The Haggai Ultimatum

There are times when we need to step back as the people of God and look at ourselves.

In doing so, it helps to get a long-term perspective and to put who we are and what we're doing and what our experience at the Church of God is all about in a bigger, longer continuum than just our own lifetime. In doing that, with the help of the Bible and the stories of God's people down through the ages and God's experience of working, whether it's with a single person, whether it's an entire nation such as Israel, whether it's a remnant of people.

At any given time, as we go from Genesis to Revelation through the story of the Bible, we see God working with large groups, small groups, single individuals, remnants of groups.

But everyone is God's work with His people in accomplishing His plan of salvation, bringing many sons to glory, and there are lessons for us to learn. And it is very helpful at times to step back and to put ourselves in that perspective to understand our times in the Church, our spiritual journey and why things happen the way that they do as we look at even a 20-, 30-, 40-year period of time in our own limited experience, as well as to be able to even understand how the events of the world impact the Church and especially impact our individual lives. We're in some very interesting times nationally and internationally as a people in America right now as we go through a time of recession, which is unlike any recession of the past, at least in our lifetime, and with the things that I read and follow. It's different from anything beyond my own lifetime and many of ours as well. And all of those have an impact on us, whether we stop to really analyze it and think about it, and ultimately they will impact the ability of God's people to work and to do their job in an effective way. Throughout it all, God is with His people. Throughout it all, God challenges us and His work and His plan continues on.

We find at times in the Bible that there are long gaps where there's no record of any aspect of the work of God. When you piece the chronology of the Bible to get together, you will find that there are some very long gaps of hundreds of years, decades, multiple generations, where you don't read anything about what's going on with the people of God. One obvious example is after Israel went into Egypt, went into slavery, from that point until we pick up the story during the time of Moses, there are hundreds of years that we don't even know anything about what was taking place there. And there are other gaps, if you will, and those gaps can sometimes be as instructive as the times of the detailed history. Because through it all, God is doing His work and God's work continues on. It is never idle. It's just what God chooses to tell us. But when we do pay attention to what is there, and we are able to, if you will, transport ourselves into that setting, there are always lessons to learn. Such a setting is a period of time that is relatively obscure in history and certainly in your experience in mind, almost to the point where we would even ask the question, why go there? What difference does it make and why bother?

It's a period of time in the story of Israel, after 70 years after the fall of Jerusalem, during the time of the Persian Empire, when a group of Jews were allowed to go back to Jerusalem and to begin to rebuild a portion of the city. The story is told in the Bible, in a section that, if most of us were to hold up our Bibles and look at it back there, it would probably be the shiny part. Now, this particular Bible of mine right now is all shiny because it's a new Bible. I just bought this before the Holy Days of the spring, the English Standard Version, a new study Bible that just came out last fall. It weighs a ton, and I'm not going to try to go through all of this today. It's all shiny for me, but even on some of my other Bibles, this particular section is shiny as well. It's a section back in the Old Testament in the book that is called by the name of Ezra.

And I'd like for you to turn there because we're going to delve into this particular period of time and this story for some important lessons as we connect to a group of Jews who are able to go back to Jerusalem and begin to rebuild the Temple of God. The setting is the sixth century BC, the late 500s BC, roughly 528 and the years following. It is during the time of the Persian Empire. Babylon has fallen. The great Persian leader by the name of Cyrus is the emperor, the king, the leader of the Persian Empire. And Cyrus is one of these interesting characters in the Bible who was not, if you will, of Israelite origin. He was not part of the chosen people.

But Cyrus was named in the Bible. In fact, if you would go to Isaiah 45, we won't go there, but Isaiah chapter 45 is a prophecy in advance of Cyrus. He is the only leader of that stature in the Bible that is foretold. And he's foretold as being an instrument in God's hand through a prophecy before he was born. And he's mentioned by name. It's an amazing prophecy in Isaiah chapter 45. The Persian Empire rose and the Persians conquered Babylon. Babylon fell in the year 539. Cyrus entered into the city of Babylon on the night of Belshazzar's feast, the story we're well aware of in the scriptures that we read of. And Cyrus and the Persians were a different type of ruler than that of the Babylonians. Their method of ruling was to basically allow the conquered nations to keep their own identity, to keep their own religion.

And because of that, Cyrus allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem. And he issued a decree allowing that within the first year of his reign. In the book of Ezra here, chapter 1 and verse 1, it says that in the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, which is within this year would have been probably about the year 538 BC, the word of the Lord by the mouth of the Jeremiah might be fulfilled. The Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, so that he made a proclamation throughout all of his kingdom. And he also put it in writing. Then it goes on to say what that proclamation was.

Thus says Cyrus, king of Persia, The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth and charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem which is in Judah. Whoever is among you of 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 Lord, the God of Israel. He is the God who is in Jerusalem. And let each survivor, in whatever place, he sojourns, be assisted by the men of his place with silver and gold, with goods, with beasts, besides free will offerings for the house of God that is in Jerusalem. So this is the famous decree of Cyrus that allows the Jews to go back to Jerusalem approximately 70 years from the time of the fall of Jerusalem and to begin to rebuild the temple.

Jerusalem was in ruins and so the work began. So the rest of the chapter here talks about some of the leaders and the Levites and the people and the financing that was given for them to go back and to begin this job. It carries on into chapter 2 as the people came up out of the captivity from the area of Babylon, those that have been carried, and it goes into detail to list the names of different families and individuals and the Levites down in verse 40 of chapter 2.

Verse 43 mentions that along with this were also various temple servants. Now, by this time, this would have been another generation, descendants of people who were Levites and had worked in the great temple of Solomon that had been leveled to the ground.

And verse 56 talks about the sons of Solomon's servants.

And there's a story even in these details. It goes beyond what we want to get into here at this particular time. But they went back to Jerusalem. There were over 42,000 of them. It's mentioned in verse 64. Male and female servants included in them and all the heads of the families. They came up, it says in verse 68, to the house of the Lord that is in Jerusalem. They made offerings for the house of God to erect it on its site. According to their ability, they gave up to the treasury of the works 61,000 talents of gold and miners of silver and garments for the priests. And there were singers and gatekeepers and temple servants there and all of the rest of Israel in their towns. Now, this is the setting for it as they go back to rebuild the temple. Now, a little bit of a few other details to add to the story. We're reading this in the book of Ezra. But at this particular point in the return, Ezra, the scribe, is not on the scene. In fact, you don't find Ezra appearing in the story until chapter 7. We'll mention that again toward the end of the sermon. Ezra's not here. Basically, the two leaders that are there are a man named Zerubbabel, which is a familiar name to you. He was the descendant of the last king of Judah. He was of royal descent. And the second leader is Joshua, the high priest. He is of the priestly lineage. So you've got church and state combined in these two individuals, Joshua, the high priest, and Zerubbabel. You are familiar with them from two prophets, Haggai, which we're going to get into, and the other prophet, Zechariah. Zechariah goes into some interesting details about Zerubbabel and Joshua as well. We're not dealing with the prophecy of Zechariah today, but we will with the prophet Haggai when he comes on the scene. And those are the two leaders at this point in time. Ezra is not on the scene. I should mention that Ezra and the book of Nehemiah in a sense kind of go together because they both deal with the story of the return and the rebuilding of Jerusalem. We're not even going to get into Nehemiah's story today because that comes later on. Actually, in really another generation, Ezra and Nehemiah are contemporary, and they don't really come on the scene for more than 50 years from the time that the first group go back. And that's instructive as well. But Nehemiah deals with a different purpose. Joshua and Zerubbabel, in this first group of returnees, you'll find their emphasis here in this part of Ezra is solely upon rebuilding the temple. Rebuilding the temple.

Their job is not necessarily to rebuild the entire city, even though the city is in ruins. Now, you can imagine going... well, maybe we can't imagine, unless you get into some the science fiction stories of ruined cities and generations later that people go back. We've never even had to deal with anything like that. But 70 years have gone by, and roughly there's been no habitation in Jerusalem. Not that there was totally lifeless. No city of any major import throughout history that has fallen is totally lifeless because there's always nomadic peoples and native peoples who stay on and come and go in these areas. So you have to imagine that there was a bit of habitation around Jerusalem, but it would have been more nomadic and the ruins would not have even been touched. And so these Jews go back and they find it essentially as it was 70 years earlier. And whatever landed homes that had been a part of their family would have just been laying there and weeds and decay had taken over. But their job was not to go back and to rebuild their homes. Their job was to go back and to rebuild the temple. This is where the emphasis is.

Later on, when you read the story of Nehemiah, you'll find Nehemiah comes on the scene and he focuses upon the walls. And that's an interesting story in itself. That's for another sermon.

Nehemiah focuses on a different part of rebuilding. This particular group of Jews have to go back and their job is to rebuild the temple, which had been basically leveled to the foundation. And this is the Temple of Solomon. This is not that this is it's on the same site as the later temple, but it's that Mount Moriah, that temple mount area that we call it today. And this is where these people go back and this is all that they begin to deal with and work with during this particular time. Probably all that remained of the Temple of Solomon was a foundation, which was the foundation according to the records that we have in the scriptures. The foundation of that temple was about nine feet thick and that was at the base.

And so what they begin to rebuild is on a solid and sure foundation. Just an interesting side note, there is nothing left of that temple today in Jerusalem. We're all familiar with the pictures of the Western Wall, formerly called the Wailing Wall, there in Jerusalem to which Jews go. And if you ever go to Jerusalem, you can go up to that wall and you can put a prayer, write down a prayer, which a lot of people do, and they'll slip it in the cracks of the wall. And people pray there.

Our group, I said a prayer there when I was there the last time and I put a little note in the wall and wrote down a prayer and put it into the wall. I won't tell you what I prayed, but I put it in there. And I always wondered because there's thousands of little scraps of paper stuck in the mixing crannies of the Western Wall. And I've always wondered what happens to those. And I've read something recently that once a year in a special ceremony, all of those are taken out.

And they are dealt with very carefully. I forgot exactly where they take them, but they are taken out by a rabbi or a religious person and then there's room for additional people to stick more in there and they always fill them up. But they are treated very, very reverently, those prayers that people put into that wall. Anyway, that wall had nothing to do with this particular time. There's nothing left there except one little piece of remnant.

There is, on the Temple Mount, a flight of steps that leads down from the dome of the rock, the gold dome of the rock, on the northwest side of that. And the last step of this little flight of stairs, looks like a step, but it's a little different from the others. It's very well-worn. And there's the foremost authority on the Temple Mount, the archaeologist who knows more about that area today than any other living individual, has written a book about that and he feels that that last step on this small flight of about three steps that go down from the dome of the rock, that that step is actually a wall, the top of the wall.

And that that wall dates from the time of the first temple, the time of the Temple of Solomon. And that was not a wall of the temple, but the wall that went around the temple. And I think he's correct from, not that I'm a judge of his work, but from all that he explains about it, it fits with the dimensions and so many other aspects.

And you can go there and you kind of stand on it and realize that you're standing on a wall that was a remnant from the wall during the time of the Temple of Solomon and puts it back even to this time of the the exiles returning to Jerusalem. But the temple itself, the actual building, it was raised to the foundation. And this is what they began to rebuild upon. And this was a very important project, not just to the people, but because of how God emphasizes it in the story in Ezra.

It has big lessons for us. As I've traced in some other recent sermons about the temple, the temple is very important. It was important under the Old Covenant. And we all understand that the temple today is a spiritual edifice that God is building. And each of us, according to Paul, we are the temple of God's Holy Spirit. And that spirit, God's presence, resides within us.

And so that makes us a spiritual temple. The Church is described as a spiritual temple in a sense as we are all together. And you follow that line all through the scriptures. And we understand that the importance of the temple today is not a building. It's what God is doing in each of us, in our minds and in our hearts. But also we come to the book of Revelation, as I showed in a recent sermon.

And next to the last chapter, we find that in that New Jerusalem coming down, there's going to be a temple. And God's presence is there. And that temple is going to give light to the city. That's where the light of understanding and all the light means, spiritually and literally, where it emanates from. And so the prospect of the temple, from the Old Covenant to the New Covenant and into the New Age or the New Jerusalem, is a very important story.

It's a very important part and component of the plan of God. So it's not something we just push aside as Old Testament, Old Covenant, unimportant. God put it here in this story with the exile's return to teach us something about ourselves right now, today, in our life, our spiritual life within the church, and as it relates to our own present time and our own present world.

So chapter 3 picks up the effort to begin to rebuild this. So they started, they had, as the people of God always do, they always start off with a great deal of enthusiasm, with a great deal of zeal. And when the seventh month came, they were in their towns, it says in chapter 3 in verse 1.

And they were working, the various groups came together in verse 2 to build the altar, to begin offering burnt offerings as it was written in the law of Moses. They erected an altar in its place, for fear was on them because of the peoples of the land, and they offered burnt offerings on it to the Lord, offerings morning and evening. And they kept the Feast of Booths, or the Feast of Tabernacles, as it's written. They offered the daily burnt offerings by number according to the rule as each day required, and after that. And all the appointed feasts and the offerings of everyone who made a free will offering to the Lord from the first day of the seventh month, which will be the day of trumpets, they began to offer burnt offerings to the Lord. But the foundation of the temple was not yet laid. They just had an altar, which is an interesting point because when you look at, you find offerings being made with only an altar, not a temple.

There's a prophecy in Daniel that speaks to the end of the age and sacrifices being cut off prior to Jesus' return. And you link that prophecy along with what we know even from this verse right here, and you come to the realization that there's not...don't look for, don't expect that a temple is going to be rebuilt in our age in Jerusalem. It doesn't have to happen. A lot of prophecy buffs and messianic individuals place a great deal of talk about a temple being rebuilt. That doesn't have to happen. I'm not saying it will or it won't. All I'm saying is, scripturally, there's much precedent that tells us that we...and the prophecy only talks about sacrifices being cut off during those particular times. It's in the book of Daniel. And from that, you recognize that all you have to have is a functioning altar. You don't have to have a building. So don't get caught up in some of these wild stories that run across the internet and throughout all the prophecy buffs that they're going to rebuild a temple. They got the plans. Yeah, they probably get...they have the plans right down to the last instrument and the garment of a functioning priesthood. That's all...that's been there for years. That's not news. But it doesn't have to be...they don't...we don't have to see a temple there, because right here we find that they were giving offerings on the holy days and the high occasions just on an altar. The foundation of the new temple here had not even been laid. But that's another side bar. The work goes on, and they begin to work together as it goes on through here in chapter 3. But chapter 4 picks up, and you know, wherever God's work is being done, there's always opposition.

Satan is always very close to work that God is doing. And his sole job is to hinder that work, whether he can do it within an individual, whether he can do it within the organization, within the church. His aim is to hinder and prevent the work of God from being done. In chapter 4 of Ezra, we find that there are adversaries that begin to come in to oppose the rebuilding of this temple. It says in verse 1 that the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the returned exiles were building a temple to the Lord, the God of Israel. They approached Zerubbabel and the heads of the fathers' houses and said to them, Let us build with you.

For we worship your God as you do, and have been sacrificing to him ever since the days of Esir Haddon, king of Assyria, who brought us here. Now these were a group of people, the Samaritans, who had been imported into the land after the Assyrian conquest in the northern areas of Israel. And they became like Jews, or like Israelites. It says here that they approached them and said, Let us build with you, for we worship your God as you do, and we've been making sacrifices. The Samaritans tried to join in the work. And they were just close enough to appear like the Jews that they felt that they could become, that they could engage in this work at this time. This shows up again the age-long animosity between these groupings of people. You'll find the Samaritans in the New Testament and how they were dealt with, how Christ approached them at all. But in this particular episode, Zerubbabel and Joshua and the other leaders said to them, Look, you have nothing to do with us in building a house to our God. We alone will build to the Lord the God of Israel, as King Cyrus, the king of Persia, has commanded us. Then the people of the land discouraged the people of Judah and made them afraid to build. They bribed counselors against them to frustrate their purpose. All the days of Cyrus, king of Persia, even until the reign of Darius, the king of Persia. And in the reign of Hazarus, in the beginning of his reign, they wrote an accusation against the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem. They wouldn't let up. Their opposition to what they were seeing caused them to stir up among God's people discouragement. Depression, if you will.

The zeal faded. They hired counselors against the Jews. They sent letters to the leaders. They made charges of all kinds of matters. You can well imagine, read into the story. These Jews had been given state money from the king of Persia to go back and to do this. So you could well imagine that they were accused, probably, of financial abuse or of misusing state funds, in that sense, public monies that were donated by the king. And what happened is, eventually, through what they did, they stirred up trouble. And a decree went out and ordered them to stop work on the temple. When you go down to verse 21 here of chapter 4, it says, there was a decree made that these men would be made to cease and that this city be not rebuilt until a decree is made by me. This is now coming from Artaxerxes, who had succeeded Cyrus. Cyrus would have never given in to that, but the successor did. And so he issued an order that basically stopped the building. The charges had been made. They made look and the idea was, you can't let these people rebuild this city. This city is known for opposition, for causing trouble. They cause trouble to the Assyrians. They cause trouble to the Babylonians. And they'll cause trouble for the Persians if you let them regain their glory, regain their size, and be reestablished as a colony. And ultimately, they are nothing but trouble.

And you can well imagine all of the anti-Semitic stories, accusations, and jibes that we have today would have been a part in different language and in different applications to this particular episode right here to stop the work of rebuilding the temple. And what is sad is that when this was read in verse 23 and 24 by the the king's letter was read before the individuals.

They went and hastened to the Jews at Jerusalem and by force and power made them cease. Then the work of the house of God that is in Jerusalem stopped and it ceased until the second year of the reign of Darius, king of Persia. More than 15 years goes by. This order basically put a lock on the door or on the gate, if you will. A gate went up around the temple, an official padlock went on it, no more work was done, and they gave into it.

Now what do you think happened to the Jews when they didn't have this central galvanizing job guiding them? This was the work. The temple still lay in ruins.

And if they weren't doing anything on it, then again weeds were coming up through the cracks.

Decade was beginning to set in. The work of the temple lay in ruins. If you want to carry forth the spiritual analogy, whenever God's people are not zealous for the work that God is doing, decay always sets in. Distraction comes in. If your focus is not—in this particular case, their focus was on a literal building and rebuilding it. And all that it meant in the worship of God, in the work of God—there was not a large evangelistic effort of preaching the gospel. It was a work of a building which was tied to the covenant, which showed them about God, and was their identity. That's what God was doing with them at that time. And in that way, that was the gospel. That was their work. And if they weren't going to it every day, if they couldn't see the building taking shape, if they weren't mowing the grass, scraping the paint, putting a fresh coat on every couple of years, remodeling here and there, going up for the festivals, then their own spiritual life began to decay. And in the case of the Jews, what happened? You turn inward. You begin to focus on your own family, your own job. Your own job. And in many cases, they had to go out and do other things.

And it altered even the economy, because workers were being supported off of the work of the temple. That adjusted the economy, and it went off into different directions. And gradually, year by year, we have other things. We have soccer, basketball, shopping. I'd like to need to put a new roof on. Maybe we need an awning off the back door here. And we begin to think about, well, we could buy a second home down by the Dead Sea. All of these things you could imagine in the normal course of human affairs began to take up their time, their energy, their money, their life. But the work of God didn't get done. The work of God was in decay. And at this particular point in time, year after year after year, after about 15 years, God in His mercy sent an individual, a prophet, by the name of Haggai. And it's at this point that we turn over to the book of Haggai to pick up the story.

Haggai must have been one of those that was in the return.

And God stirs him up to deliver an ultimatum. And this is where we move into the title of my sermon today. For those of you who like titles and for Mark Vincent, who really loves titles.

The title is The Haggai Ultimatum. The Haggai Ultimatum. God in His mercy sends Haggai to give a series of messages to the people. Haggai is a very short book, probably the shortest of the minor prophets. It's only two chapters. In the second year of Darius the king, in the sixth month, and the first day of the month, the word of the Lord came by the hand of Haggai the prophet to Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, the governor, and to Joshua. So Joshua, Zerubbabel, are still on the scene. They're the leaders, the high priest, and the governor. And God stirs this up in the mind of Haggai. And the time setting you'll see is very specific. It's the second year of Darius, the sixth month, the first day of the month.

It's approximately August 29th by some reckonings. So it's late August, late summer is when this is taking place. And the whole prophecy takes place over about a four-month period. It's a very short period of time that he comes on the scene and he gives several ultimatums to the people.

Thus says the Lord of hosts, the people say the time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the Lord. This is what the people said. This was on the chat forums. It's not time. We've got other things to do. The time might be later on, but it's not now the time. That's not the focus. There are other things to do. This is what the people say. This was the mood of the people after 15 years. It's not time. There'll be a time. It's going to get done. God will do a work.

You see, they had a certain reference to the prophecies and they knew there would be a temple.

And maybe the thinking was, you know, God has a different plan and we just have to sit here and tend to our garden, take care of our own business or whatever it might be. God will do that in His time and in His way. The word of the Lord came by the hand of Haggai the prophet. Verse 4, Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses while this house, the temple, lies and ruins? A question, but with a force that you know something else is coming.

Now therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts, consider your ways. Three very powerful words, almost like examine yourself whether you are in the Lord. Remember that verse from 1 Corinthians, examine yourself whether you are in the Lord, which we just did as we went through the Passover in preparation for the days of 11 bread. Consider your ways, Haggai says.

You've sown much and harvested little. Sounds like my garden every year. Put out a lot of plants, especially pepper plants that can never grow pepper plants. I don't know why I keep putting those out. You've sown much and harvested little. How frustrating. You eat, but you don't have enough.

You drink, but you never have your fill. Just not satisfying. You clothe yourselves.

Best sales, best clothes, two suits for the price of one. You clothe yourself.

No one's warm. It's just not enough. You've got to have another dress, shirt, tie, another pair of shoes. You buy clothes, but you're not warm. We always have to have more.

There's something in the therapy that just doesn't give us enough therapy.

And here's the kicker. He who earns wages does so to put them into a bag with holes.

Read 401k.

IRA. Social Security.

General Motors Pension. What do you want to read into it? Right there. What better sentence could we pull right now into today's life that describes exactly where we are? You earn wages. Got your union contract.

$25 an hour. Or is it too low?

Whatever it might be. 30 years in and out. 40 years. Looking forward to retiring at age 63.

Take early retirement. Now it's bumped up. Early retirement's bumped up now. 65, 66, 67.

We earn wages and we put them into a bag with holes. I don't like looking at my statements every month. I'm a chicken. I've just kept putting them in the drawer for the last few months.

Until finally I pulled them out and looked at it. 35% gone. Gone.

Did I put it into a bag with holes? Some experts that I read tell me that in our lifetime, we will never get back what has been lost in the last eight months. It's hard to really accept for any of us and to think that that can't be. It just can't be. I mean, Medicare bankrupt by 2015. Social Security 2025 or 2030. All you read these estimations by the Government Accounting Office about what's going to happen with Medicare, Social Security. Every administration has kicked that can down the road and the present one says they'll deal with it. I don't know. But other things have happened. We're in uncharted waters and those times do happen historically. What's uncanny about it is that we still can go about our lives and our jobs and as if nothing has changed.

They're just numbers, right? Numbers off the on the accounting chart, they're gone. But I mean, we can still get a gallon of gas. We can still fill up our grocery cart. Just may take a few extra dollars. But something has happened. And there are some very interesting times right now and many of them lay ahead. This description of the people here during the time of the Zorubba Bell and Joshua, as Haggai comes on the scene, he is telling them, you have a level of affluence, but it's not enough for you. And you're not able to look forward.

He's getting to the point where he's showing them the reason for this.

Thus says the Lord of Hosts, consider your ways. Go to the hills and bring wood and build the house that I may take pleasure in it and that I may be glorified, says the Lord. You look for much and behold it came to little. And when you brought it home, I blew it away.

Why? declares the Lord of Hosts, because of my house that lies in ruins, while each of you busies himself with his own house. 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 and on the grain, the new wine and the oil, on what the ground brings forth on man and beast and on all their labors. And so, boom! This is why. You have neglected the work, the spiritual side of things, and you've gone off pursuing your own pleasures, your own security, and you don't have enough, and you know it. And he says the reason is because you have looked for much, it's come to little, my house lies in ruins, while each of you busy with your own home, with your own work. Not that our homes are not important, and not that we shouldn't keep up our homes and do all those things. That's not really the point here. The point is the neglect of the spiritual, and that's the lesson for us today. We're not building a building, a physical temple, but we are in the process of God building a spiritual temple. And to the degree we neglect that, and all that that means in terms of the work of God, the work that the collective temple is to be doing, and we pursue the physical, we will wind up in the same boat that these people wound up here, putting money into bags with holes in it. Accumulating a lot of material matters, but it's not satisfying. Got to have a better home, got to have a bigger home, got to have more clothes, got to have how much money is enough, for some, once that becomes the dominant pursuit in life. Again, we all would probably say, well, how much? More than what I've got. Yeah, I understand that too. I understand that too.

But we have some interesting times right now. One of the things we are looking at in the church, we are facing the accumulation of what we've now termed legacy costs. As the employees, the ministry of the church grow older and begin to retire in increasing numbers over the next few years, the impact upon the budget of the church is going to grow considerably. We're beginning to look at those things. One of the things that you do when you go on the council, you get the curtain pulled back, the curtain in the throne room of Oz, and you get the curtain pulled back, and you see all the details, and you get involved in all of those things. Not that those details are false or anything, but you begin to have to deal with the concerns and the real hard issues. Legacy issues are a growing issue for the church, just as they are for all of us. As we look at the years ahead and wonder about retirement and what's going to happen and how we're going to manage and what's going to happen to our accounts and those things, those are very real issues. The baby boomer generation, my generation, is coming down for a hard landing by all accounts. The golden years of retirement are not going to be what many of us thought that they would be. That's just a hard reality, which presents us challenges, but it also presents us opportunities, just as it presented an opportunity here for the people of God. If we can get our minds oriented on the spiritual and our hearts and our minds to the trim of the work, the spiritual work of God, the work of preaching the gospel, the work of the spiritual work that God is doing today, then we don't have to throw up our hands in despair. We don't have to think that all is hopeless. We don't have to be discouraged by adversity, whether it's by individuals like Samaritans in this story or any other type of adversity that comes up before us. We can see that as opportunity, and we should, and we must. We must learn the lesson that God has left for us in the continuum of His story of His people and recognize the principles and bring them into our setting today and live by them and to learn from them because we are presented with opportunity just as they were by the prophet Haggai at this particular time. They were being told the solution.

And it's in this story that is the solution that we find for all the challenges that we find today facing the church, facing us individually within the church, and being able to look to God. Because, as I said, this particular scene in these first few verses mirrors much of what we see around us today when we look at only the material to the exclusion of the spiritual dimension.

God and His agents are watching, and they are looking. That's where you bring in the story of Zechariah, the other prophet that we won't have time to turn to. But Zechariah tells us that God has His angels and His servants that are always watching the people of God, the work of man, and God is active and working in behind the scenes. That's a subject for another sermon on this particular story. But God is very much involved, and He's showing us the solution.

Now, what happened here with Haggai and his words is the people were stirred up and they obeyed. Beginning in verse 12.

It says, The rubber belt in Joshua, with all the people, Obeyed the voice of the Lord their God in the words of Haggai, and the people feared the Lord.

Then Haggai, the messenger of God, spoke to the people with the Lord's message. He said, I am with you. Remember what Christ said in His final message with His disciples?

You're not alone. You're not alone. I will be with you, even until the end of the age. I will send my spirit as a comforter. Here, through Haggai, God said, I am with you.

The Lord stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel, the spirit of Joshua, and the spirit of all the remnant of the people. And they came and they worked on the house of the Lord of hosts their God on the 24th day of the month and the 6th month and the second year of Darius the king.

So the work was revived. They began to go about their job. But you know what?

Satan stirred up trouble again. And this is where you go back to Ezra, chapter 5, because chapter 5 shows us where Haggai and Zechariah, the two prophets in the story, came on the scene, stirred up the people. The work began. But then opposition came in again, because in verse 3 of Ezra, chapter 5, at the same time, Tatnai, the governor of the province, and his associates came and they spoke and they said, who gave you permission to build this house and to finish this structure?

What are the names of these people? We're going to take the names. We're going to report them. They're going to get a summons. But the eye of their God was on the elders of the Jews. They did not stop them until the report should reach Darius, and then an answer would be returned by letter concerning it. And then the remainder of this, I'm not going to go through the details, a letter was sent by Tatnai, the Persian governor, to King Darius. And it reached Darius in Persepolis, one of the capitals of the Persian Empire. This letter went all the way there. In the meantime, the work continued. This took place over the ensuing weeks from the time Haggai appeared on the scene in late August. They kept working. They kept working. They wouldn't be stopped.

The officials sent a letter to Darius, and they made search through the archives. They didn't have Microsoft to do it real fast for them. They had to rummage through the archives, and they finally found the letter. This is what happens here in the remainder of chapter 5 and into chapter 6. They found the letter from Cyrus where he had given them permission.

They made search, chapter 6 here of Ezra, and the various places. And they found a scroll with Cyrus's decree upon it concerning the house of God at Jerusalem to allow it to be built, and the place where the sacrifices would be given, and the costs were all to be paid for.

So what they did was they sent another directive back to Judah to Tatnai, verse 8-6, the governor of the province. The decree said basically that they were to continue on rebuilding the house of God. The cost was to be paid in full without delay from the royal revenue, from the royal coffers, and whatever else was needed. Down in verse 11, Darius said, I make decree that if anyone alters this edict of beam shall be pulled out of his house, and he will be impaled upon it. Pretty serious. And his house will be made a dung hill, even more serious. May the God who has caused his name to dwell there overthrow any king or people who shall put out a hand to alter this or to destroy this house of God that is in Jerusalem. I, Darius, make a decree, let it be done with all diligence. So let it be written, so let it be done. And it was. Which shows, through all of this story, that when God's people put their trust in him and they don't fear man, when they put their trust in what God says to do and they continue to do it, well, they take care of the business of life, a house, clothing, 401, an IRA, or whatever, and prepare diligently, as the scriptures tell us, for the future. But God's house, God's work, the spiritual work of God, is first. The Word of God, that relationship, and all that it entails, when we put that first and we fear God rather than fearing man, God will take care of the details.

And he shows here that he will even do that through the leaders and even turn around the economic condition, so that there is prosperity to the degree that the needs are taken care of. Oh, it doesn't always promise fabulous wealth, ostentatious wealth, but prosperity to the point of taking care of the needs. That's the story. That is the promise from God. And that's what happened here. Now, we go back to the book of Haggai. Well, before we leave Ezra 6, let's say that they finished it beginning in verse 13, tells the story of how they finished it and they brought it down. But let's go back to the book of Haggai. Chapter 2 takes us to the seventh month, a month later, on the 21st day of the month.

God's Word came through Haggai and says, speak to Zerubbabel and to Joshua, Who was left among you who saw this house in its former glory? How do you see it now? Is it not as nothing in your eyes? It was. It was nowhere near the glory of Solomon's temple, and it was in dereliction as a result of years of neglect. Yet now, he says, be strong, Zerubbabel, be strong, Joshua, be strong, all you people of the land. Work. Work. Put your shoulder to the grindstone. Put your heart, your mind, your efforts to the spiritual work, to involvement with people of like mind, to a dedication to the gospel, to the work that I am doing. Work. Put the work. When I was growing up, we talked about something in terms of the church. We didn't always mention the church. We talked about the work.

The work of the gospel, the work of preaching the gospel, the work that was growing, the work that was being done here and there, and advances, and broadcasts, and offices being open, and people being called. I remember even early enough the old baptizing tours. Hearing analysis about ministers going out to areas of the country where there were not established churches, taking stacks of letters from subscribers who wanted contact with the church, and visiting with them, meeting people at a post office, and taking them out to a farm pond after a few hours of counseling and baptizing them. This is how it used to be done. And then enough people would be in an area where a church could be established. And the work was established. The work grew.

We talked about the work, the work of God. That's something we don't always have to the same degree. We even talked about that once in the council about a year ago. And we would talk about the work with a capital W. And that's it. Here in verse 4, he says, work, for I am with you.

And again, that promise. My spirit remains in your midst. Fear not, for thus says the Lord of Hosts. Yet once more, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land, and I'll shake all nations, so that the treasures of the nations shall come in. And I will fill this house with glory, says the Lord of Hosts. The silver is mine, the gold is mine, declares the Lord of Hosts. I look at verse 8, verse 7 and 8 here, and I'll tell you, I take great comfort in that. God says the silver is mine and the gold is mine. And like you and I, I guess I wish a little bit more of it were mine as well. But I'm also a realist.

And I know what I have and what I probably will have.

And long ago, gave up whatever dreams of, you know, we might dream for the practicality of what we have. But I apply this verse to the church. And though, as I said, we are concerned about legacy costs, I don't intend to lose any sleep over it, because I read this verse and I know the God we serve. And he says the silver is mine and the gold is mine, which tells me that he can and he will provide for us as a church. And he will provide for us as individuals. As long as we are oriented spiritually and properly seeking the kingdom of God first, he says all these other things will be added to you. I firmly believe that if God's church puts the work of the gospel first, God will take care of all the other things. I don't know how. No more than Joshua or Zerubbabel or the Mason or Carpenter on this particular job site of the temple knew exactly how they would get their job done, from the financing, the safety, to the actual completion.

But if you take the Word of God at face value and you set your mind to it and you put God first, God says the silver's mind, the gold is mine, and the glory is mine, and it will be done.

In this place, he went on to say, I will give peace, declares the Lord of hosts. That doesn't mean we can neglect prudence, wisdom, sound management in every way, whether it's in your life and mine, at the level of the church as we handle the resources that we have. But I take this as a promise from God. The silver's mind and the gold is mine, and He will provide it.

He will provide what we need. The story goes on. On the 24th day of the ninth month, now we're getting into December. Remember, we started in August, we're into December, the ninth month. In the second year of Darius, the word of the Lord came by Haggai the prophet, thus says the Lord of hosts. Ask the priests about the law. If someone carries holy meat in the fold of his garment and touches it with his fold or stew or wine or oil or any other kind of food, does it become holy? They said no. Haggai said, if someone who's unclean by contact with a dead body touches any of these, does it become unclean? They said, it does become unclean.

Then Haggai answered and said, so is it with these people and with this nation before me.

And so with every work of their hands, what they offer there is unclean. And now, consider from this day onward, before stone was placed upon stone in the temple of the Lord, how did you fare? When one came to a heap of 20 measures, there were about 10. Again, talking about the lack, the disparity. Things weren't squared. Accounts weren't reconciled. Trying to get that word in there. When one came to a wine vat to draw 50 measures, there were about 20. They came up short.

I struck you in all the products of your toil with blight, mildew, and hail, yet you did not turn to me.

Consider from this day onward. In other words, he's saying, just remember from the time you turned around and considered your ways, and you got busy with what you were supposed to be doing. You got serious about church. You got serious about me. You got serious about my word. Then things began to happen from the 24th day of the ninth month, since the day that the foundation of the Lord's temple was laid considered. Remember, is the seed yet in the barn? Indeed, the vine, the fig tree, the pomegranate, and the olive tree have yielded nothing, but from this day on, I will bless you. Now, what he mentions in this last verse 19 are basically the essential foodstuffs of their diet and of their life at that time. The vine, the grapes, for which they made wine. The fig tree, which had many different uses, sweetening as well as the food and everything. The pomegranate, very important. Have you tried to buy a gallon of pomegranate juice today? It's pretty expensive. They've done a really good marketing ploy with pomegranate. All these health benefits of pomegranate for us. Next time you're in Kroger, check out the price of just straight pomegranate. It makes a gallon of gas look real cheap. In other words, this was an important staple to the diet. Then, of course, the olive tree, which is still with us to this day in terms of a staple there. He mentions four types of food that were at the heart of their life.

And then he said they weren't yielding what you needed, but from this day on, I will bless you. So he draws them back to this point that from the time you got serious, then the blessings, things will start to work out. Though he doesn't mention it, you can well imagine that he was also telling them, remember the hole in the bag? It's going to be sewn up.

It's going to be sewn up. And you'll have something when you reach in, when you need to reach into that bag, they'll be there what you need. The economy will turn around. There will be prosperity. The Word of the Lord came a second time to Haggai on the 24th day of the ninth month.

This is actually in the same day as we were back in verse 10. The setting of this prophecy, and this particular utterance, there are two of them on the same day. A little bit later that day, Haggai comes back and he speaks to Zerubbabel, and he utters a magnificent prophecy that stretches on down beyond our own day. He says, I'm about to shake the heavens and the earth and overthrow the throne of kingdoms. I'm about to destroy the strength of the kingdoms of the nations and overthrow the chariots and their riders, and the horses and their riders shall go down, everyone 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, says the Lord of hosts. That gets into a messianic prophecy that even goes down beyond our own day. But it's the last utterance that comes from Haggai, and he leaves the scene. Now, if you go back to Ezra chapter 6, you pick up the thread of the story here.

Because at the end of chapter 6 of Ezra, they finish this temple to the point where they can be prepared then a few months later, from the time of that late December utterance of Haggai.

They can begin to be ready to keep the Passover. In Ezra 6, verse 19, they slaughtered the Passover lamb for the priests, for themselves, and they kept, in verse 22, the Feast of Unleavened Bread. And so, they had done enough work to where then they could keep the holy days of the following spring. They kept the Feast of Unleavened Bread for seven days, for God had made them joyful and had turned the heart of the king of Assyria to them, so that he aided them, even in the work of the house of God, the God of Israel.

Now, this is where the story ends for Haggai. He disappears. We don't read any more about him.

As I said at the beginning of the sermon, chapter 7 here of Ezra picks up, and Ezra comes on the scene. But what you don't know until you read the fine print, if you have a study Bible or a Bible aid to help you understand the historical context of this, is that chapter 7 and verse 1 of Ezra is over 50 years after the previous verse.

An entire generation passes before Ezra comes on the scene. We don't know anything about what happened. We read about them keeping the Passover and Unleavened Bread right after the time of Haggai, when he stirs them up. By this time, Zerubbabel and Joshua are dead. 50 years of silence.

It's one of those silent spaces in the Bible. Maybe nothing of note happened because Ezra has to come on and correct an imbalance again. Zechariah comes in, and he has to stir them up, and they begin to rebuild the walls. That's part of the unending story of the people of God and the cyclical nature of repentance and decay and lack of diligence, lethargy, than having to be renewed. We shouldn't be quite like that. We shouldn't let 50 years or even 15 pass over us with big gaps of disobedience, with gaps of growth.

God's Spirit working in us should produce something a bit different than what we read about here, but we all know that collectively and personally, we've had our challenges.

Which again puts us back into the need to understand the historical flow of God's work with His people and to understand ourselves. We're in this period of time between Unleavened Bread and Pasilah, or Pentecost, as we will be observing Pentecost and learning the lessons of God's Spirit in that particular time. It's not unconnected to the lessons of this story. The Haggai ultimatum for me comes down to five principles that we can pull, and I'd like to give them to you before I conclude here in my sermon. When Haggai came on the scene to stir up the people, he said, first of all, in chapter 1 and verse 7, consider your ways.

Consider your ways. Examine yourself. Continue to look at yourself. In verse 13, he said, I am with you. God says, declares the Lord, I am with you. God never leaves us. We might stray. We might leave off from God, but God is always with us, even when we let down in the work. The third ultimatum is to be strong. To work. Chapter 2 and verse 4 of Haggai. To be strong.

And then in verse 19 of chapter 2, he said, fourthly, from this day on, I will bless you.

From the time that you turn around, make a course correction, and get on track, from that day, I will bless you. It's a promise. And then lastly, number five, I have chosen you.

God's people must never forget, and we must never lose sight of the fact that we are a chosen people. We are a part of a spiritual body. We don't have the ethnic, racial lineage, such as the Israelites and the Jews had during this period of time of Joshua, and Zerubbabel, and Haggai. We come from a mixed bag of descent. We're all, well, we use that term, but we've got all kinds mixed in with us. So, we can't, none of us, can claim any racial purity in the sense of the Israelite and the chosen people there. Our chosen covenant is that of a spiritual covenant. God has chosen us. He's doing a spiritual work within us. Never lose sight of that. That's all part of the Haggai ultimatum, an important one to keep in mind as we prepare ourselves and keep our eyes firmly fixed on the work and understand how it fits into the overall plan of God.