Consider Your Ways

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Don Filcek; Haggai 1:1-11 Consider Your Ways

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And good morning, welcome to Recast Church. I'm Don Felsick, I'm the lead pastor here, and I'm really glad to be back after a couple of weeks of summer vacation.
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Actually, it's been a little sketchy. Those of you that have been attending here regularly notice that I've been out for,
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I think, three of five weeks recently, but I'm eager to be back here. I really do feel a sense of belonging here, like this is where I should be.
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And whenever I'm away, I get a chance to visit other churches, and I always miss you guys. I really miss
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Dave when I'm away, and so I just really appreciate you guys, and I'm just glad to be back.
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Some of you may be curious about noticing that we've shifted gears a little bit here this morning, and we're gonna be shifting gears for the month of August, so it might be curious to you.
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Wait, Don, weren't we in 1 Corinthians, and then all of a sudden, whiplash, we're gonna be talking about the
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Old Testament book of Haggai, however you pronounce that. I say Haggai, usually, and then
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I've been corrected a couple of times, and here we are, Haggai. And I was told by somebody this week, if you just say it with confidence, nobody questions you, except when they do, so there's that, but Haggai.
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And we're gonna be in that for the next four weeks. There's a rhyme to that, there's a reason for that. You might go like,
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Don, 1 Corinthians, I was enjoying that series, I wanna keep going. We are gonna pick that back up in September, but over the next four weeks, we have all of the littles with us, kindergarten through fifth grade, are in here with us to give those teachers a break back there, just kinda take the month of August, let the kids be in here and worship together with us as we kinda march toward the busyness of September and all of that, even going to two services in September.
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But the content, if you wanna take a moment sometime this week and read 1
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Corinthians 6 and 7, that's where we are in the book, that was like, whoa, wait a minute, we wanna talk about that with everybody in here?
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I don't think so, so we're gonna do Haggai. And if you read that, you'll actually be thankful after the fact, so maybe you're not so much right now and then go back and read that and go like, oh, that would've been kinda rough to talk about with kindergarten through fifth grade in here with us.
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But to be honest, Mike, I've got a pretty strong commitment and I think those of you that have been around for a while, those of you who know me more personally,
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I've got a really strong commitment to the 66 books of the Bible as God's holy word. And that makes me comfortable, just grabbing a book and saying, let's go through this one next.
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And especially, like, if it fits. I was with a pastor friend this past, a couple weeks ago, and I said, oh man,
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I've got this conundrum, I've got all the kids in there, 1 Corinthians 6, it's gonna be a bit rough, I've got four weeks that I need to do something with.
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And he said, well, I did a series in Haggai and it only took me four weeks, it's two chapters. And I said, oh, let me try that.
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I didn't realize how much it could potentially come off in the wrong direction as a church that's considering expanding our facility a little bit.
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We are at a point in our church history where tonight we're gonna talk a little bit about expansion plans, going to two services in September, all of that kind of stuff.
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And the goal of eventually building, maybe knocking this wall out and expanding out that way, adding some classroom space.
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And so it could look like a book about the building of the temple could kind of be misunderstood as that's what
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I'm trying to do. So I wanna be clear about two things this morning as I kind of introduce this book to us.
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The first is that I didn't pick this passage in order to spiritualize its content and make it all about expanding our facility, despite the fact that we do indeed hope to expand our facility and many pastors will use
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Haggai as a church building, church expanding project kind of book. But that leads into the second thing
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I wanna make clear to us, and it's even more important. This text is not written so that pastors have a passage to preach when they're hoping to expand the facility.
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The theme of our text and the theme of this book is about realigning our priorities toward the worship of God.
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Full stop, that's what we're gonna be talking about. The realigning of our priorities toward the worship of God. It's not a passage that's merely about giving or merely about building, this is a passage about considering the place that God has in our day -to -day lives.
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Not just here in the gathering, but in the way that we live and move and do the things that we do.
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Worship being more than singing songs, more than just the things that we do here on Sunday morning, but worship being the everything of our lives given over to God.
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So the setting for our text is the people of God living in opulence while neglecting the central worship of God.
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And they're experiencing misery while having their material needs met. Let me say that again, they're experiencing misery while having all of their material needs met.
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And the fundamental call of this text will ring out loud and clear to us as God's people.
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Consider your ways, that's the title of the message this morning, consider your ways. Peace and joy and gladness are found in a life of seeking the pleasure and glory of God.
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The life that is seeking its own pleasure and its own glory is a small and insular life of dissatisfaction and constant hungering for more and more.
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But it is as we seek his glory, as we seek his pleasure, as we live for that which is more than us, that's where joy and gladness and thankfulness and peace and hope and purpose begin to settle on our lives.
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And so our text this morning is a very contemporary message considering it was written a bit over 2 ,500 years ago.
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We know very well and actually it's very refined. Those who do numbers like I don't, those who are able to kind of delineate between the solar calendar and the lunar calendar and study history and dates and documents and all of that stuff, we can get this really, really down to a pretty precise date like as in August 29th of 520
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BC is when the opener of our verse one is here.
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So let's open up to Haggai verse one, chapter one, verse one through 11 and let's let the ancient text speak so clearly into our contemporary moment.
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He wants to talk to us here 2 ,500 years later through the prophet Haggai. So I'll give you a chance to get there and we will read this
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God's holy and precious word, church. This is what he desires for us to hear this morning because this is spoken by God.
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Haggai one, verse one, in the second year of Darius the king, in the sixth month on the first day of the month, the word of the
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Lord came by the hand of Haggai the prophet to Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah and to Joshua, the son of Jehozadak, the high priest.
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Thus says the Lord of hosts, these people say the time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the
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Lord. Then the word of the Lord came by the hand of Haggai the prophet. Is it time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses while this house lies in ruins?
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Now, therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts, consider your ways. You have sown much and have harvested little.
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You eat, but you never have enough. You drink, but you never have your fill. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm.
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And he who earns wages does so to put them into a bag with holes. Thus says the
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Lord of hosts, consider your ways. Go up to the hills and bring wood and build the house that I may take pleasure in it.
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And then I may be glorified, says the Lord. You look for much and behold, it came to little.
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And when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why, declares the
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Lord of hosts, because of my house that lies in ruins while each of you busies himself with his own house.
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Therefore, the heavens above you have withheld the dew and the earth has withheld its produce. And I have called for a drought on the land and the hills on the grain, the new wine, the oil, and on what the ground brings forth on man and beast and on all their labors.
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Let's pray as the band comes to lead us in worship. Father, I pray that you would use this ancient document to realign our priorities.
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We have so many things that grab and war for our attention, for our time, for our resources, for our energy.
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And I believe that many of us in this room could testify to a dissatisfaction in our hearts that we can't quite pinpoint.
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We can't quite tell where it's coming from, but it seems as though we have plenty to eat. It seems as though we have warmth in the winter and cool air in the summer.
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We have vehicles and iPhones and family and people to reach out to if we want to.
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We have so many resources around us, and yet there's a dissatisfaction that grows. Particularly in our culture, we see this.
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And it's as if Haggai would seek to speak, or though you would seek to speak through this ancient document to write where we live here in America in 2023.
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So Father, I pray that you would press on us the thing that is most needful for our souls, which is what we're about to do in singing.
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We're about to praise your name. We're about to lift you up and exalt you, and that in the exalting of you, not just in song, not just in this gathering, not just here today, certainly in those things, but in the way we drive, in the way we work, in the way we love, in the way we relate to others,
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Father, that in all of these things, we have the opportunity to identify you as most, you as highest, you as permeating all of these things, all of our strength, all of our energy, and everything focused to you, so that in lifting you up, we find the very purpose for which we were created.
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We find joy, we find gladness, we find hope, we find help in worship to you alone who are worthy.
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So Father, I pray that that would fuel us even as we have an opportunity to sing this morning, but even more so as we have an opportunity to leave this place and do all of these things for your glory and honor.
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All that we do, all that we are, for you and you alone, in Jesus' name, amen.
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All right, go ahead and be seated, and you can reopen your Bibles or your devices to Haggai chapter one, verses one through 11.
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If at any time during the message, you need to get up and get more coffee, or juice, or donuts, take advantage of that. If you already had too much coffee, the bathrooms are down the hallway on the left -hand side if you need that, too, those are there for you.
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But you're not gonna distract me if you need to get up at all during the message. Our goal in the remainder of our time is gonna be to hear from God, and that's what we're trying to do, not just hear my voice, but to see the things that God has said here.
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I'm trying to explain that, bring it into our context, and explain how this text has hit me. And I just wanna start off with a question.
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Do you know what it means, do you know what it means, or have you experienced what it means to have plenty of good without the good life?
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To have satisfactory provisions without being satisfied? To have plenty of content without contentment?
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I think it's quite possible that the Spirit through Haggai wants to speak very directly to us this morning, to us here in this gathering.
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I wanna encourage any of you who love history and enjoy backgrounds to read the history and the introduction to this book, the book of Haggai, in the
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ESV Study Bible. If you don't have one of those, I highly recommend it to you. We actually have copies of that out at the welcome table that anybody wants to take, you can for a suggested donation there.
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But if you don't have a Bible, take one of those with you today. But I really like the introduction and what it has to say there for the different books, and some of the maps and charts and stuff in there are very valuable.
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When I was a kid, that's what I loved, was the maps and charts. Anybody ever kind of like when you were literally just kind of going back and forth over there?
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But it got me looking at the Bible, that was kind of cool. But I think sometimes history lessons,
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I could talk a lot about the history of Haggai. We could almost never get to the content today by just talking and catching up with the things that have gone on that lead us to the opener of this book.
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But I think sometimes the history lessons can take us down rabbit trails that kind of detract from the main points of the text itself.
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You see, this is indeed an ancient text, and we could talk about that ancient context all day, but it's a very contemporary problem that we must get to.
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It's a very contemporary problem in an ancient text. The Jews, I mean, I'll give you a little of the history, but this is gonna be a thumbnail sketch of what's going on so that you have at least the bare bones to be able to understand what's going on here in the text.
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The Jews have been coming back in waves after being exiled in Babylon. There's a lot of history about how they got exiled and all of that, but God is restoring them to the land.
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After the temple had been destroyed, the walls were torn down around Jerusalem, and the king and his family were carted off to Babylon around 586
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BC. Yeah, I just set a date, and some of you just zoned out because I set a date, and you're like, is this on the test? It's not gonna be a test, so don't worry about that.
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But 60 years has passed now since Jerusalem has been destroyed, since Judah has fallen, and Babylon has been now conquered by the
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Persians. So the ones who conquered Israel have now been conquered themselves, and the Persians have come down and descended on them.
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And one of the Persian kings has issued an edict that's allowing those who were conquered by Babylon, many of those peoples, to go back and resettle their lands, go back and rebuild their cities, go back and particularly even worship their gods.
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So 20 years prior to Haggai chapter one, verse one, 20 years prior to this, a first wave of Jews came back into Jerusalem under a dude, you would recognize his name, you should recognize his name, it's
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Ezra and his compatriot Nehemiah. Ezra, the one tasked to help rebuild the temple,
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Nehemiah, the one retasked to help build the walls of Jerusalem. And they had the express purpose, they were put back into the land with the express purpose of rebuilding that temple, reestablishing the worship of God there in that place, and they got as far as the foundation of the temple and they stopped.
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And the text here is gonna give us some indication why they stopped, they got caught up in other pursuits, they found the busyness of taking care of themselves to start to get in the way.
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Anybody that would just raise your hand and say, I think I know where this is going, I think I can start to see it, the busyness of life and the pressures of taking care of numero uno are starting to get in the way of the things that God has told his people to do here in this text.
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Contemporary problem, how many of you would raise your hand and say, sounds like a contemporary problem to me. It is. That might be a different scenario, might be a different situation, obviously we're not tasked with the building of a temple, that's not our task, but the worship of God is indeed on us.
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So I'm summarizing a lot of history here, but it's amazing that in verse one, we're able to narrow down the content,
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I mean the context, to the fall of 520 B .C., that's what's going on here.
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This is a real historical account. Verse one references August of 520, and again when you start translating from their lunar calendar, they followed the moon, we follow the sun in our calendar, you end up with a date of August 29th referenced in verse one,
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August 29th of 520 B .C., before Christ was born. And chapter two, verse eight, is the last date given in this book, and I'll share that here at the start, it's gonna be a date in December of 520
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B .C., so all of this happens in the autumn of 520 B .C. Now we're reading a document that took place in a real location a bit over 2 ,500 years ago, and that's amazing.
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When you think about how we're able to understand it, we're able to translate it, we're able to get it in our language, and we're able to understand the very things that Haggai wrote.
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And here's the rough outline of what he says in our text this morning, rough outline if you're taking notes. The first is neglecting worship, verses one through four.
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He's gonna define that and explain that, the neglecting of worship, verses one through four. The second is a call to return to worship, verses five through eight.
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And the third is the consequences for neglecting worship, verses nine through 11. So neglecting worship, a call to return to worship, and the consequences for neglecting it.
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And so we'll start right here at the beginning in verse one with the neglecting of worship. Verse one introduces us to the context.
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I've already kind of covered that a little bit, but Haggai has been given the word of the Lord to share with the
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Jewish governor of Judah and the high priest over the people.
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Verse one establishes this book as revelation from God, and not only does it give us the date and the context and all of that, but it says this is from God.
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It was delivered through the prophet Haggai, from his hand, given to the individuals, obviously then therefore a written document, but it deserves our attention and for our understanding of who
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God is. It's worthy of our attention because it even declares to be
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God's word and it has the power to transform us from the inside out. Understanding who God is, what God says, and what he desires is the purpose of this book.
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In verse two, he jumps right into the neglect of worship on the part of his people. The title that God uses in verse two for himself, you can look at it there, thus says the
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Lord of hosts. It's a significant title that God gives to himself here as he begins to talk about the neglect of his worship.
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It speaks directly, this title speaks directly into a tumultuous time of clashing civilizations.
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Okay, well, I mean civilizations, but not necessarily sports.
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Oh, that was supposed to be funny, you guys, but it's just, everybody's like, I don't get it. Okay, it's not fall yet,
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I don't know. Clashing civilizations, more like, think
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Babylon has conquered Israel, okay? So Babylon conquers Israel, then
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Babylon themselves are conquered by a northern group of people, military minded, called Persia, then
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Persia sweeps all the way across Israel and conquers Egypt, and then Egypt is in the middle of fighting back against Persia.
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All of these massive clashes of armies, and God says, I am the
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Lord of hosts. Now, you're going, whoa, he said that? He called himself that?
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No, it doesn't really rest on us the way it would have in their time and in their era, where they're observing all of these cataclysmic things going on around them, and who's gonna conquer us next, and who's gonna own us?
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He's the Lord of hosts. He is the almighty captain of the armies of heaven, is what that phrase means.
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Lord of hosts, the captain of the armies of heaven. It's a military word, hosts, the massive armies, and the legions, and all of the rank and file, and the cavalry, and all of them are under his charge, and many have even interpreted this as angel armies.
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There's a contemporary song that uses that phrase in it about the God of angel armies is on our side.
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That's referencing, it's a translation of this phrase here, Lord of hosts.
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He is more powerful than Babylon, church. That's what he's getting at when he identifies himself here as Lord of hosts, more powerful than Babylon, more powerful than Persia, than Egypt, than China, than Russia, than the
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United States of America. More powerful than any world power is our God, amen?
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That's to bring us encouragement right off the bat. Why worship this one?
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He's the Lord of hosts. He is over it all with full and supreme power.
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But his people have returned from exile under his grace, only to neglect what the
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Lord of hosts has asked of them. In Ezra 1 .3, so that you can see it with your own eyes,
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I think it's gonna be up here on the screen, you can jot that reference down. You don't need to turn over there, but it is helpful to see that they were given explicitly instructions to build the temple.
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Ezra 1 .3, under the decree of Cyrus, the king of Persia, God told the people this.
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Whoever is among you of all his people, may his God be with him and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and rebuild the house of the
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Lord, the God of Israel. He is the God who is in Jerusalem. This is a pagan king that God is using his voice to dictate scripture,
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Ezra, the book. And he's using him to say, go back to the land, rebuild the temple, and reestablish the worship of your
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God. This is the instructions that were given to the people. The purpose for their restoration to the land was the reestablishment of the worship of God in Israel.
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Yahweh, their God, sometimes pronounced Jehovah. What we need to understand in this context is that by putting off the building of the temple, putting that off means that they were rejecting the worship of God and the way that he had told them to worship.
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He's given them instructions. How many of you know how, it can be confusing in our minds, but you know the temple was a big deal in the
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Old Testament. How many, raise your hand if you knew that. The temple's a big deal in their understanding of worship and the things that God had given them to the covering of sin and the bringing forward of sacrifices and when you sin, go and bring a lamb and all of that stuff that was there in the
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Old Testament. I'm so glad we don't live in that Old Covenant now. My hands are not bloody this morning.
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I am not, you are not bringing your sacrifices to me, amen? I am so glad that we don't live in that era and that time.
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But in this sense, he's given them instructions. He said, go back to the worship of me and the way that I have set forth for you.
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And in this sense, they're neglecting of that. In this sense, it has some parallels to an increasing phenomenon of self -professed
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Christians in our era rejecting church. God has told us to gather in this new covenant.
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He has told us to come together in thick or thin, through difficulties, through relational strife, through hardship and pain and working and bearing with one another, but also through the joys and the gladness and the celebrating together in all of these things.
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God has told us to gather. What did he tell them? He told them to bring sacrifices to the temple, a temple that is not built, a temple that is just in ruin, a temple that is just a few rocks on top of each other, the foundation barely laid.
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And they say to God, not now, not now.
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We can worship you just fine without doing it your way. We've got this figured out. We've got the internet.
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We've got all kinds of ways we can worship you. We don't need the temple. We don't need to gather. We don't need the sacrifices.
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We've got our own methods. We've got our own ways of worshiping you. How in the world were they worshiping God in an old covenant way for those 20 years?
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Ask yourself that. Well, they weren't doing it God's way. They weren't doing it in the way that God had established for them on the old covenant.
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They weren't following the law. They weren't bringing any sacrifices forward. We're good without a temple.
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Or today, we're good without a local body. We're good without a gathering. The returning exiles are saying, this isn't a good time to rebuild yet.
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They acknowledge in verse two that it is, it is their responsibility by the word yet. Well, we know we're supposed to be doing it, but it's not good timing for us.
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But they've determined that this isn't, it's just not a good time. And it's, the work started over 20 years and 20 years ago and they're, not yet, not yet.
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Church, when is it a good time? When is it a good time to honor the Lord? Always, I like that answer.
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And I could even just add to that, maybe now. Whatever now is, whenever now is, whenever it's brought to your attention, that which you ought to offer to God, offer it to God now.
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And always and perpetually offering it to God. When is it a good time to honor the Lord?
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Always and now. When is it a good time to establish his worship and his praise in your life, in your family, in your work, in all of these things that we are given to do to bring glory and honor to our great
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God, in all things, in all times, to praise him. Today is a good day.
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Now is a good time. Verse three reemphasizes that God speaks out into this context.
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It's a reiteration of what's already been said. This is the word of Lord, came to Haggai. But it's reemphasizing it to put it in this context.
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In other words, it's at the point when the worship of God is on hold in Israel. It's at a point like that.
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And the people are going about their own business. And we're gonna see in a moment, they're building their own houses, they're tricking out their own digs and ignoring
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God in not worshiping him. And it's speaking into spiritual things.
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They are speaking into things that are their own spiritual opinions. There is no lack of opinions about the way to worship
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God. How about we get back into the word and see how he wants us to worship him. Ask yourself, on what basis do they say it isn't time to reestablish worship in Israel?
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It's not time to rebuild his house. Why are they saying that? These are real people, real humans.
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Can you imagine why they might be saying that? Well, the text is gonna explain that they're busy with their own houses.
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It's on the basis of their own opinions and feelings that they would say this, right? Not on the basis of scripture, not on the basis of what
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God has asked of them, not on the basis of what he wants of them, but on the basis of how they feel. Bit busy right now,
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God. But maybe this is a tough season for me, but maybe once we get past the crunch and we get back into school and things are a little bit better and I've got a little bit more pattern, then
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I'll praise you, then I'll worship you, then I'll stick to your word, then I'll gather with your people, then, then, then, no, now.
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Now is the day, now is the time. And man, oh man, does this feel like a contemporary indictment on us?
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Not you, us, me included. Are we not living in a culture full of doing, doing things our own way, only obeying convenient commands, disregarding any command that might call for sacrifice on our part, that might require us to give a little more of our resources, a little more of our time, a little more of our energy?
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God is faithful to deal with the real history of real people. I love that. Their wavering and commitment to the worship of God, so he in grace and in his kindness sends them a prophet to correct their error.
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He's kind of harsh. In verse four, the accusation is more pointed and we get a better picture of what's happening here.
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A simple rhetorical question, look at it with me. Verse four, is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses while this house lies in ruins?
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A simple rhetorical question makes clear that the people are in need of a radical realignment of their priorities.
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That's what we're talking about. We're not even, at the end of the day, this is not an application about building something. It's not even an application about giving something.
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It's an application about realigning our priorities toward the worship of God in all things. The question makes it clear that they're living in opulence while the temple lies in ruins.
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I say opulence, the word paneled, paneled houses has a little bit of debate over it, but the majority of scholars think that that word, because it's used in the, one of the only other times it's used in scripture, that specific word is in the temple,
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I mean, rather, the palace of Solomon. You talk about opulence.
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The only time we see paneled as an adjective for houses or for a dwelling is for the dwelling of the most wealthy king over all of Israel, potentially one of the most wealthy kings of the era and the time.
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And he lived in a paneled house, and now they are paneling their houses as well.
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Putting their comfort first while putting off the command of God to restore his place of worship.
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They are honoring themselves in comfort while the work of the temple can wait till tomorrow. And I said in the introduction, this is not a passage that directly correlates to a church building.
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Please, oh please, oh please, don't draw that connection because it's actually a relatively unhealthy, unhelpful connection.
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It's too little an application to think that we might walk away, and I would say this would be a small -minded application to this passage.
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How can I live in a house with clean carpet when the church has coffee stains everywhere, right? By the way,
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I see every coffee stain on that carpet as a badge of honor. It is used, amen?
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Like it is us. We're here, and we consume some caffeine. And in the consuming of that caffeine, we pay attention, and we hear from God, and God speaks to us and meets us here in this place.
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And so when I walk in here, and we're not here, by the way, it shows up a lot more when you're here alone. You walk through there, and it's like, whoa, there's some stains back here.
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And kudos to Bob who tries to work on those things. I mean, he's trying to get those stains out, and everybody give
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Bob a hand. I'm just so grateful. He does a great job cleaning this place. There he is, yeah.
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I did not plan that. Sorry to call you out, but I'm sure you don't mind. But, yeah, where was
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I? Stains on the carpet. How can my house, how can I pay such close attention and keep my place all clean, and then see that here and see the stains and stuff like that?
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Now, this is an issue of the priority of worship, not about a facility, not at all about a building.
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The temple served a role in the old covenant as the place. It's different now. Did you know that?
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It's different now. The temple had its purpose and fulfilled its time and its era, and it's done with, it's fulfilled in our
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Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. It served a role in the old covenant as the place where God was pleased to meet with his people.
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That's not here now. Now, does he meet us here? Yeah, and he also meets us on our morning run, and he meets us in our quiet time, and he meets me in my brown chair as I'm looking out on the woods in the morning.
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He meets me in all the, he meets guys in deer blinds. He meets women while they're together quilting.
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He meets us in our workplace. He meets us anywhere, amen? You don't have to travel anymore. Praise God.
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You don't have to travel to a building to meet God anymore. The temple is fulfilled in Christ, but in that time and in that era, it was essential because of the way that God had designed that old covenant with a central people, a nation, as a model for others, a model for what?
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What a model that we can't do it. Look, look at all the blessings that he heaped on them, and look at how they spurned him, how they pushed him aside, how they refused to build his house, how they refused to honor him, just like our hearts are prone to do.
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So it was a place where he met with his people. It was a place of atonement where sacrifices were made. It was the place of the gathering of the people, the place his very presence was together with his gathered people, a place that now in the new covenant is defined much better by a person, a place that is defined by a person,
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Jesus Christ, our greater temple. He is the greater eternal omnipresent presence of God with his people so that he meets us in all of those places at the same time.
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We need not pilgrimage to a place. Jesus told the woman at the well that a day was coming when people no longer have to travel to Jerusalem or go into Samaria up to the mountain of Gerizim to worship
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God or to make sacrifices, but they will worship wherever they are in spirit and in truth.
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In Christ, the location and the geography is wrapped up.
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We don't have to pilgrimage to a place any longer. Jesus is our better sacrifice.
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No longer repetitive, but finished. We don't need a place of sacrifice any longer.
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He did it once for all. Jesus forges our local gatherings in his name and he is as Colossians, as Paul writes in Colossians, he is the head of his church, head of his body, the church, that's us.
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He forges us, he leads us, he guides us. I'm merely an under -shepherd to the Lord Jesus Christ.
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He is the head of this church. The building is no longer his focus.
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Rather, his people are his focus. Whether they meet in a basement in Trestle Creek or a storefront or a cafeteria or a steel building, we are the new covenant temple of God church.
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It's a glorious thing that he is pleased to dwell in our gathering, pleased to dwell through his spirit in each heart that is his.
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So to apply this today has much more to do with the neglect of worshiping God in community and barely anything to do with the building.
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I say barely because we do a little bit worship God in part through stewardship and our building is a tool.
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It's a very expensive tool but I've said it's always just been a tool that he has been gracious to grant to us and so we do try to treat it well but we don't make it an idol.
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We don't make it something that has to be pristine. So to summarize the problem, the returning exiles have been neglecting worship for the cause of their own comfort.
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They have been sure to trick out their own digs while the central place of their worship lies in ruins.
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They have taken care of themselves first at the exclusion of worshiping God. I'm curious, have they learned anything from their exile?
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They were exiled in the first place because of neglect of the worship of God and here they're at it again. You see,
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God is to be central to his people and his worship is not an option for those who will be called by his name.
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We call ourselves Christians, followers of Christ, then we ought to be known for more than just that title but as those who honor him in the way we do things.
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Hopefully you can see the problem in this first point before we move on to the second. They're not worshiping
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God but they are taking care of numero uno. The second movement in the text is a call to return to worship, verses five through eight.
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The God of the angel armies, the Lord of hosts, he takes on that title again here in verse five.
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The God of the angel armies responds, in light of this neglect of worship with an interesting command.
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I think it's really great how right out of the gate what he commands them to do. Instead of merely saying, so build me a place of worship, doofuses, he tells them twice something gentle and kind and I think showing something of his heart, he says, consider your ways.
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How many of that's a little bit different than what we might expect an authoritarian to go for? I told you to build my temple and look at it.
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Come on, get with it, get with the program. No, he says, consider your ways and this reveals something in a subtle way about our
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God, does it not? He's not merely interested in abject obedience, do it or else.
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He wants hearts. Our God wants hearts. He wants us to want him.
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He wants us to want to love him. Why do I say this? He wants us people to consider.
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We can often be so busy doing that we neglect what I would call the harder work of considering, especially where we don't like silence.
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We could fill it with all kinds of music or podcasts or whatever to just numb ourselves and just keep from thinking.
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I think we're honestly a people that are relatively, how many of you know what I'm talking about? We're people that are relatively afraid of considering.
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To take the time to think, to take a moment of silence and solitude to listen, to consider, to think.
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The word here in Hebrew means to pause and give careful thought to. That's the word consider here in our text.
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To pause and give careful thought to. And what are we supposed to be pausing and giving careful thought to?
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What did he want his people to give pause and careful thought to? Their ways. That word ways is an elastic enough word in Hebrew to encapsulate both how they roll and what's happening to them.
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Consider your ways. As you're going down the road and you're taking step after step, how's that going for you?
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I think all of us, to a person in the room, it would do our souls good to stop and think about the trajectory of our lives at any given moment.
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Now would be a good time. Today would be a great day to stop and think about our ways, to consider what are we doing and how is that going for us?
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You see, obedience to God is in our best interest. It absolutely is in our best interest.
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It does result in internal peace. It does produce within us joy and gratitude and love and patience and hope if we obey and worship
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God. When God asks us to slow down and consider how we roll and how it's going for us, what do we find, church?
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What will we find there? God gives them a few things to ponder and once again, this ancient list in verse six, what he's gonna give them to ponder and think through sounds like he sent
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Haggai to America this morning to call us out. Like I can picture Haggai just showing up and saying, yep, let's talk through this.
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You see, the people have seeds to sow and they have very little to harvest. They eat, but it's never enough to satisfy.
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They drink, but their thirst is never quenched. They clothe themselves, but never quite feel like saying,
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I'm warm. And all their wages are stuffed into wallets with holes in them.
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They don't even know where the money goes. Sound familiar? Well, it's the furnace again.
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It's the car needs brakes. It's more tires. It's this, it's that. Where did all the money go? That's what the people are experiencing.
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God calls them here in the text to consider their lives and their priorities. And he points them towards some symptoms of dissatisfaction that I think many of us can relate to.
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What most scholars identify in this passage is not poverty. They're not experiencing poverty.
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They are experiencing discontent. Not poverty, discontent.
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They have food. They have drink. They have clothes. They even have wages, a pretty big deal in that time.
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They're doing all right. They're paneling their houses. God hasn't stopped up the good things for them yet.
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He says here in the last part, we're gonna see that he's going to. But he hasn't stopped it up yet.
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But what he has stopped up is their enjoyment. He has been faithful to stop up their enjoyment of the good.
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Is it possible, church, that our lack of contentment, our dissatisfaction, might be due to our lack of worship?
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Not talking about singing songs, not talking about Christian radio. Talking about that we see him as worthy and high and exalted of all of our daily activities, everything that we engage in.
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And you can worship him through anything that is not sin. If it's sin, you can't worship him by sinning, obviously.
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But anything in your day that is not sin can be rendered as worship to God. Consider your ways.
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Worship leads us to gratitude and to thanks. And thanks and gratitude leads to joy and appreciation.
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A person who complains that they never have enough is also a miserable person, in part because they are not a grateful person.
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I'm not gonna ask for a show of hands who knows that person in your life. And I'm further not gonna ask for a show of hands if you are that person in your life.
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But everybody, everybody, everybody knows a complainer, or is one. Are you miserable because you're focused on yourself?
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How many of you know that's a pathway to misery? That is a pathway to misery. Focus on yourself. Try to please number one and you will never be satisfied.
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Why do these people lack satisfaction? Because they are not worshiping God. Listen to this very fundamental truth.
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We are made to worship God. We are made and designed for that.
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And a human soul will not and cannot be satisfied until it finds rest in the wonder and awe of our great
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God. That's the place of satisfaction. That's the place of rest.
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That's the place of true abiding gladness and joy is in the worship of God. God repeats himself to drive the point home in verse seven.
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Two times in this passage, consider your ways. He is so faithful to call us out, church, to consider how we're living and how we're experiencing life on the basis of how we're living.
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Consider your ways. Consider how it's been going for you. Consider your level personally, your personal level of dissatisfaction.
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Is it possible that it's time for a realignment in your life? Has your worship of God shifted from the center?
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Consider your ways. And after you've done all the hard work of considering, then align your actions with his priorities.
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If after talking to him over a season of considering and you come to the end of talking to God and saying, how am
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I doing? Am I really putting you first in all things?
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Or am I the first in all things? And is the reason for this dissatisfaction in me, the reason for this discontent that's been growing within me is because I'm just not able to fulfill myself, which is absolutely true.
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So after taking a season of considering, if you determine that your career, your family, your entertainment, or whatever it might be is the place that you need to sow more time, maybe you'd be like, that's what
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I need more of. You take a moment to consider and you go, I just need more entertainment. That's gonna solve it.
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I need more money. That's gonna solve it. I need to work harder. That's gonna solve it. I need more whatever it might be.
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That's gonna solve it. Well, you have the right to come to that conclusion, but you also have the right to be wrong.
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Scripture is saying what you need is worship. What you need is worship, not to those things.
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Those are becoming idols to you. What you need is worship to God. The worship of God is to be the priority of the people of God.
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And that worship takes many forms. It isn't merely gathering on Sunday morning, as I've said many times, or singing some songs, but in our text,
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I love it, what form it takes in the text of Scripture. In this, it takes the form of going up into the hills and the hard work of logging the forest to gather supplies to build the temple.
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I think it's beautiful that the next step in reestablishing worship here in this text is not singing.
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Well, if you just sing more, if you tune into Christian radio, if you just get a little bit more praise in your life, then you're gonna be okay.
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Now, what's the first step in restoring their hearts to God? Obedience.
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Obedience in what way? Build a building. Get your hands dirty. Go get some splinters for Jesus.
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In this context, that's what it is. How many of you know worship can take all kinds of forms, including getting splinters for Jesus?
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Yeah. The builders say, yeah. In case you misunderstand what it means to consider,
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I wanna point out very carefully, this is a very important caveat. If you've tuned out for whatever reason, just come back for a minute.
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Worship is not here in this text pitted against family. It's not against entertainment. God is not against vacations, and he is not even against paneled houses.
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He's not against the good things that we experience in life. He's not against filet mignon.
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He's not against beamers. He's not against sweet rides. He's not against a nice house, or a few dogs, or whatever it might be.
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Worship is placing all of those things as a subset of the worship of the
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Almighty. Considering, this call to consider is seeking clarity in our priorities.
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I have to ask myself questions like, am I husbanding in a worshipful way that's seeking to please God in the way that I lead
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Linda? Am I fathering in a worshipful way that is seeking to guide my children toward faith in God?
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Real questions I have to ask myself. Am I balancing work, and entertainment, and resources?
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And as your pastor, I can testify that's not always the case. We all need these kinds of moments of considering to get realignment.
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Is it apparent that we can balance those things, work, entertainment, resources, and we can balance those in a way that it's apparent that God is a big deal to us.
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There's another way to balance that that looks like entertainment's a big deal to us, or even that our family's a big deal to us, or that our work is a big deal to us.
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Ask yourself in this considering, here's a good diagnostic question, is it apparent to others that I see
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God as worthy of my time, and my resources, and my energy? If you went out and polled those who you see on a weekly basis and asked them, is it apparent to you that God's a big deal in my life?
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If the answer is no, then there's some changes that need to happen. The call back to alignment in Haggai looks like a physical restoration of the
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Jewish place of the presence of God, and God encourages his people at the end of verse eight with the ultimate target of the life of his people.
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Here's what we're shooting for, the obedient restoration of worship in Jerusalem will give God pleasure and bring him glory.
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Verse eight is a crux in this text, it's important. To what end are we to consider?
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To what end are we to realign? To what end are we to worship him, his pleasure and his glory?
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And that actually rebounds to us and reflects back to us joy, gladness, purpose, thanks, a life of less complaining and more gladness over the things that he's given to us, and ultimately over who he is.
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Eugene Peterson reflected in an experience he had sitting on his porch in Montana. His Montana homie was sitting out on the porch in a rocker just kind of watching, having his quiet time, and he watched a mother bird push her three hatchlings out of the nest for their first flight.
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And he got an opportunity to see that. That would be kind of cool to see, I've never seen anything like that. Seen it in, I think,
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Attenborough's documentaries with that liquid British voice, some of you know what I'm talking about, and I could watch that guy, listen to him read the, read the phone book or something, but.
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I don't know where I got off on that, but. He's watching these birds, he's watching this mother bird, and she's pushing them out for their first flight, and sure enough, you know, he's like, oh man, this is dicey, apparently the branch was out over the lake, and he was like, if they,
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I don't know what happens to these kinds of birds if they hit the water, but I'm guessing it doesn't go well, and I'm not sure they survive, and sure enough, all three of them, at the last moment, their wings caught wind, and they took flight for the first time.
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And he's there cheering them on. And then he had this observation, as he watched the last one cling to the branch a little bit harder, took a little bit more effort for mom to get this last one out.
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It's always the youngest, no, I mean. I don't know if that's true or not, I just said it. But trying to coax, and this one's got the death grip on, and he just identified, he said, they have feet.
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They have legs, they are fully capable to be terrestrial. But what is the distinctive of a bird?
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It flies. It flies, yeah, they could walk everywhere. A robin can get everywhere that it needs to get walking.
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That would be weird, right? The distinctive is flight, and he kind of took this a different track.
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His mind, working through, and obviously, thinking spiritually, he's a pastor, and he's trying to work through this.
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What is the distinctive of humans, is where his mind went. What is the distinctive of humans?
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The distinctive of a bird is that they fly. He says, we're distinct because we glorify.
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We magnify with intention. With intention, we are able to magnify
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God, to glorify Him, to worship Him. We praise, we have voices that speak His praise.
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We have knees that bend to bow before Him. We have minds that craft and create, made in His image, and therefore, creative like Him, to worship in our creation.
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When a human is doing what makes it distinct, it is intentionally seeking to bring pleasure and glory to the one whose image we bear.
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So, consider your ways, not whether or not God is on the top of your list, but is He the paper on which your list is written?
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Is He under, in, above, through, and the reason for all the things that you do? And we're gonna blaze through this last point, because I'm looking at the time.
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So, the consequences of neglecting worship, verses nine through 11. The consequences here, this isn't a long point.
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I mean, it's pretty direct, and it's pretty harsh. Look at verse nine. Here, the section of our text closes with a stern warning of the consequences of continuing on in the neglect of worship.
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God has blown away the little things that they have in verse 11. He threatens a drought of all good things.
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And considering the context of this being written on August 29th of 520 BC, that's the first day of the sixth month that was a new moon harvest festival in Israel.
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It was a pretty specific date. This is the day of celebrating the crops, in other words. And this particular year, the dissatisfaction has been increased.
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Can you imagine a God, do you serve a God who can give freely dissatisfaction?
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Do you serve a God who could give you dissatisfaction intentionally? Let this vision of God correct any thoughts you might have that God only ever gives material blessing to His people.
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He will gladly grant emptiness to us when we go our own way, ignore His glory, and refuse His worship.
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God is faithful to allow us seasons of discomfort in our sins. We are free to ignore
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Him. We're free to ignore Him, church, but we're also free to be discontent in His absence.
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We may perceive a threat that the text doesn't address, and I think it's important to address here because I imagine that I can almost hear some of you thinking, won't the people just merely return to God so that they can be blessed again?
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Won't the, in the presence of a drought, if God says, I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna give you a drought if you don't go back and build my temple and you don't consider your ways and you don't shape up and you don't start worshiping me, then
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I'm gonna bring drought. Are they gonna just look at Him and go, okay, no drought, we'll cave, we'll call
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Uncle, we'll build you a temple, just don't send the drought. How many of you know what I'm talking about? That correlation is just kinda like, our motives are all kinds of all over the place, right?
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And yet scripture never seems to fear that as a motivation. It's kinda strange, we do, scriptures don't.
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Come to God for good things, church. Go it alone and you may have the good stuff temporarily, but the best we will achieve in trying to just kinda manipulate
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God to get our own way, manipulate if we think we can get Him to be the vending machine and we put in the temple effort, then
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He's gonna give us good things and He'll remove this drought from us. The best that we're gonna get in the pursuit of our own glory, our own pleasure, our own satisfaction is, well, what
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Mick Jagger's mantra was, I can't get no, despite trying and trying and trying,
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I can't get no, you guys got it. The cycle of futility is well documented on the pages of human history, the pages of our own lives.
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You live long enough, you're gonna get this, you're gonna see it whether you adopt it or not, whether you consider your ways, it might be the very fabric of your lives right now and you don't realize it because you're not stopping to consider the futility.
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Why am I so miserable all the time? Maybe it's because you're trying to serve yourself and you're not gonna get satisfaction that way.
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The only satisfaction you're gonna find in this life is serving Him. Everything else is futility.
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And the book of Ecclesiastes is there in scripture as an entire book to churn that out, to take us through the paces, pleasure, sex, wealth, whatever it is that you might seek to try to please yourself to glorify yourself and you will be miserable in it until you find rest in the worship of the one.
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That is the only place we will find hope. The application this morning couldn't be more clear.
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Consider your ways, consider your ways. Take a moment.
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Some of you, this might be an extremely encouraging thing to do, do it anyways. You might even be sitting here going,
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I don't need to do that because everything's great. I'm really worshiping God well and everything's clicking on all cylinders right now.
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Take a moment to consider, take a moment to pause. It's healthy. Are you living out a life of priority on the pleasure and glory of God?
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Are we like the Jews in Haggai's time? And is it possible that our problem is diagnosed by this ancient prophet?
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We have not put his pleasure and his glory above our own and this is a call for us to consider our ways.
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So let's wrap up our time considering the lack of a physical temple to build today. God is not calling us out for neglecting a building project.
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He is calling us out where we are neglecting the worship of the greater temple. So as we step to the tables of communion, let's go there in deep gratitude and thankfulness and yes, in worship of the one who has gathered us together as his living temple.
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Let's reflect on his greater sacrifice made to take away our sins and grant us his righteousness. And let's rejoice that he is with us today.
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He is here in this very gathering this morning with his people. He is graciously speaking through Haggai as we come to these tables.
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And what is he saying to us? What is he whispering to each and every heart? Consider your ways, consider your ways.
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It is for your benefit that you center your life on his worship. He calls you to this worship because he loves you and he knows that we will only find satisfaction in worshiping him.
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So if you've asked Jesus Christ to be your Lord and savior, I encourage you to go to the tables. During this next song, take a cracker to remember his body broken for us.
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Take a cup of juice to remember his blood that was shed for us. We, his people, and you can take that cracker and juice back to your seat.
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Take them as you have time to consider. And my hope and prayer is that God meets us this week in our considering.
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Let's pray. Father, I thank you for your grace and your mercy that led you all the way to the point of sending your son.
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That all of this plan in the Old Testament culminated in your son, Jesus Christ, the sacrifice made for us, the hope that we have in him.
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His death for us, his burial for us, and his resurrection that spells hope for us.
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So Father, I pray that you would meet us in these moments, that you would press on all of us the value of considering our ways, that you would help us by the power of your spirit, especially anyone here who belongs to you by faith, that you would press on us those in that moment of considering what's really going on in here.
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Are we really placing you as the priority in all of our list? Not you being number one over a bunch of things that we do, but you being, you permeating the list, the way that we family, the way that we work, the way that we discharge all of our responsibilities and all the things before us, the way we are entertained in all aspects, you first.
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So Father, I pray that you would press that on us as we take time to consider now the cross of Jesus Christ.