well-known verses from 1 Samuel. But this really captures it. Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of.

The Lord?

Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice and to listen than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of divination and presumption is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has also rejected you for being king.

This is a great passage if someone says, well, I'm just disobeying, it's not a big deal. Well, rebellion is as a sin of divination. I mean, something that you think might be something good that you're doing, but you're actually in rebellion against God, God calls it divination because of your disobedience.

Okay, that was week three. Any other thoughts? Yeah, Mike.

King James.

Witchcraft. Witchcraft.

Can you explain that?

I think that's a pretty good, yeah, I would say, yeah. I mean, divination might be a little more of a polite, a little politer. Sometimes we run across polite translations, you know, but yeah, divination or it's witchcraft.

It's like that. It doesn't say it is that. It's a simile. It says it's like that, and it's how bad it is. Okay, well, now let's turn to page 11 in your notes, and we're into the last oracle of Haggai.

God’s Promise to Zerubbabel and the Coming Judgment

God's promise to Zerubbabel. This is verses 20 and 23, and I'm just going to read through it since it's only four verses. The word of the Lord came a second time to Haggai on the 24th day of the month.

Speak to Zerubbabel, governor of Judah, saying, I'm about to shake the heavens and the earth and to overthrow the throne of kingdoms. I'm about to destroy the strength of the kingdoms and the nations and overthrow the chariots and their riders, and the horses and their riders shall go down, every one by the sword of his brother.

On that day, declares the Lord of hosts, I will take you, O Zerubbabel, my servant, the son of Shealtiel, declares the Lord, and make you like a signet ring, for I have chosen you, declares the Lord of hosts.

Now I wanted to, before we look at these four verses, since it's a fairly short section, to talk a little bit about this chart here. I don't know if you have it with you, but possible time chart, and it's possible, I want to reiterate, just possible, okay?

This was not designed to be definitive, but simply to try to put down on paper what I thought was something that we could see. And really we're talking about hermeneutics here, we're talking a little bit about how do you interpret the word of God.

And when you run across passages like this, oftentimes you will find people that will take this, a date like this 70-year date that we see here, and I did run across that in some of my reading and studying, and a whole lot of other commentators are commentating on the people that do not take this as actually 70 years.

They can't quite reconcile the dates with a starting date and a stop date, and so they simply say, well, you can't take that literally. You have to take that in a non-literal way. It doesn't really mean 70 years, it means something other than 70 years.

Well, the problem with that is they don't tell you, well, it means 72 years, and then prove it from Scripture. Or they don't say it means 68, and then prove that from Scripture. They simply, I'm going to just call it a cop-out and say it's indefinite.

It's indefinite. Well, what do you do with that, right? And I don't think that's adequate for a way to deal with the word of God. Numbers are words. Numbers are words, and these words are God's words, and all of God's words are God-breathed and profitable, we know from the New Testament, and so are these.

And so, not only that, numbers are generally in a place in the Scriptures where they modify other words, 70 years, three days and three nights, our Lord said. Or the famous thousand years from Revelation chapter 20.

And when those words are in syntactic relationship like that, you have to understand them in relationship that they are in the sentence, as God has put them there that way, okay? In other words, if you say 70 years doesn't mean 70 years, well, maybe years doesn't mean.

Years.

Maybe it's 70 orange orchards or something. Now those folks would say, what are you talking about? How can you say that? Well, if it's an indefinite number, or if it's indefinite, maybe it's an indefinite number of vineyards.

They would say to me, what are you talking about? Look at the text. What does the text say? And I'm going to say, no, no, we've already moved way beyond going by what the text says. According to you, it's not, we don't take it for what it says, okay?

So you see, you have a real problem interpretively there with their consistency and trying to understand what they say. So I ran across an article, it's on the bottom of page three there, it's Dr. Talbert.

He was basically dealing with the same thing. You know, is 70 really 70? And so I read through his article, and he basically approached it from a couple of ways in his understanding of it, and I think he's right on with it.

Basically, if you can't fit the timing together, one of the things may be you're starting at a different point in time, and then ending at a different point in time. If you start with 586, and then end it the night of the handwriting on the wall, when the Babylonian Empire came to an end in 539, you get about 47 years, okay?

And so basically, he walked through these various aspects of the 70 years. And also, remember that the Jews don't reckon time exactly like we do. Any part of a day is considered a day, and any part of a year is considered a year.

So there's a difference there as well. So I just wanted to, for the sake of seeing if I could sort of illustrate it, chart it, and certainly you can see that the 70 years can easily fit into the information we have in Scripture.

You can take it for what it says, okay? And I just wanted to point out, I didn't know if anybody had worked through this timeline on page two, but remember in Haggai, at the end of, in that last section we looked at, he specifically notes the date at the end of 19.

From this day on, I will bless you. And so this writer, Mr. J. Sidlow Baxter, back in 1960, he figured this all out from that date, calculated it all out, and he calculated it out down to the day, he says here.

So I haven't personally worked through that, but I thought that should be included in the mix here, and if you're really good with a computer or calculator, you can work that out. What I did want to look at real quick, though, was if you have your Bibles, turn to Jeremiah chapter 25.

We're going to get back to Haggai here, but Jeremiah 25, Jeremiah is prophesying, he's banging away at the nation of Judah, he prophesies their sin, he predicts their captivity, and he also predicts their return.

But in Jeremiah 25, this is 605 BC, we know that because it's the first year of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, and he gives this condemnation of their sin in part, but when you get down to verse nine, he says, behold, I will send for all the tribes of the north, declares the Lord, and for Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, my servant, and I will bring them against the land and its inhabitants and against all these surrounding nations, I will devote them to destruction and make them a horror, a hissing, and an everlasting desolation.

Moreover, I will banish from them the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the grinding of the millstone and the light of the lamp. And then, verse 11, this whole land shall become a ruin and a waste, and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon 70 years.

Then after 70 years are completed, I will punish the king of Babylon and that nation. That's a prophecy of Daniel chapter five, and that night that he is going to punish that nation. Now, if you look at Jeremiah 29, I mentioned to one of the fellows earlier that I've spent more time in Jeremiah and the study of Haggai than I have in Haggai, but it's background and I think it's very helpful.

So in chapter 29, now we're up to 597 BC, and here's what I find absolutely fascinating. Verse one of 29, these are the words of the letter that Jeremiah the prophet sent from Jerusalem to the surviving elders of the exiles.

Remember, there had been a series of deportations up to Babylon, 900 plus miles away. Two of the people that were there were the prophets, Daniel and Ezekiel.

They're up there.

So a letter is written to the priest, the prophets, and all the people whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. And he just talks about how the letter got there. So they're getting the prophecy of Jeremiah up there in Babylon.

Now look at verse 10, for thus says the Lord, when 70 years are completed for, and it could also be at Babylon, I will visit you and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. And here's that famous T-shirt, for I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil to give you a future and a hope.

Now verse 12, then you will call upon me and come and pray to me and I will hear you.

Okay?

Got that? Now, let's look at Daniel chapter five. Daniel's up in Babylon. He's been there since at least 605. And when you look at Daniel chapter five, you're 70 years ahead, all the way to 539.

Okay?

So Daniel chapter five, it's the famous passage of the feast, the pagan feast, where they're using the chalices of the temple of Jerusalem to get drunk and to have their pagan orgy feast. King Belshazzar made a great feast for a thousand of his lords and drank wine in front of the thousand.

Belshazzar, when he tasted the wine, commanded that the vessels of gold and silver that Nebuchadnezzar, his father, had taken out of the temple in Jerusalem be brought that the king and his lords, his wives, and his concubines might drink from them.

So this is all going on. And the handwriting on the wall occurs. Now look at verse 26. They called Daniel to interpret it because their own magicians can't figure it out. Look what he says. Now Daniel, remember, he received the letter and he understands the prophecy from Jeremiah.

But here's what the handwriting on the wall says. Verse 26 of chapter five. This is the interpretation of the matter. Mene, God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end. Tekel, you have been weighed in the balances and been found wanting.

Peres, your kingdom is divided, given to the Medes and the Persians. Then Belshazzar gave the command and Daniel was clothed with purple, a chain of gold was put around his neck, and a proclamation was made about him that he should be the third ruler in the kingdom.

That very night, okay, God's timing is precise and he knows what he's talking about when he tells people these things. That very night, Belshazzar the Chaldean king was killed and Darius the Mede received the kingdom being about 62 years old.

That very night, the entire city of Babylon went down in one night, which is incredibly unusual because as we mentioned, I think, last time, the way they did it was they stopped up the Euphrates River, which ran underneath a big gate through the town.

And when that river dropped down, they just swarmed up the middle of that river and they were right in town. They took that city from the inside out in one night, just like that. What did God say? You've been numbered, your days are numbered, and this is it, it's over.

That's in fulfillment of Jeremiah's prophecy. But here's also what's interesting. Now look at Daniel chapter nine. Daniel chapter nine, we also have a time stamp that tells you this is exactly that same year.

In the first year of Darius, the son of Ahasuerus, by descent a Mede who was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans, in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, perceived in the books the number of years that according to the word of the Lord to Jeremiah the prophet must pass before the end of the desolations of Jerusalem, namely 70 years.

So when it comes to interpretation, we get our rules of interpretation from Scripture. Scripture comes with its own rules of interpretation. And one of them is how did the prophets interpret the word of God?

Be a good example for us to follow, whether we want to take it literally or not. You can add to that, we won't do that today, but how did the apostles interpret it? How did Jesus interpret the Old Testament?

The Bible comes with its own rules of interpretation. It's not for us to try to figure out what our interpretation is going to be and then impose it upon it. But how did Daniel interpret Jeremiah's prophecy that was sent to him by letter that he is reading?

Very literally, right? And he recognized it for what it is. According to the word of the Lord to Jeremiah the prophet must pass before the end of desolations of Jerusalem, namely 70 years. Now, going back to chapter 29 of Jeremiah, you remember what else it said?

What's going to happen right when Babylon falls? Part of the t-shirt thing. What are you going to do?

Pray.

He said, you will pray. It's the very next thing Daniel does. He knows we're going back. We're going back to Jerusalem. 70 years are over. Babylon has been destroyed. We're going to head back, but we're not ready to go back.

We're not ready to go back and resume the worship of Yahweh yet. Then I turned my face to the Lord God, seeking him by prayer and please for mercy with fasting and sackcloth and ashes.

I prayed.

And then what follows is this long, beautiful prayer of repentance on the part of the people. And there you have not only the fulfillment of Jeremiah's prophecy, but you also have a picture of the sovereignty of God who calls him back, who tells him he's going to do that, but you also have the responsibility of man to pray, right?

He just read in the prophecy, we're going back. But he doesn't say, get packed up, let's go. He still prays and calls his people to repentance. So there's much more we could do with that. There's lots of parts and pieces to this puzzle, but I think that's probably enough for now.

Do you have any thoughts or comments on that? Indefinite, it's an indefinite period of time, that kind of thing. That's probably the most common. It does not fit their theology. They have a presupposed theological system that they are using as a hermeneutic and nothing gets through it but their system.

Instead of exegeting the text and adjusting their theology, they have a preexisting theology and they impose it on the text. That's how it happens. They're good people. They're smart people. They're not stupid.

They're highly educated, very smart people, but they have a preexisting system. And when you do that, and you can do that with any system. Anybody can do that. You have to be very careful and you have to let each text make its contribution to your system.

You're done talking with them then. I would be. I mean, once you get to there.

I mean, if they don't, there's nothing you can say that's going to make them accept it.

You talk about, think those cowboys will get into the coach? I don't know. Maybe they will. Because you bump up against that and it's, where do you go?

Okay.

Anybody else have any thoughts on that? Interpretation is very, very important. It's critical. It's going to determine everything you think about the Word of God. It really will. Well, let's spend the rest of our time looking at these last several verses in Haggai that I just read through.

The first thing, once again, we're going to see the promise of judgment. The Word of Yahweh came to Haggai a second time. And very interestingly, it's the second time on that, on the same day. So there's four oracles and the last two are both given on the same day, as in, same as in verse 10.

But this time, in comparison to the other three, it's very narrowly directed to Zerubbabel.

Okay.

This is, this is really important to see. In all of the vast movement of nations and warfare and temples up and down in the whole nine yards, there's something very important going on here. And that is God is preserving and protecting the seed line of the Messianic seed line, the Davidic line, as he promised in the Abrahamic covenant, that there would be a seed line.

And so what he says is directed directly to Zerubbabel alone, which indicates that this message is a Messianic or a royal prediction. Your two blanks there, alone, and it is a royal prediction. Pardon me.

Right.

It's Messianic. Zerubbabel is important, but he's the governor, he's the civil governor. And in that regard, he's somewhat of a picture of Christ, but he is certainly not Messianic in any way other than he's in the seed line, as we're going to see.

And then, like verse six, future universal divine judgment is pictured here. This is reminiscent of what he said before. I'm about to shake the heavens and the earth and to overthrow the throne of kingdoms.

I'm about to destroy the strength of the kingdoms of the nations and overthrow the chariots and riders and the horses and their riders shall go down, every one by the sword of his brother. Universal divine judgment with that massive earthquake that's going to take place.

Revelation 16, 18, you find the bold judgments being poured out on the earth. And it says that a great earthquake, such as there had never been since man was on the earth, so great was that earthquake.

Earthquakes happen now, they happen all the time. Some of them extremely severe and damaging and take a lot of life. But when that happens, it's going to be absolutely cataclysmic. That's what he's talking about.

So we're looking into the future here. This is eschatological from Zerubbabel's perspective. And it's also from our perspective as well. This has not happened yet. So it is in the future. It will also include, it will be universal divine judgment, and it will include the overthrow of the throne.

This is singular in Hebrew. Some of your translations may have plural, the thrones of kingdoms. It's actually singular. And it may be, I don't think I would arm wrestle anybody over this, but it may be a reference to a single throne in control of multiple kingdoms, which very well could happen in the future.

Remember when Satan tempted Christ, one of the things he tempted him with was, I'll give you all the kingdoms.

Now, it could have been lying,.

But we also know that Satan is the god of this evil age. He's the prince of the power of the air and so on. Also, Revelation 16 .10 might be a reference to look at as well. But he's going to overthrow these kingdoms, and these kingdoms are apparently Gentile kingdoms.

There will be a cataclysmic judgment, including the earthquake and so on. And then we have the promise of Messiah. This is where it all culminates. This is really where it all points, 2 .23. On that day, declares the Lord of hosts, I will take you, O Zerubbabel, my servant, the son of Shealtiel, declares the Lord, and make you like a signet ring, for I have chosen you, declares the Lord of hosts.

He will make you like a signet ring because what he's doing is he's looking at Zerubbabel. He's actually looking at the entire line of people. This is pretty common in Hebrew thought and the way they saw things.

You know, they could look at a man, and when you look at that man, you could talk about his generations were in his loins, so to speak. Abraham is spoken of that way. So this is a look into the future.

Zerubbabel is his servant, and he's also been chosen by God to be a part of this seed line. The signet ring was the symbol of divine election and authority. It was even used by kings and people to transact business.

It could be worn on the hand. It could also be worn around the neck on a string. The fourth and final oracle prophesied the future judgment and destruction of the Gentile nations that even in Haggai's day were occupying the land.

And the signet ring is the symbol of divine election and authority. It had been removed from Zerubbabel's grandfather Jehoiachin, in other words, his right to be any kind of a ruler because of his sin and perverse leadership of God's people.

Let's go back to Jeremiah 22 -24, and we're going to see this curse. We talked before about how there was all these kings ruling, and most of them were wicked. They were evil. They rebelled against God.

They led God's people away from God through idolatry and so on. But in Jeremiah 22, starting in verse 24, we have God's condemnation of this man named Coniah. He started out being, you can see him named as Jehoiachin or even as Jeconiah.

But in verse 24 of Jeremiah 22, it says, "'As I live,' declares the Lord, "'though Coniah, the son of Jehoiachin, king of Judah, "'were the signet ring on my right hand, "'yet I would tear you off and give you "'into the hand of those who seek your life, "'into the hand of those of whom you are afraid, "'even into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, "'and into the hand of the Chaldeans.'".

And that's exactly what happened. And notice he went from being Jehoiachin or Jeconiah to just simply Coniah. Names are important in the Bible. God took his name off the front end of his name. Yahweh was no longer part of his name because he was now going to be condemned.

He's under a curse. And not only him, but his entire progeny. Here's where it gets very interesting. Look at verse 30. "'Thus says the Lord, "'Write this man down as childless, "'a man who shall not succeed in his days, "'for none of his offspring shall succeed "'in sitting on the throne of David "'and ruling again in Judah.'".

Well, that creates a problem because this man is in the seed line of Messiah. So how in the world is his descendant going to be qualified to be the king of Israel, Messiah, when he's under a curse? All of his descendants will be.