Speak to the People All the Words of this Life

Well, good afternoon, everyone. It is good to be back with you here in Dayton. It's been we were thinking coming up when was the last time we were here and it's been nearly a year and a half since we were up here. So I'm glad you let me come back. And we're glad to be here this time with the ABC choir. I think two years ago we were up with a choir and I enjoyed that and their performance here today. It's good to hear the choir put it all together in one package. I catch snatches of it through the building as they practice throughout the week and I may be going by and I'll hear a song and hear them practicing in between classes at the end of the day. And I wonder, well, that sounds nice at that part. So to see it all put together, it is very nice. So we appreciate this opportunity that comes around every year to tour the choir around the Midwestern Congregations. I believe this is the first venture out this year to Dayton. So we're glad to be here with them and with you once again. Things are going well at the office. It's hard to believe in terms of just the ABC. We're almost at the point of just a few weeks away. I was counting up how many classes and yesterday I was looking at our calendar and how many classes I've got in certain ones and where I am in the Book of Acts or World News and Prophecy or doctrines and how many actual class periods I've got yet to get everything done. And I'm in trouble. So I'll have to either speed up, go kind of half time, double time on the speed or beg for some additional time from Dr. Dunkel on the schedule, which I think I've already got a few weeks planned in there, but we're getting to that point. ABC just starts and I always tell them, catch a deep breath because it'll be over before you know it. Actually, there was a graduate from last year that came through yesterday and he came by and said hello. He said, it's hard to believe it was just a year ago. And he said, you were right.

It does go quickly. And he was commenting to me about that. But that's what happens.

But other things are going well in the office and our plans. Right now we are in the midst of our America. The time is now public appearance campaigns. Two weeks ago we were in Nashville and held a campaign down there. And you're going to be hosting us in August, I believe.

I don't know the exact date, but you're on the calendar to have one here in Dayton.

There's a little bit of a background to that. We did three of those in October down in Texas and had a good turnout. And we decided to stay closer to home and cover a number of Midwestern cities that we could kind of go out to for the weekend and back without an extensive trip. When we come here to Dayton, we'll just drive up on Sunday morning. We'll go over to Indianapolis in two weeks and just drive over there on Sunday morning set up.

Finally we do this at 3 o'clock on a Sunday afternoon. It's about a little more than an hour presentation. It's very professionally done. All three presenters do a 20-minute presentation on America. The time is now. I go out with the first message and talk a bit about prophecy and where we are in the world today. Steve Myers talks about the purpose of life and why you were born and works that into the theme. And then Gary Petty comes and shows them what they must do now, basically repent. And talks about the Sabbath, talks about keeping God's commandments in the Sabbath, and it's Gary Petty's job to close the deal as he's the last one out. So we feel we've got a very balanced message to take to our audience. We are essentially marketing with our Beyond Today television and magazine audience.

We had 45 brand-new subscribers come out in Nashville two weeks ago and also over 100 church members. And we felt that we were very pleased with the turnout. Anytime on a Sunday afternoon you can get 45 new people to come out and hear a message, a religious message in today's world, today's with all the distractions, that's a success. It's also a double success when you can get your own church members to come back out on a Sunday afternoon after having been out on the Sabbath and listened to as well. But the church was very encouraged in Nashville by what they, being a part of it, and to see people come out. We had totally brand-new people. We had people that kind of came out of the woodwork that had not been a part of the church for 20 years. In fact, Fred Keller, the pastor of Nashville, was talking for a long time with a couple that he had baptized more than 20 years ago. They dropped out and they came back out. Who knows that might not happen here when we come to Dayton. Pray about that. Keep that in your prayers. We are in the midst of that. It's an effort to promote the message of the church, the gospel, and the television program, the magazine, and to engage with our audience at that level. So we are excited about it and feel we have just a message that is appropriate. It's a message that deals not just with prophecy but the very basis of why we were born, the purpose of life, as well as a call to repentance and encouraging people in that. We've also actually produced a special edition of the Beyond Today magazine that we hand out to all the attendees and the members who come on that Sunday. It's a special edition. We've repurposed material from our website and other sources in our past publications to take the audience a bit deeper into the topics that we cover during the personal appearance campaign. So that's another part of the program that we have made as well. Everything is introduced with a short video, and each presenter is introduced as well by the video. Mr. Cubie comes out and introduces himself and talks about the church and the local pastor at the very end of the program. So you'll be hearing and reading more about that probably in the United News and then looking forward to coming up here to Dayton in a few weeks. One of the classes I teach at Ambassador Bible College is the book of Acts. This year there was a passage that struck me when we read it that I hadn't focused on so much before. It's in Acts 5. If you can turn there, please. The apostles were preaching the gospel, and they had been harassed by the Jews in Jerusalem and admonished not to do that job. On about the second occasion where they were doing their job, they got imprisoned for a night. In verse 17, the Jews were filled with indignation.

Verse 18, they laid their hands on the apostles and put them in a common prison. But at night an angel of the Lord opened the prison doors and brought them out and said to them, Go stand in the temple and speak to the people all the words of this life. Miraculous deliverance.

It's not the only one in the book of Acts. There's another one that you're well aware of when the apostle Paul and his partner Silas were in Philippi. They were imprisoned, and an angel let them out in the middle of the night as well. But here they were. The doors just swung open, and an angel appeared to them. A fantastic experience. They'd already had an experience of that spirit world as they had seen the resurrected Christ for a period of 40 days after His resurrection and that great event. Instruction with Him, seen Him come and go. They knew that dimension of the spirit world. But now they had first-hand experiences they were preaching. They're told, Go stand in the temple, speak to the people, the words of this life, all the words of this life.

Now the temple at that moment was a large, beautiful edifice, what is called the second temple. And they did that. They went out, and early the next morning they were there greeting people as they came in, and pigeon-holding them or gathering around small groups, no doubt, going about the job that they had, which was to share the news of God's kingdom and the resurrected Jesus Christ. We don't have that temple today, but today in a sense I'm standing in that temple because we know from what Paul would later write that the church is the temple that God is putting together today. It is a spiritual temple. That temple, where they stood actually a few years later, was actually destroyed again, the second temple.

There's not been one rebuilt because God's building a spiritual temple, a church. And every week in congregations among God's people, someone stands and speaks the words of this life. As that struck me, and it's been kind of rolling around in my mind over the weeks since then, I wanted to put it together, the episode, or at least that scene, to a present application and a present lesson that we can learn today. Because the words of this life are very important to us. The times in which we are living are quite significant.

And to live our lives with a sense of urgency and a conviction of our calling and of a relationship with God and His Son, Jesus Christ, and our collective efforts to preach the gospel, but also to prepare our people, and to continue this age-long work of which we are a part.

And for many of us, we have been a part for many decades. We always need to be encouraged, fired up, reoriented, so that we don't get too distracted or too caught up with our lives and life and the issues of growing older, getting sick, marrying, giving in marriage, careers and other matters of this life which are so much important and are a part of it.

But that it is all aligned with the words of life and with the very job that we are called to be a part of and what God is doing in developing a spiritual temple today.

One of the episodes from the Bible that I think we can put ourselves into for a few minutes this afternoon is another episode with the temple from the Bible, this time a bit further back from the book of Acts, where we find in the book of Haggai a message to the people of God who were at that moment engaged in rebuilding what the Bible or history calls the Bible doesn't do it, but history calls it the first temple or the temple that Solomon built. The book of Haggai is a very short book among the minor prophets.

Two chapters. First chapter is 15 verses, and the second chapter is 23 verses. We can very quickly cover that here in a few minutes this afternoon and learn a few lessons about this. Let me set the stage. It is in the second year, it says in verse one, of King Darius, the sixth year of the first day of the month. It is at a time when a group of Jews had returned to rebuild the temple more than 70 years after its destruction and the captivity of the people of Judah by the Babylonians. A group of Jews returned to build the temple at the express command of the Persian king named Cyrus.

Ezra chapter one tells where this took place. It was an event prophesied about 150 years before, during the time of the prophet Isaiah. Cyrus was actually even named. It is one of the very proofs of prophecy in the Bible. In Ezra chapter one, verse one, is the story of where God stirred the spirit of Cyrus, the king of Persia, to make a proclamation saying, in verse two, all the kingdoms of the earth, the Lord God of heaven has given me, and he's commanded me to build him a house at Jerusalem which is in Judah.

Who among you of all his people may his God be with him and let him go up to Jerusalem which is in Judah and build the house of the Lord God of Israel which is in Jerusalem? The decree goes on, but that gives you the essence of it. And so they returned.

Several thousand Jews went back to Jerusalem, nearly two generations after the city had been destroyed and the Jews, most of them deported to Babylon. According to the prophecy of Jeremiah, it was fulfilled and Cyrus did and several thousand went back. Now, it's important to understand that not all the Jews who had been taken to Babylon went back.

In fact, many, many stayed in Babylon and had scattered to that point. In fact, unbeknownst to a lot of us even today, there are still Jews in the area, the land of ancient Persia which is today Iran. And to our modern times there have been Jews there. There are quite few and fewer than there were. But the descendants of those who had been deported, and of course the Jews have dispersed around the world, but not all the Jews in this case went back to Jerusalem.

You know what happens with the people when they move in mass? In this case, throughout world history where populations have routinely been moved by captive nations, people get on with their lives. And in Babylon, while they were technically slaves, many of them found their way into jobs and businesses, and they made a new life. And they didn't want to go back. They had a business, they had a house, grandchildren. You know how it is. You wind up someplace because you migrated someplace to work.

Sixty, seventy, eighty years ago people from other parts of the United States migrated up here to Dayton, Ohio, to work in factories. They went to Toledo, they went to Detroit because they didn't have jobs down in Beckley, West Virginia, or Pikeville, Kentucky, or Johnson County, Kentucky, where I used to live.

And they came north for jobs, thinking they would go home, but they never did because they had families, and those families had grandchildren, and then they retired from General Motors or Borg-Warner or whatever it might have been. And there were grandchildren who watched play basketball. So people don't always go back. Not all the Jews went back to Babylon. And many who didn't, who stayed, sorry, they didn't go back to Jerusalem, those who stayed in Babylon essentially stayed in what I would call a mediocre life.

A mediocre life. It wasn't necessarily horrible. Maybe they were probably successful, and they were getting on with their life. Many of them maybe lost a bit of the distinction that they had as Jews. But the ones who went back to Jerusalem knew who they were. They knew the story that they were a part of.

And they knew their Bible, their scriptures, their story to that point because they knew what I was going to do. And as Isaiah had said, Ezekiel had been among them during that time, they knew who they were. They knew their story. And they were led back by competent people, and they went back. They were not interested in staying in Babylon. They wanted to be a part, they wanted to continue the story that had started when they were, that went all the way back to Sinai when God said, I will make of you a kingdom of priests, a holy people. They were part of something bigger than themselves, and they wanted to continue. So they went back. And they did.

Now, let's pick up the story. Those who returned, the way I like to put it, they had decided, not to stay in a mediocre life in Babylon, getting on with the ways of Babylon, but they, like Moses, had decided to throw in their lot with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of Egypt. They decided to use a phrase from the book of Jeremiah, they decided to run with the horses. Jeremiah 12. They decided to run with God, and the pounding, strong hoofbeats of a herd of horses, the difficulties and the challenges that that would be. And so they did. But they met opposition when they went back. If you go back to Ezra, Chapter 4, it begins the story that says in verse 4, that the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the descendants of the captivity were building the temple of the Lord God of Israel. And they came to Zerubbabel, their leader, and the heads of the father's houses, and they said, Let us build with them, for we seek your God as you do, and we have sacrificed to Him for many days. But Zerubbabel and Joshua and the rest of them said, You have nothing to do with us to build this house. We alone will build the house of the Lord God of Israel, as King Cyrus has said. This is in Ezra, Chapter 4.

And the people of the land tried to discourage the people of Judah, and they troubled them in building, and they hired counselors to frustrate their purpose during the days of Cyrus until the reign of Darius, the king of Persia. They experienced opposition from people who were there, who were not Jews, and yet identified somehow with it and wanted to be a part of it, and they said, No, you will not. And so they made accusations to Cyrus and they got it stopped. And when you go back now to Haggai, you find that as the story opens in the story of Haggai, they had stopped the work of building the temple for some time. In verse 2 of Haggai 1, it says, Haggai said to the people, The time has not come, the time that the Lord's house should be built. The word of the Lord came to Haggai. Is it time for you to dwell in your paneled houses and this temple to lie in ruins? They had been put off by the opposition that had been stirred up by the people at this moment. And for several years, they stopped. But they had to eat, they planted, they built homes, they devoted their time, energies, and talents to that, rather than their prime mission of rebuilding the temple. It was a physical edifice. But keep in mind that the real meaning of Haggai for you and I today as we read it is that we are in the midst of building a spiritual temple, being a part of that as we do our work, as we work among ourselves, as we overcome the challenges and the oppositions of our lives, our own selves, this world, matters that we have to deal with. The people here at the time of Haggai got distracted, which happens even among people who are dedicated and motivated, as you and I are. Life happens fast, as the commercial a few years ago was saying. Life comes at you kind of fast. Things happen. The years go by. In this case, they had opposition.

And the prophet goes on in verse 5, and he says in verse 5, therefore, thus says the Lord God of hosts, consider your ways. Now, we don't know anything about Haggai. He likely came back with them, probably having been born in Babylon. And no doubt he was a pious, dedicated individual. And God kind of brings him out of the ranks and gives him a message.

He knows that he has to say something to the people. And so he begins to do so. And the message that God gives him here in these first verses, essentially, are little nuggets of his messages that he would have given as he kind of went around the streets in Jerusalem.

And here is the essence of it as it comes down. Consider your ways. Think about what you're doing. Look at your life. Look at what our mission is as a people. Look at what is yet to be done and think it through. Every year before the Passover, the Days of Unleavened Bread, what do we do? We consider our ways, don't we? We think about our life and where we are in relationship with God as we prepare ourselves to take that very important service of rededication and commemoration of Christ's suffering and death and prepare ourselves for the Days of Unleavened Bread and that examination that comes along as we examine exactly where our lives are. We consider our ways.

Now going back to verse 6 here, he says, you've sown much, you bring in little, you eat, but you don't have enough. You drink, but you're not filled with drink. You clothe yourselves, but no one's warm, and he who earns wages earns wages to put it into a bag with holes.

Sounds like my 403 account right now, especially since the first of this year with all the gyrations of the stock market. There's been a few holes to spring up in my 403b retirement account. How about yours? We work and we clothe ourselves, but there's another sale to go to. There's another job to go to. We eat, but we don't have enough. We're going to eat here today and hope we get enough. You guys have good potlucks here in Dayton, and I know about that. But really what the prophet is describing is life that goes along. Does it distract or does it enhance? Do we use our goods and our money and our wealth and our time and our energies and gifts wisely before God to where there is satisfaction with our life? What he's describing here is an unsatisfied life, not quite fulfilled in whatever way.

One of the matters of considering our ways is to ask ourselves, are we satisfied with what we have done and where we are? Many of us are at that point. The younger ones in our crowd here today, you've got a lot of years ahead of you. Many of us who are older and there's more years behind us than there is in front of us, we think about these things perhaps a little differently now. We say, what have I not done that I need to do? If only I were 42 again. Lately I'm saying if only I were 55 again, that's looking pretty good, right? A little more time. And what I would do. Again, I have no regrets, no major regrets in terms of the large major choices of my life. I may have other smaller regrets, but I have no regrets about who I am, what I've done, and the job that God has given to me, the years in the ministry, none at all. But we consider our ways. Verse 7, he says, again, consider your ways. Go to the mountains, bring wood, and build the temple, that I may take pleasure in it, and be glorified, says the Lord. You looked for much, but indeed it came to little. And when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why? He said. And here's helping them to understand a bit of dissatisfaction. One of the reasons in this particular case these people, and there's a lesson for us too. He says, why did I blow it away? Why does it seem to not be satisfying? Because of my house that is in ruins, while every one of you runs to his own house. Therefore the heavens above you withhold the dew, and the earth withholds its fruit. For I called for a drought on the land and the mountains, on the grain, the new wine, and the oil, on whatever the ground brings forth of men, livestock, and on all the labors of your hands.

So here's a couple of vignettes of the message that Haggai went through the streets and marketplaces, and where the intersections of the tiny town of Jerusalem brought people out, and they gathered during the days and allowed him to speak and to bring this about. And his message had an impact. These two forms of it, maybe there were more, but these are the two that come down to us, they had their impact. Because when we come to chapter, well, here in verse 12, then Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, and Joshua the son of Jehoshadek, the priest, with all the remnant of the people, obeyed the voice of the Lord their God. And the words of the prophet, and the people feared the presence of the Lord. Then Haggai, the Lord's messenger, spoke the message to the people, saying, I'm with you, says the Lord. They heeded, and they began to get back to the job of building the temple. Now, when you put it together here down in verse 14, let's just go ahead and read 14 and 15. So the Lord stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, the governor of Judah, and the spirit of Joshua, the high priest, and the spirit of all the remnant of the people. So the two leaders, Zerubbabel and Joshua, were moved with a sense of meaning, purpose, and urgency, and a rededication, and the people, the spirit of the remnant of the people. They were indeed a remnant. They were a small group compared to what had been there 70 years earlier of Judah at the time of its collapse.

And no doubt, just again, many had not come back. So it was a remnant of the people. Remnant is an interesting phrase. It's not a negative matter. As I said, in this case, these are people who knew who they were, they knew their story, and they wanted to continue that story, and they stayed with it. And after nearly two generations, they went back to Jerusalem to do that. They came, it says, and they worked on the house of the Lord, their God, on the 24th day of the sixth month in the second year of King Darius. This was then about a period of three weeks. From the time Haggai first uttered his message, as we're told in verse 1, to the time when they began to do it, was three weeks. In other words, his message provoked a revival among the people in a matter of three weeks, and they changed. And they rededicated themselves. They went back to the work. They overcame their opposition. They didn't worry about it, and they went back three weeks.

The articles that I read about changing a habit, transforming your life, or overcoming something, whatever it might be, a smoking habit, or getting up earlier, or overcoming procrastination, several places over the years I've read that most feel, people who study human behavior, that it takes about three weeks, 21 days, to change a habit. Three solid weeks of working every day at it, and you can see that there's a change. You can see a change. It becomes more natural. It becomes more part of your routine, your life, your mindset. Three weeks. What's three weeks from the time Haggai began his prods, with God's words, to the time that they rededicated themselves, got back to rebuilding the temple. A revival took place in a very short period of time.

It doesn't take long to turn a group of people around. When the message is right, and in this case the message was right, the cause was right, and God's Spirit was involved.

And God's Spirit is with us, because we are being built by that Spirit into a temple of God today, a spiritual temple that is being fitly framed together of different people from different walks of life and races and ethnicities in this experience that we are a part of. A small part in our time, even at our biggest. But nonetheless, a significant part of that. This has been done.

And so for you and I to look at where we are and what is taking place in our lives, if we have that same Spirit we do, and we need to be stirred up, then let's look at stirring that Spirit up. In 2 Timothy 1, hold your place here, Paul writes to Timothy at a later time, but with the same instruction that can teach us, verse 6 of 2 Timothy 1, therefore he says, I remind you to stir up the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands.

That's the Holy Spirit given to us upon repentance, faith, baptism, the very power of God. For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but a power and of love and of a sound mind. This is what each member of the body of Christ, each converted individual who has repented, been baptized, and with the laying on of the hands have received, it is the very power of God. And it is a power of not a fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind. It's one of the great verses for us always to keep in mind when we want to really be understanding what God has given us, what is at our disposal, and what we need to get back to to overcome fear or to be revived ourselves, to be rededicated to God, to a calling, to a fellowship, to a commitment. Where God's spirit is, is a very powerful thing.

And God knows when He gives it. God knows we know when we have it.

And certainly in terms of the process of salvation, it's critical, it's essential, and it's very powerful. And it can be stirred up. I mentioned two weeks ago in Nashville, where we had individuals who had not been a part of the church for 20 years come out.

Was God's spirit stirring them, rekindling something that had lain dormant, not completely extinguished for a period of time? How many others may be there in that position that God is still, in a sense, able to work with when it gets stirred up?

Keep in mind as we look at the message of Haggai, it was a prophet, it was a servant taking the words of God and stirring up a high priest, a governor, and the remnant of the people, working within them from the words of God. As you and I feed on the Word of God, as we study it, as we let it teach us, it can stir us to faith, it can stir us to love, it can stir us to a sound mind, and it can help us to erase the fear, the fears of life. If you go back to these Jews that got, they were fearful as to what was taking place and it allowed them to stop. They let the opposition for a few people. If you go back to Haggai, and actually, if you've kept your place back in Ezra, just to look at chapter 5 of Ezra, chapter 5 of Ezra verse 1, this is a parallel to what we're reading in Haggai. It says, the prophet, then the prophet Haggai and Zechariah, one of the other minor prophets, prophesied to the Jews in Judah and Jerusalem in the name of the God of Israel who was over them.

So that Zerubbabel and Joshua rose up and began to build the house of God in Jerusalem, and the prophets of God were with them helping them. So verse 1 and 2 tell us what we just read back in Haggai 1 of what they were stirred up to do. But if you would read on here in Ezra 5, you will see that they met opposition again. Some of the gentile neighbors said, you can't be doing this. And they took it back to the Persian court once again. We won't go into that story, but this time it was different. Joshua and Zerubbabel and the remnant of the people didn't give in to the fear. They kept doing it. And in a few months, they finished the temple.

It's a fascinating story that Ezra tells in parallel with what Haggai and Zechariah show.

There was a second wave of opposition that went all the way up to the highest levels of the Persian court, but they did search. They found the decree of Cyrus, and they said, no, it goes forward. And the people didn't stop. They had come to a point where they overcame their fear.

And they continued to work at that, and they eventually got it done.

Now, there's a lesson for us. They had opposition.

We face opposition, too. Through the years, we've had many different epics and waves of the church that I've been a part of. And there was one major period of outside opposition that I well remember a number of years ago from the state. But you know something? As I look back through the years, so much of the opposition that has hindered our building and our working on the temple today in the church has been from within. We've been very good at generating opposition within.

And I don't mean to dwell on that. I think we understand that. And there's a lesson there.

So, we don't let it stop us today. Right now, we have peace to do the work, to preach the gospel, to prepare a people, to care for the people. Despite all of the internal opposition that we have had to endure, we're still standing. About a year ago, we started talking with a group of business in Cincinnati to work with us on a design logo for the magazine, The Beyond Today. And in the initial meeting, we had to kind of get to know them and they get to know us. We talked a little bit of history teaching and even a little bit of some of the problems that we've been through. And the comment was made, well, we're still here.

And those of us around the table in that room at that moment, we said, others have left us. We're still here doing what we said we were doing 20 years ago. And that thought caught in my mind. I said, yeah, that's right. We're still here.

We're still here doing what we said we were going to do. You're still here.

And to be here takes a lot of dedication and courage and the removal of fear from our life, overcoming it or managing it in its worst manifestations when the fears that will come that sometimes age brings, health brings. Those are strong fears that are part of life that we all know will be there, have been. And we have to manage those. Other fears we just need to deal with and remove so that they don't cripple us corporately as a group and cause us to diminish our responsibility. Fear crops up all too often in the church. And some quarters that creates people, creates uncertainty. Things could be said. People might fear, you know, with the doctrine of the church and what we went through 20 years ago, there's been a lingering fear of that very often will crop its head up that any change or anything could create a problem or even a hint of a change, not that there's any changes out there. In terms of doctrine, I teach the doctrines of the United Church of God at Ambassador Bible College. We have 20 fundamental beliefs. We have a number of teachings that are not codified as fundamentals of belief.

But I always say we've got a lifetime of understanding, even with the 20 that we have, that we can appreciate and work with. But sometimes people fear that. Sometimes people fear shifts in culture or aspects of our tradition that they perhaps want to hold on to when we change the name of the magazine from the good news to beyond today. We had very strong, viable reasons to do it, but there were some that opposition or just concerns that were voiced because the good news is a part of a tradition of our past. And it's always been a very comfortable title and name and a brand, if you will, for us to have. I remember 20 years ago when we put that on our magazine, there was a reason and a good reason, and there was a good reason to make the change this time, but I just use that as an example of some of the things that can come up. And we cannot look at the church and the work of the church from any perspective of fear. That can only debilitate us because there's nothing to fear. God doesn't give us a spirit of fear but of love, power, and a sound of mine. And those things need to be understood. There's enough fear in the world today—I don't know if you've noticed that or not—but people are scared. That's why our political race this year is so turned upside down. People fear the barbarians coming in from the Middle East, ISIS, and they have made inroads into Europe and into America. People fear cultural change, and we have gone through a significant cultural change with Supreme Court rulings on same-sex marriage last year and other major shifts in the culture. And it's not the world I grew up in.

How about you? Things have changed. There is the fear of the economy and jobs, and people are fearful about that as well. I mean, the very words we read here in the first chapter of Haggai about bags with holes in it and not being satisfied. And that's part of the things today. I was reading a piece, an op-ed piece yesterday, by Charles Krauthammer, who's a commentator. You see him every night on Fox News. He was writing about the candidates, and he mentioned about Mr. Trump.

And he said the reason he has garnered such support among the evangelical community—and this really helped me figure it out why. Because a few days ago in South Carolina, he swept the evangelical vote away from the other two frontrunners who tout their evangelical Christian identity, and Donald Trump swept all of that. And he may be a bit challenged in some of those areas himself. I won't go into any more of that. But they voted for him in South Carolina.

Mr. Krauthammer was saying it's because they fear. They fear the barbarian at the gate coming in, and they also fear the evangelicals, the erosion of their culture and religious liberty in the world—in America today. Believe me, religion has suffered a lot because of decisions in the last seven years. But Mr. Krauthammer said that Mr. Trump is basically saying, I'll be the centurion that stands at the gate and keeps the barbarians from coming in, and will deal with the internal opposition there. And that's why evangelicals in South Carolina and across the board voted for him, as opposed to someone else who may have better religious credentials. It's just a sign of our times and the fear that is here. The people in the time of Haggai had to deal with that fear. And as I said, they overcame it. If you go back to Haggai 2, and look at them as they went on and how God worked with them.

Verse 4, he says, Be strong, Zerubbabel, be strong, Joshua, be strong, all you people of the land, and work, for I am with you, says the Lord of hosts. According to the word that I coveted with you when you came out of Egypt, so my spirit remains among you, do not fear. It's one of the great two passage verses and two verse passages of the Bible. Be strong, do not be afraid, I am with you. Be strong, do not fear, I am with you. It's a good code for life. Be strong, do not fear, God is with us. The kids sang words to that effect in one of their songs that they gave us here today.

God is with us. This is what God wanted them to know and gave this through Haggai.

And he goes on verse 6, for thus says the Lord, Once more I will shake heaven and earth, the sea and the dry land, and I will shake all nations, and they will come to the desire of all nations, and I will fill this temple with glory.

God was shaking the nations even at that time, and they knew it, and they understood it. We're living in a period where the nations are being shaken today. I firmly believe that there's an upheaval being worked out among the nations with the turmoil of the Middle East and in Europe, and even the retreat of America. We are living through an epic of politics and the powers among the nations and changes that are reshaping our world, and I think God's hand is in it.

So I don't fear, nor should you, if we are like these people with their shoulders to the work that is in front of us. And that work in the front of us is the work of building the spiritual temple.

God goes on here in this chapter to basically explain a few things to them, beginning in verse 10, that can be a bit obscure. He says, ask a priest in verse 11 concerning the law, if the person carries holy meat in the fold of his garment with the edge of his garment, he touches bread or stew, wine or oil or any food, will it become holy? And the priest answered, no. The guy says, well, if one touches one who is unclean because of a dead body touches any of these, will it be unclean? And they said, well, yes, it will be. The guy said, so is this people and so is this nation before me and so is every work of their hands. And what they offer there is unclean. Life goes on. And really what the point is being made here is that holiness is a rare thing and it's not achieved overnight. Uncleanness can spread quite quickly, like that leaven that we are told leavens the whole lump.

Holiness is a very precious commodity. And as it applied to the people here, they were not getting the job done completely and they had to be reminded about it and stirred back to it. They had a name and a story, but the fire was not lit until Haggai came along and did it.

And they got lit and they got the job done. Is it burning in our lives? Is it burning in our fellowship? Is it burning with us? We have a work to do to not only preach the gospel, but to prepare a people. The spiritual preparation of the disciples that God calls is an ongoing effort that involves a whole church effort to bring us all to the measure and the stature of the fullness of Jesus Christ. We have a job to make known the good news of Jesus Christ and the kingdom of God, but we also have a job to prepare a people. As we look for that kingdom to come, we also have a job to live that kingdom today. And that's what we are to do. To let God's Spirit be stirred within us, to stand today in the temple, the spiritual temple, and live righteously according to the words of this life. That is our calling.

As I was growing up in the church, one of the maxims and sayings that I heard and remembered and has always impacted me was that we grow spiritually to the degree that our hearts are in the work. Today, I take that to not just mean the work of proclaiming the gospel of God's kingdom, but also the work of preparing a people. They all work hand in glove together.

We must continue to be focusing upon the growth and the development of the spiritual temple of God for all of us who have been at it decade after decade after decade and may be entering into the final years of our own life and our effort at that. I count myself among you. I'll go on Medicare this year. Okay? So there. Full disclosure. My wife started drawing her Social Security this year, small as it is, but every little bit helps. Right? As I said, there's more behind me than there is in front of me, but I'm determined to live them all well and to do all that I can to help God's people live well as well. One of the things that I feel and see that we need is to grow in the love of God. In John chapter 15, verse 9, Christ says, As the Father loved me, I also have loved you, abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love. Just as I've kept my Father's commandments and abide in His love, these things I have spoken to you that my joy may remain in you and that your joy may be full. Very positive, very encouraging, very uplifting.

This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than to lay down one's life for his friends. You're my friends. If you do whatever I command you.

Verse 17, These things I command you that you love one another. And what it is said back in chapter 14, By this shall all know that you are my disciples, if you have love, one for another.

The Church of God, the United Church of God, must come together and grow together in the love of God.

I talked about doctrine a while ago, and the elders have been deciding aspects of our bylaws about the votes about doctrine. And there was an effort to create an additional fundamental belief on marriage that was proposed. And it's likely to come back around at some point in the future.

And adding a 21st fundamental belief on the doctrine of marriage. We all know what we teach, but we felt that some have felt that we needed to embed that in our fundamentals of belief.

That'll be the end of that discussion has not been held, I'm sure. And I'm not opposed personally to that. We'll see how that all works out. But in thinking about this sermon today, I'm thinking, you know what? I'm going to propose a fundamental belief of my own.

I'm going to propose a fundamental belief on love.

That I think we need a fundamental belief called love. Love is all you need.

Because that's what we do need. Now, we need all the other fundamentals of belief, too.

But in our zeal to be right, in our zeal to obey God, we cannot ignore the matter of love.

Love will overcome whatever opposition that rises internally. Love will overcome fear.

Love will overcome doubt. God has given us a spirit of power and of love and a sound mind.

And if we grow in that love one for another, we'll be doing a very critical part to build the temple of God and our part within the body of Christ. To live that kingdom, to live the values and the teachings of the kingdom today. We must love one another, or we will die.

We must love one another, or we will become irrelevant.

We must love one another, or we will become a footnote in the story of the Church of God.

We, brethren, must love one another, or God will raise up stones to serve Him.

We need a fundamental belief called love.

And all of our dealings and all of our efforts, love for God, love for one another, that can overcome fear, doubt, the pointing of the finger, the accusation, the suspicion, wherever it might arise, in any of us, in our midst, among ourselves, from any portion of any quarter, whatever, while we obey God, while we serve Him, and while we do His work.

And His work is the preaching of the Gospel and the preparing of a people.

And our time to do that is now. It has been upon us for a long period of time. Our time to do that is now. In Colossians 3, verse 12, Paul says, As the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, and longsuffering, bearing with one another, forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another, even as Christ forgave you, so also you must do. But above all these things, put on love, which is the bond of perfection, and let the peace of God rule in your hearts, again, the spirit of power and love and of a sound mind. Let the Word of God, of Christ, dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another, in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. And whatever you do, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.

Pray for that love to bind us together, to give us the courage to believe God that He is with us and to resist whatever opposition might arise internally or externally that would hinder us from the work of perfecting the temple and perfecting the bride and all the analogies and teachings that are there to teach us of how we are to be drawing together. I do ask that you be praying for that work to be done, that more people would engage with us and experience the truths of God and the life-changing transformative power of God's Holy Spirit and a relationship with the Father of Jesus Christ. Pray for that. But pray for one another as you do. And redouble your efforts to pray for one another, that God would raise up and encourage those who need courage, heal those who need to be healed, give grace to all who need that grace to deal with the challenges and the struggles of life that will come. We hear about them regularly from our fellowship, and we all need to be praying for one another more. And doing those tangible acts of kindness with humility and meekness that really demonstrate the love of God.

Less finger-pointing, less accusation, less fear, more love, more of the love of God and Jesus Christ within us as we obey Him and do His commandments, as Christ said, and demonstrate that love for Him. Those are the words of life that we hear and need to be reminded of as we all stand within the temple, hearing them, living them, experiencing them, the very life of God's calling that's binding and drawing us together into a finished product of the spiritual temple in the body of Jesus Christ.

If we commit ourselves to that, God will be with us. If we consider our ways and mend what needs to be mended, start now in that preparation process for the upcoming holy days to help us be able to stand before God with confidence, with courage, and with conviction, as He continues His work of building a spiritual temple of which we all are apart and in which we stand.