Haggai - Part 1

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, it's a delight to welcome to you the first third week of Keswick. We're thrilled to have you with us and we're looking forward to God doing great things amongst us. The lady very kindly came into the reception last night and said, can I pay to come to one or two of the convention sessions? I'm only here for a day or two, can I pay to come in? We were happy to say, well, there's no charge, all the sessions are entirely free and you're welcome to come to as many as you're able. But of course, the convention does need financing. And as you came in this morning, you would receive a yellow gift aid form and an offering envelope. We're not going to take an offering this morning, but on tonight and tomorrow night and Wednesday night, there will be an opportunity for you to contribute to the expenses of the convention. We are facing increased costs this year, not least because we're doing three weeks rather than two weeks, but also because of additional publicity that was required because of all the scare that the foot and mouth disease in this area created to let people know that the convention was still going ahead. Also our income is down. You may know that we have a convention centre here and above the centre there is accommodation which we let out to church and youth groups throughout the year. Because of the foot and mouth disease, our income has come down along with many other people in Keswick. So we would particularly encourage you to give generously this year. If the Lord blesses you through the ministry, then please help us to finance the convention. There is no registration charge and we rely entirely upon what you kind folk give in the offerings. We encourage you to come and to pay the costs of your accommodation and to being here. We encourage you to buy audio tapes and videotapes and we encourage you to buy books. We hope that there will be a little bit left over to put into the offering to help us finance the costs of the meetings. On Wednesday evening, there will be a special retiring offering. There will be the normal offering during the meeting but there will be a retiring offering which will go to the Cumbria Community Recovery Fund which is helping businesses, farmers and traders in the area to overcome the devastation of the foot and mouth disease. So as you leave after the Wednesday evening meeting, there will be an opportunity for you to give to that. We have done that in the two previous weeks so that we can give a tangible expression of our love and concern for those who are most severely affected. We trust that you are going to enjoy the week, that the Lord will speak to each one of us and bless us and we are so delighted to have you here. Thank you for coming. Thank you, David, and it's my great pleasure and privilege now to welcome on your behalf Stuart Briscoe who is going to be bringing our Bible readings this week. A number of you will know Stuart from previous visits but to quite a number of you I imagine that he's someone that you haven't met before. And so each morning this week I'm going to ask Stuart one or two questions which will allow him to say a little bit about himself. And so let's first of all welcome Stuart who has come a long way across the pond to be with us along with Jill, his wife, so let's welcome Stuart. Stuart, I know that you live in foreign parts and have done so for many years but you're actually a true Cumbrian, aren't you, and I wondered if you could say something to us this morning about the formative influences in your early years which you spent here in Cumbria, things that shaped you, that you've taken with you into the years of ministry that have followed across the world. I'd certainly be happy to do that, Ian, it's just too bad that I won't have time for the Bible reading after it. I was born at an extremely early age in a little town called Millam in Cumberland. It's so small that the people who live in Millam have to look on the map to see where it is. I was born in 1930, which means that I was born in the midst of an economic depression. The war started in 1939 and concluded in 1945, and two years afterwards I was drafted into the Royal Marines because we had another war in Korea, and so I was demobilized from the Marines when I was 21. So when I was 21 I sat down and I looked over my life so far, and it had been a depression, a war, a post-war, and a war. And if you ask about the formative influences in my life, they were a depression, a war, a post-war, and another war. It does something to you. In addition to that, because I grew up in Cumberland, I was subjected to Cumbrian weather. That does something to you as well. The remarkable thing is that I survived all these things and did reasonably well beyond survival. The obvious reason for that was, in my understanding, that I was privileged to be brought up in a Christian home, that I came to faith in early years, that I came under the very powerful influence of the Torchbearers as a teenager, that I was thrust into preaching as a teenager, and very quickly became involved in reaching out to young people. And so even though I went into the business world, I achieved my lifetime ambition when I was 17, which does not mean I was precocious. It simply meant that I had very few ambitions, and my ambition was simply to leave school as quickly as possible. And so I did that, but even though I entered into a business career, I engaged in ministry in my spare time in those days, and very quickly became deeply involved in reaching out to young people. So there was a whole mix of formative influences that I believe, in the business world, in the Marines, playing rugby, growing in Cumberland weather, Christian home, all these things came together to help to make me the person that I am. Thank you, everyone. In the second year of King Darius, on the first day of the sixth month, the word of the Lord came through the prophet Haggai to Zerubbabel, son of Shelteel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua, son of Jehozadak, the high priest. This is what the Lord Almighty says. These people say the time has not yet come for the Lord's house to be built. Then the word of the Lord came through the prophet Haggai. Is it a time for you yourselves to be living in your panelled houses while this house remains a ruin? Give careful thought to your ways. You have planted much, but have harvested little. You eat, but you never have enough. You drink, but you never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it. Give careful thought to your ways. Go up into the mountains and bring down timber and build the house so that I may take pleasure in it and be honoured. You expected much, but see, it turned out to be little. What you brought home, I blew away. Why? Because of my house, which remains a ruin, while each of you is busy with his own house. Therefore, because of you, the heavens have withheld their dew and the earth its crops. I called for a drought on the fields and the mountains, on the grain, the new wine and the oil, and whatever the ground produces, on men and cattle and on the labour of your hands. Then Zerubbabel, son of Shelteel, Joshua, son of Jehoshadak, the high priest, and the whole remnant of the people obeyed the voice of the Lord their God and the message of the prophet Haggai, because the Lord their God had sent him, and the people feared the Lord. Then Haggai, the Lord's messenger, gave this message of the Lord to the people. I am with you, declares the Lord. So the Lord stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel, son of Shelteel, governor of Judah, and the spirit of Joshua, son of Jehoshadak, the high priest, and the spirit of the whole remnant of the people. They came and began to work on the house of the Lord Almighty, their God, on the twenty-fourth day of the sixth month in the second year of King Darius. Greetings to all of you on this beautiful morning in sunny, warm Keswick. And greetings also to those of you who are listening by radio, courtesy of Premier Radio in London, down in the southeast of the United Kingdom, and particular greetings to listeners of Telling the Truth, our daily broadcast which has just concluded, and now you're saying to yourselves, not Briscoe again. And the answer is, yes, I'm afraid so, and you're in danger of overdosing. But we are delighted to be with you, and thank you for giving us this opportunity. Now a few months ago Peter Maiden, the chairman of the Keswick Convention, telephoned me. He said that he was at Heathrow Airport. He was calling on his cell phone, and he had to catch a plane in a few minutes, and would I teach Haggai. I think he carefully designed it that way so that I would not have time to discuss it, like Haggai who? Or who is Haggai? And so I agreed, certainly I'll be very happy to teach Haggai at this year's Keswick Convention. Then of course I had to get down to the task of preparing this, and I must say that it has been a very exciting time for me, and I trust that as we look into this very small prophecy we too will find it relevant and exciting. Let me therefore introduce the first chapter to you by pointing out to you that this is the record of a message that Haggai gave to the children of Israel. You'll notice that the prophecy, even though it extends only over two chapters, contains four messages. That's rather convenient as we have four sessions. I don't know if that had anything to do with the committee's choice of this passage. And we will simply take one message each morning this week. As far as an outline of the first message in chapter one goes, I believe you've been given a printed copy of my outline, and for the benefit of those of you who don't have one or are listening by radio, there are three things that I want to draw to your attention. First of all I'll talk to you about the characters in this chapter, then secondly the circumstances, and then thirdly the challenge. For the theme of this first message is that it is a message of challenge, a message of challenge which Haggai brings to his contemporaries. The characters who are involved in this particular story are first of all our friend Haggai. You will notice that he is called in verse one a prophet. In verse 13 he is described as the Lord's messenger. In verse 14 we are told that he is the one whom the Lord has sent. Excuse me, verse 12. So here we have three descriptive terms for this man. He is a prophet. He is the messenger of the Lord. He is the one whom the Lord has specifically sent. If we turn back to the book of Ezra, and don't bother doing that because this will be a very brief visit, we read a little more information about Haggai. He is called the one who prophesied to the Jews in Judah and Jerusalem in the name of the God of Israel who was over him. Or along with his friend Zechariah, it actually says they prophesied in the name of the God of Israel who was over them. Now put all that together. He is a prophet. He is sent by the Lord. He is the messenger of the Lord. And he speaks what the God of Israel has told him to speak because the God of Israel is over him. And furthermore in Ezra chapter 5 and chapter 6 we are told that what God told him to say was an explanation of the commands of God. So immediately we see that Haggai is a person upon whose life the hand of God uniquely rests in calling and empowering and enabling, for he has a monumentally important task. It is to let people know what God is saying. Walter Brueggemann, the theologian, describes the prophet's role as follows. He says the role of the prophet is, quote, to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us. That's a bit of a mouthful, but let me give it to you again. The prophet's role is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us. Perhaps I can put it in a slightly different way. Many years ago I was invited to speak in Germany to a group of men who were all living in a home for recovering alcoholics. They were all Germans, veterans of the German army, veterans of the Second World War. Practically all of them had been very severely wounded during the war and had turned to alcohol as a method of trying to assuage their pain and their difficulties. Behind me, as I spoke each morning of that particular week, there was a large tapestry that these men had made. It was a picture of a river with many fish going in one direction and one fish going in the opposite direction. And in German, translated into English, for your benefit this morning, it said these words. Any dead fish can go with the stream. It takes a live one to swim against it. The prophet is a live one. He sees the way that the culture is going. He knows that all kinds of people are carried along by the culture. He has something alternative to say, alternative to the consciousness and perceptions of the culture of his day. The end of the Second World War, one of the great German preachers and theologians called Helmut Thielicke was described as a modern prophet. This is what it said about him. This modern prophet deflated the proud, comforted the broken, inspired the hopeless, and challenged the bewildered and skeptical. End quote. That's the prophet. And that is our friend Hagiai. The second character here is King Darius. King Darius was the king of the Persian Empire. You can read about him in Ezra chapters 5 and 6. Incidentally, if you want to see how Hagiai fits into the rest of the Old Testament, you will be amazed the contact that he has with all kinds of other writers in the Old Testament. He was the emperor or the king of the superpower of the day. It was a vast, vast empire, the Persian Empire. And when he came to power, he had a monumental engraving made in the side of a mountain, which you can still see to this day. And it describes him as follows. The great king, king of kings, king of Persia, king of countries. He was numero uno at the time. He was on the top of the heap. He was in charge of the major superpower of the day. The third character is Zerubbabel. Zerubbabel was appointed as governor of Judah. His responsibility was to oversee the returning exiles to Jerusalem. More about that in just a moment. And to oversee the task that they had been given, a massive undertaking. And he had a very, very significant role to play. He was a grandson, in a rather convoluted way, of the deposed king Jehoiakim. You will notice in Ezra that the person who was put in charge of the returning exiles rejoiced in the name of Shesh-Bazar. Incidentally, pay careful attention to these names, because you will be required to fulfill a test on them before you're allowed to exit this tent. Nobody knows what happened to Shesh-Bazar, because after he was sent there in charge, he seems to disappear off the edge of the earth. Some people think that he died prematurely and that Zerubbabel took over. Other people think that the two names refer to the same person. We don't know. But what we do know is that Zerubbabel, governor of this tiny little piece of real estate called Judah, in charge of the rebuilding project in Jerusalem, we know that he is a prince. Fourthly, we have Joshua the high priest. He, under Persian rule, had been given joint rulership along with Zerubbabel. But the star of this whole cast of characters is undoubtedly the one who speaks with great authority, and he is described as the Lord Almighty. The Lord, of course, you'll notice, is printed in uppercase letters, which refers to his name Yahweh or Jehovah. When it says that he is the Lord Almighty, it means literally he is Yahweh of hosts. And the word host can refer to hosts of angels or hosts of armies. It has this idea that he is all-powerful or all-mighty. And these beleaguered people returning to Jerusalem, trying to undertake this big task that they've been given, really need to know that Jehovah is almighty, because they will need to draw upon his resources. So much then for the cast of characters. You'll notice we have a prince, we have a prophet, we have a priest, and we have a king, or if you like, a potentate. Now here, secondly, we have the circumstances. Let me take a few minutes—that's a preacher's few minutes, which for everybody else is usually an interminable amount of time—but let me take a few minutes just to describe what I would call the circumstances to give you the setting of this particular story. In 2 Samuel chapter 7 we have the account of the Lord speaking to the great king David. Great King David is feeling a little embarrassed. He has spent quite some considerable time and expense building himself a very, very nice palace. But then he talks to his friend Nathan the prophet, and he says, Here I am living in a palace of cedar, while the ark of God remains in a tent. And so Nathan says, Well, what do you have in mind? You're in good terms with the Lord. Whatever you have in mind, I'm sure the Lord can let you do it. And David says, What I would really like to do, I'd like to build a house for the Lord. And the Lord gets back to him and says, No, you won't do that, but your son Solomon will. But then the message of the Lord in 2 Samuel chapter 7 goes on to say, But the Lord himself will establish a house for you. Now here there's a slight change in meaning. David is talking about building a house or a temple in which the ark of the Lord can be placed. But as the Lord responds to him, he talks first of all about what David is talking about. And then he enlarges the theme and begins to talk about establishing a house for David. And as he goes on to explain this, he said that this house will become a kingdom. It will be a kingdom where there is a succession of kings. And in verse 16 he says, Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me. Your throne will be established forever. Now the significance of this, of course, becomes even more apparent when we remember that in Luke chapter 1, verses 32 and 33, in the announcement to the virgin that Messiah is going to be born, we are told this, He, that is the child who will be born, will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever. His kingdom will never end. Well now here we're seeing the establishing by God of the great royal line coming from King David. A great royal line, a great kingdom that will extend forever and forever that includes, among other things, Messiah himself. Which gives us, of course, a sense in which God is far expanding the boundaries and promising that His kingdom, His grand eternal kingdom, will eventually come. That is why when we pray the Lord's Prayer to this day, we prayed it yesterday morning in the Methodist church where I was preaching, we pray, among other things, Thy kingdom come. Which kingdom? The kingdom that was promised to King David, the kingdom that will come from Him in a direct succession, but of course will be the Messianic kingdom of which Jesus is King. That was how this Davidic kingdom started out. Things went very well for a very short period of time. But after the demise of David and subsequently the decease of Solomon, the kingdom became divided into Israel and Judah. Not long after that, Israel totally collapsed. It had made a unilateral declaration of independence from Judah and fell to the Assyrians in 722 B.C. You can read about it in 2 Kings chapter 17. That left Judah, centered in Jerusalem, very vulnerable. And eventually Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar in July 587 B.C. You can read about that in 2 Kings 25. Before that, there had been two deportations of the cream of the crop from Jerusalem, one in 605 B.C. That deportation, incidentally, included Daniel, and one in 597 B.C., you can read about that in 2 Kings 24, and that included Ezekiel. Now, have you got all that? You say, no, but at least you know that I know it. Well, now, what is the point of all this? Well, the point of all this is to show you that there is a grand history behind what we're going to be reading in Haggai. So we have the promise of this great kingdom. We see the division of this kingdom, and then we see the collapse of both Israel and Judah. The Babylonians are the ones who have captured Judah. The Assyrians are the ones who have overthrown Israel. But eventually, the Assyrians and the Babylonians themselves are overthrown, and the Persians come and take their place. Do you see a pattern here? The pattern here is that a superpower comes to the fore, and then it is overpowered by a subsequent superpower, which is then overwhelmed by a subsequent superpower. There is something very interesting about history, isn't there? And the fascinating thing to us, of course, is that as we read the Bible, we see that a superpower supersedes superpower. You try and say that quickly. We see that in this train of events that God is mightily at work. And eventually the Babylonians and the Assyrians are overthrown, and the Persians take over. Now the great king of the Persians at this time is a gentleman by the name of Cyrus. Cyrus, the king of the Persians, we read about him in Isaiah chapter 44 and in chapter 45. Let me just read to you very, very quickly a couple of things about Cyrus that I mentioned in Isaiah chapter 44 and chapter 45. This is what it says at the end of chapter 44. The Lord, speaking about Cyrus, says, He is my shepherd, and will accomplish all that I please. He will save Jerusalem, let it be rebuilt, and of the temple let its foundations be laid. This is what the Lord says to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I take hold of, to subdue nations before him, etc., etc. Now, this particular statement in the prophecy of Isaiah is long before Cyrus is born. This has caused theologians all kinds of problems, because some say, well, it's not really a problem. This is a predictive prophecy. This is God, through the prophet Isaiah, predicting that a man called Cyrus will come along, and when Cyrus comes along, he, out of the goodness of his own heart, under the influence of the Lord Almighty, who has chosen him, who has put his hand upon him, whose anointed he is, he will allow the children of Israel who have been in exile in Persia, under the Babylonians, he will allow them to return, because the Lord has promised this will happen. Other theologians say, well, we can't really see it as predictive prophecy. This obviously is part of Isaiah that was written after the event. I simply mention that to you so that you'll know that I know it, but you shouldn't spend any time worrying about it right now. The important thing to realize is that Cyrus is clearly talked about in the prophecy of Isaiah, and this is what Cyrus did. When he came to power over the Persian Empire, he developed a very enlightened policy. His enlightened policy was to speak well of all the people who had been placed in exile by the Persians, or by the Babylonians, and to allow them to return to their own countries. In addition to that, he allowed them to worship their own gods. If you go to the British Museum to this day, you may be allowed to see, if you're very fortunate, something called the Cyrus Cylinder. The Cyrus Cylinder is covered with hieroglyphics, which people with very vivid imaginations and very real skills have been able to decipher. It dates back to the time of Cyrus, 2,500 years ago. And in dating back to the time of Cyrus, it has an explanation of how Cyrus decided to allow the exiles from the various countries, including the Jews, to go back to Jerusalem, and how he instructed them to worship their god and to put in a good word with their god for him. Now there's an interesting thing. The Bible says that Cyrus was prompted to do this by Jehovah. Cyrus, in the Cyrus Cylinder, attributes his success to Marduk. Well, one of these days we'll find out what it was all about. But as far as we are concerned, here's the picture. This grand eternal kingdom that God has promised David has been established. Now it has been divided. Now both sides of it have collapsed. Now they've been taken off into exile. But now Cyrus has come to the fore, and he gives them permission to return to Jerusalem and to worship their god. As a result of that, some intrepid people who are now living in captivity return to Jerusalem. And in 538 BC, they do just that. They go with the express purpose of restoring the worship of Jehovah in Jerusalem. As soon as they get back there, they build an altar. They check in the Scriptures, and they discover that they should have been celebrating the Feast of Tabernacles, which they haven't been doing. So they celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles. They have been encouraged by Cyrus not only to return, but they have been encouraged in that he gave them all kinds of resources to rebuild the temple. And so they lay the foundations of the temple with great enthusiasm. They set about the work, and immediately they run into problems. They, when they lay the foundations of the temple, are immediately discouraged because some of the very old people, who can remember the good old days, look at the foundations of the new temple, and they say, that's pathetic. You should have seen it in our day. You've probably heard people talk like that as well. Now remember that if some of those people were still alive, they must have been very old, and when they saw the former temple, they must have been very young. Can you remember going back to the town where you were born, when you hadn't been there for many years, and you suddenly realized that everything is much smaller than you thought it was? But it isn't much smaller, it's just that you were so much smaller. I wonder if that was the case as far as this temple was concerned. Some of the old timers are saying, well, things aren't the way they used to be when we were your age. I don't know, but they were very, very down on the foundations of this new temple. In addition to that, some of the Samaritans came along, and they wanted to volunteer to help in the rebuilding of the temple. Now the Samaritans were in the fullest sense of the word, not kosher. Who were they? Well, they were some of the people who had been left behind in Israel when others were carried away by the Assyrians, but the Assyrians had also planted some Assyrians in Israel, and some Israeli girls had met some Assyrian boys, and they had got married, and guess what? They'd started producing little Samaritans, and the true blue Jew just did not like at all the Samaritans, and so there was great tension between them. Even in Jesus' day, the Jews had no dealings with the Samaritans. And so when the Samaritans come along and offer to help the Jews rebuild the temple, they say thanks, but no thanks. And being rebuffed in this way, the Samaritans did not take kindly to it, and they became unrelenting opponents and enemies of those trying to rebuild. And so the tremendous discouragement set in immediately, and almost as soon as they'd laid the foundations of the temple in Jerusalem, they quit. They quit. And for eighteen years they didn't touch the project at all, until in 520 B.C., August the 29th, to be precise, Haggai—you think I'm kidding as well, don't you? But you check in the dates here, Haggai is very precise—August the 29th, 520 B.C., Haggai comes along and he says to them, Excuse me, didn't you come back here to rebuild the temple? Well, yes. Well, I've got a question. It's a question from the Lord of hosts, the Lord Almighty. This is what he wants to know. How is it that you're saying we don't have time to rebuild the Lord's temple, but you have lots of time to build your own houses? Could you please explain that to me? And that brings us to the beginning of our text. And all that was introduction. But I hope now that you see the picture. Now, some people are not very interested in history. When I was in school I was totally disinterested in history, because as far as I could see all we had to do was learn the date on which an act of Parliament was passed and when it was repealed by the next Parliament. And the only date I can remember from all that was 1066 when William the Conqueror arrived. And that's only because I remember the Stanley Holloway poem about it. But we won't get into that right now. However, now that I'm an old man, I'm fascinated by history. The reason for that, of course, is when you get old you realize that you have far more history than future. And so you tend to concentrate in those areas. Here's a little word of encouragement for some of you here today. Henry Ford said, history is bunk. And he dismissed it. Hegel, if I may paraphrase him, said if history teaches us anything, it teaches us that it doesn't teach us anything. What he meant by that was we never learn from history. Should we simply ignore history? Not if it's biblical history, and I'll tell you why. Because biblical history is part of a grand narrative. And the point of this grand narrative is to reveal the character and purposes of God. Scripture is all about God's divine self-revelation. One of the ways in which God reveals himself is in the way that he interacted and related to his ancient people, the Jews. So we should be absolutely fascinated by the great historical narratives of the Old Testament, for they're designed to show us what God is like as he relates to other people. Now granted, people put a certain spin on history, and historians have their own approach. Somebody once said to Winston Churchill, how do you think posterity will view you, Mr. Churchill? And he said, oh, I will leave that to the historians. And then he added, and as I intend to write the history myself, I have no qualms. Well, obviously, historians have their own spin. They have their own view on history. But of course, we are talking about the biblical narrative, which is about God's dealing, listen very carefully, inspired by the Holy Spirit. And so we read carefully, with reverence, the great sweep of God's dealings in history with his people. This brings us now to the third point here. That is the challenge. Notice two dimensions to this passage of the Scripture. The first part of the challenge I would entitle, this is what the Almighty says. The second part of it is, and this is what the people did. And that is very exciting to me. You know, it was most often the case when the prophets came and spoke to God's ancient people, the prophets got stoned. Now please don't misunderstand that expression. It means that they threw stones at them and killed them by throwing stones at them. When the prophets came and spoke, they got stoned. But in this particular incident, so powerful and so ready to hear the word of the Lord, so powerful was Haggai's message, and so ready to hear it were the people that we are told that they immediately responded to the prophetic message. And that is very encouraging indeed. First of all then, what did the Lord Almighty say? Well, I've already pointed out to you that the people were saying it is not time to build the Lord's house. Even though they had been there for 18 years and had just walked past this derelict, destroyed building for all that time, knowing full well that the sole purpose of them returning was to rebuild it. But they had become so used to seeing it like that, I suppose with a shrug of their shoulder they kept going and said, well, it's just, don't have time. Well, not the time to do it. But the inescapable fact was this, that when they were saying they didn't have time to build the Lord's house, they seemed to have an enormous amount of time not only to build their own, but to do a very, very nice job of building their own houses. And so the Lord says to them in verse 7, Give careful thought to your ways. Having already said in verse 5, give careful thought to your ways. And He will say in verse 15 of chapter 2, Now give careful thought to this. And in verse 18 of chapter 2, from this day on, from this 24th day of the ninth month, give careful thought. And in the next sentence He says, give careful thought. Have you noticed anything there? Now when a preacher repeats himself, you know that there can be various reasons for it. He can be simply unprepared. He is shooting from the lip. Or it can be that he's discovered he has more time left than he has material with which to fill it. Or it can be that he is trying to make a very powerful emphasis. Now let's take a vote. Who thinks that Haggai was running out of material? That's what I thought. Who thinks that he is not well prepared? That's what I thought. Who thinks he's trying to make a point here? What is his point? Give careful thought to your ways. Question, how do you do that? Answer, by listening to what the Lord Almighty says. There's the thrust of the challenge. Give very careful thought to your ways by paying careful attention to what the Lord Almighty says. That's the thrust of His message. As they give careful thought to their ways, what will they realize? Number one, they will realize their lives are a disaster. They are deeply discouraged. They are desperately disillusioned. They had come back to Jerusalem with high expectations. They have crumbled to the ground. Remember that they were well acquainted with the prophecy of Isaiah. And in the prophecies of Isaiah, they had been given great and glorious pictures of a restored Jerusalem. Awake, awake, O Zion. Clothe yourself with strength. Put on your garments of splendor, O Jerusalem, the holy city. The uncircumcised and defiled will enter you again. Shake off your dust, rise up, sit enthroned, O Jerusalem. Free yourself from the chains of your neck, O captive daughter of Zion. For this is what the Lord Almighty said. Isaiah had gone on and on like that. And he had painted such a magnificent, rosy picture of a restored Jerusalem. That he got these people all fired up. They're all excited. They're all enthusiastic. And they go back to Jerusalem and they say, Let's build the temple. Let's restore the worship of Jehovah. Let's put Jerusalem back together. Let's bring about all that the prophet Isaiah said was going to happen. And now look what's happened. Nothing. Nothing. Great expectations. Great and noble inspiration. Thrilling possibilities. Boundless vistas. And they look at it and they say, This is it. This is it. That's how disillusionment sets in. That's how discouragement sets in. They look at their lifestyles. And the simple fact of the matter is they plant much and get very little harvest. They eat, but they're never satisfied. They drink, but they never have a fill. They put on their clothes, but they can't keep warm. They earn wages, but they put them in a purse with holes in it. They are living with chronic dissatisfaction. Dissatisfaction. Despair. Disillusionment. Disappointment. It's a sad scene. Consider your ways, says the Lord Almighty. What happened to you? The wheel came off. You came apart at the seams. The whole thing is collapsing. What happened to you? Consider your ways. God doesn't just point these things out to them. However, He gives them a phenomenal challenge. Do you know what He actually says to them? He says, verse 9, You expected much, but see, it turned out to be little. What you brought home I blew away. Why? That's the question that He's raising. He wants them to consider. Why, with all the great expectations, are you so disappointed? So discouraged? So disillusioned? So despairing? Why? And God answers the question. Listen very carefully. Why, declares the Lord Almighty. Answer, because of my house. In other words, He is drawing a direct correlation, a direct principle of cause and effect between the conditions under which they are living and the fact that they have neglected their spiritual obligation. That is profoundly significant. He is saying, when you sit down and take a long, hard look at the condition of your lives, you have got to come to terms with the fact that the reason you are living the way you are living is because you have neglected your spiritual responsibilities and you have failed to establish your correct priorities. Why is all this happening, says the Lord Almighty? Because. You ask why, I'll tell you, because. Well, how can this be? Well, if we had time, we could go back to Deuteronomy chapter 28. If you go back to Deuteronomy chapter 28, you will find God is rehearsing the covenant that He has made with the children of Israel before they enter the Promised Land. And part of that great covenant concludes with the blessings and the cursings. And the blessings are the inevitable result of a life of loving, trusting obedience. And the cursings are the inevitable consequences of coldness, hardness of heart, and disobedience. And if you check on Deuteronomy 28, you will discover that God very, very specifically said that one of the cursings that His people would experience if they lived in disobedience to Him was specifically the things that they were experiencing in the time of Haggai. In other words, there's a direct correlation between failed spiritual intensity and priority and the things that happen in our everyday lives. It's a hard lesson to hear. It's a challenge that comes loudly and clearly. They had failed to maintain a balanced lifestyle. They had failed to recognize that pleasing and glorifying the Lord is of paramount importance. They had failed to utilize their resources properly. Here's a question. Cyrus gave them lots of wood with which to rebuild the temple. Whatever happened to the wood? You go and check on their houses. You'll see where it is. And they had failed to see the direct connect between their spiritual failure and what was happening in their everyday lives. And the people listened soberly to this powerful prophetic message. What did they do with it? Well, some of them went away and said, doesn't he shout a lot? Somebody said he went on too long, didn't he? Somebody else said, weren't many illustrations, were there? And somebody else said, where's the coffee? And some of them said, that was the word of the Lord. And some of them said, my heart was stirred within me. Somebody else said, what a challenge. But how exciting to hear the Lord Jehovah say, I am with you. And somebody said, something ought to be done. And somebody said, and I'm going to do it. I'm going to go away and I'm going to carefully consider my ways. I'm going to evaluate my priorities. I'm going to look at the direct connect between my spiritual life and the way my life is going. I'm going to look at what I'm doing with what God has given me. I'm going to carefully consider my ways because I've heard a word from the Lord. He has stirred my heart. And I'm not going to let it go in one ear and out the other and just say, it's nice to be back in Keswick, isn't it? Because there's something I have known deep down in my heart I should have been doing for 18 years or 18 months or 18 days. I just let it slide. But no more. I'm going to do what he told me to do. You see, to end up like that is simply to show why we have Bible readings. Because the whole point is to hear the word of the Lord so that he will stir up our hearts so that we do what he tells us to do. And it's 11 o'clock and time to finish. Let's pray together. So the Lord stirred up the spirit of the people and they came and they began the work as they feared the Lord and rejoiced in the fact that he was with them. And the work of the Lord prospered in their hands. Lord, may that be our response to your word in these days as your spirit speaks to us clearly, powerfully, winsomely. May we hear and obey in Christ's name. Amen. Attention. You're dismissed.