Haggai No.1 Putting the past behind you

We're going to join together and sing 1, 3, 5, Father in Heaven, how we love you. We're dedicating a baby this morning, or more precisely, a family. And as we praise the Lord and thank Him, we do want to bless Him for families and for children and for all the mighty works that He has done.

1, 3, 5, Father in Heaven, how we love you. 1, 3, 5, Father in Heaven, how we love you. We lift your name in all the earth.

May your kingdom be established in our presence. As His people declare your mightiness. Blessed be the Lord God Almighty.

Who was and is and is to come. Blessed be the Lord God Almighty. Who reigns forevermore.

Father in Heaven, how we love you. We lift your name in all the earth. May your kingdom be established in our presence.

As His people declare your mightiness. Blessed be the Lord God Almighty. Who was and is and is to come.

Blessed be the Lord God Almighty. Who reigns forevermore. Please do sit down.

Now we have, as you've probably gathered from reading notes and news as you were waiting for the service to start, we've got a dedication this morning. And I want Andy and Amanda, if they'll come out here please with their little charge. Now tell us something about yourselves because you haven't been that long here in, have a good trip.

You haven't been that long here in Worthing have you? No, I've been here about 18 months now. And you come from? London. South London.

South London. Did you detect a note of glad they didn't come from North London? The name of your other little boy. What's your name? Alex.

Sorry? Alex. Alex. And we've also got Ashley James to bring to the Lord.

Why Ashley James? Any particular reason? Well I'm Amanda Jane, he's Andrew James, Alexander James, Ashley James. They're all AJ's so that was it. This is the name of the new pop group we're going to form.

The AJ's. So when they come this way again if you've got any suggestions and combinations of AJ's let them know. So we're going to bring Ashley James to the Lord.

Boys and girls this probably, probably this happened to you. Though you can't remember, a long time ago your mum and dad may have brought you to the church like this and we held, or some of us, or whoever was leading the dedication held you in our arms and asked that God would bless you and ensure that when you grew up you might become a Christian boy or a Christian girl. So we're going to do that and we're going to also pray for Andy and Amanda and ask that God will help them as they bring their children up to know the Lord.

So can I put one or two questions to you good folk? Is it your desire to thank the Lord for the, he's going to sabotage the whole thing. Those of you upstairs who couldn't see we nearly lost the mic. Is it your desire to thank the Lord for the gift of this little life? It is, yes.

And do you promise as best you can to bring him up in such an environment that when he becomes mature he'll trust the Lord Jesus as his own Saviour? Very much so. And you'd like the prayers of your Christian friends to this end? Yes please. Yes.

The little verse we have says, in all your ways acknowledge him and he will direct your paths. Let's just pray for a moment. Lord God as we bring this little life and mum and dad and brother to you we ask your blessings to be upon this family but especially now for Ashley James.

Lord will you be with him and bless him. May he know physically and spiritually as he matures your hand upon him. We pray for his brother.

We pray for his mum and dad. We thank you for their settling here in Worthing. We ask that they may know your help and your blessing and your inspirations in their lives.

But right now we offer again this little lad to you. We pray for your hand to be upon him. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost.

Amen. Let's turn in the word of God to the book of Haggai. Murray McShane used to talk of the movement of the pages of the Bible when he preached in Scotland as he heard his congregation week by week do just what you're doing.

He said it was a chatter of angels. Well I'm sure that the Lord is pleased when we look into his holy word. Haggai.

We're going to look at two chapters but Brother Tim has the privilege of ministering here next week on the second chapter and I'll minister on it over at Maybridge. Haggai chapter 1. A call to build the house of the Lord. 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 Shealtiel governor of Judah and to Joshua son of Jehozaddak 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 paneled houses while this house remains a ruin? Now this is what the Lord Almighty, if you want the old fashioned translation which I think is nicer. Now this is what the Lord Sabeoth says. Give careful thought to your ways.

You have planted much but have harvested little. You eat but never have enough. You drink but 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. This is what the Lord Almighty says.

Give careful thought to your ways. Go up into the mountains and bring down timber and build a house so that I may take pleasure in it and be honored says the Lord. You expected much but see it turn out to be little.

What you brought home I blew away. Why declares the Lord Almighty 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 call for a drought on the fields and the mountains, on the grain, the wine, the oil and whatever the ground produces, on men and cattle and on the labor of your hands. Then Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, Joshua son of Jehozadak, 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 Shealtiel, governor of Judah and the spirit of Joshua son of Jehozadak, the high priest and the spirit of the whole remnant of the people. They came and began work on the house of the Lord Sabaoth, the Lord Almighty their God and on the twenty-fourth day of the sixth month in the second year of King Darius.

Just turn over the page to Zechariah in chapter one. Look at verse three here, lovely verse. Therefore tell the people this is what the Lord Almighty says, return to me declares the Lord Almighty and I will return to you says the Lord Almighty.

Let's say that verse together. Therefore tell the people this is what the Lord Almighty says, return to me declares the Lord Almighty and I will return to you says the Lord Almighty. Here's a question.

Three names, Hillary, Festus, Haggai. What do they have in common? Hillary, the clue is in the second one. Hillary, Festus and Haggai.

Hillary is Greek, Festus is Latin and Haggai obviously Hebrew. They have something in common. Well as I said the clue is in the second one.

Festus, that's fairly easy to guess because our English language derives a great deal from the Latin. Festus, well that's very much like feast and my feast, Festus, Hillary, again the Greek for feast and Hag, the Hebrew for feast and when you work it through it seems and this is about the only thing that we do know about this prophet Haggai, that is that he was born on a feast day at a festival. Very often the date of your birth was registered by the name that they gave you or the incident of your birth like Isaac, he's called laughter because well he caused the heart of Abraham and Sarah to be joyful as they had the birth, the unexpected birth of this son of theirs.

Well here as I say the prophet Haggai, he comes onto the page of scripture and we know very little about him. Was he a young man or was he an old man? For reasons I will leave Tim to go into next week, if he agrees with me he'll tell you why he was possibly old. If he doesn't agree with me then he won't tell you at all and you can come and ask me.

Haggai could well have been the president of the movement for shorter sermons had that existed in the land of Hebrew at the time of the land of Israel at the time of the Old Testament people but actually they liked long sermons in those days because they didn't have television or anything else to waste their time on. He preached five times, one of his sermons was only four words long. I am not following Haggai this morning.

Do you confront every morning your biggest problem? I think you do. You see it's there in a mirror isn't it? It's Shakespeare who wrote a play, a tragedy entitled The Taming of the Shrew. That indicates that Shakespeare had problems in his marriage, I don't know.

But there is a sense in which all of us could write our own tragedy, not The Taming of the Shrew but The Taming of the Self. And it's Christianity more than any other faith that actually addresses the self. Queen Victoria had as a prime minister a man called Lord Melbourne.

Lord Melbourne was a sort of establishment Christian and he was heard on one occasion to make this comment, it has come to a pretty pass when Christianity is taken personally. He went into a church and the preacher zapped him and he didn't like it. And so he made this comment, it's come to a pretty pass when religion is taken personally.

And yet the religion of the Old Testament which is of course just the antecedent of the religion of the New Testament is something to be taken personally because it's a letter, a divine letter in effect written by God and directed to ordinary individuals like you and me. And here is Haggai and he comes on the stage of Hebrew history at such a time when people had in effect forgotten, if you please, the personal nature of religion. When our beloved Lord is on earth he has a handful of disciples and on several occasions other people come along and say, hey what about me being your disciple? And Jesus squares with them and he says okay well come on now on my terms and you be my disciple.

And do you remember how Luke has in one of his chapters the incident of three men who said yeah okay Lord but don't take me too seriously because I need first to go home and fix things with the wife. I've got a few domestic matters to attend to and so forth and that recurrent little expression me first comes in and Jesus will not accept these people on that basis because well self is the thing that he has come to deal with. And as far as discipleship is concerned it's the Apostle Paul who will give you the best definition of the sort of attitude that you and I need to have if we are going to be followers of the Lord of Sabeoth, the Lord of hosts.

For the Apostle Paul writing to the Galatians, one of the first verses I ever learned as a kid just after John 3.16, Galatians 2.20 says I am crucified with Christ. I live yet not I but Christ lives in me. The Apostle because he recognizes as you and I certainly myself do every morning that that old self resurrects itself so very easily and there needs to be this daily death.

This daily working out of priorities to see just in my life, in your lives which really is number one. Now Haggai in the name of God is going to make two demands upon the children of Israel and if you want two words that will summarize the first chapter and also the second chapter then these are the words. The first one is priority and the second one is purity.

You are to give God the first place and alongside that you are to bring a pure life. When there is primacy and purity then the children of God are powerful spiritually and they also constitute in Old Testament certainly an economic force that is also with great muscle and prowess. So Haggai comes along and he starts to minister to the children of Israel who have returned to the land of Israel.

I hope you pray for the Queen. Annas Harabalis, that's another Latin term that's being written into a colloquial language at the moment simply because somebody dashed off a letter to Her Majesty and suggested that that was the way she would describe and look back on 1992. And certainly the House of Windsor have had a real packet of trouble one way and another, some self-caused, other maybe as a result of unacceptable persistency on the part of the media.

It's been a rotten year for the Queen. Let's pray that when she makes some comment in her broadcast she'll be able not only to comfort her own heart but comfort the heart of many of her subjects who respect her. The year 580 was a sort of Annas Harabalis as far as the Israelites were concerned because you see in Old Testament history that was the year when what God said might happen did happen and the Jews were terribly astonished.

You see they had come to the conclusion as I was teaching you and Tim Doubtless also was teaching you some while ago as we went through the prophecy of Micah that simply being a Jew was a sort of charm that you wore that indicated God would always be with you and it didn't matter how you lived. And when Micah who was a prophet some years before Haggai came on the scene warned the Jewish people that if they continued to live the life that they were living at that time they would be judged and condemned, he was laughed at. People were actually saying that this is not the way that God behaves.

Micah chapter 2 and verse 7 articulates the words of the Hebrews as they respond to the prophet Micah. Is the spirit of the Lord angry? Does he do such things? Does he judge people? Does he chasten his own people? And the popular idea was no he doesn't. But Micah says yes he does.

Micah who has the spirit of God upon him as does Haggai he makes this terrible prediction in the twelfth verse, you'll see where this is all coming to in a moment if you stay with me. In the twelfth verse of the third chapter of Micah he says, therefore because of you Zion will be ploughed like a field, Jerusalem will become a heap of rubble, the temple hill a mound overgrown with thickets. And it happened.

The armies of the Babylonians they encircled Jerusalem. Jerusalem was razed to the ground. The temple was toppled.

Ordinary people were laid off in chains. The barbaric Babylonians had a policy of ethnic cleansing. How modern the Bible is.

God help the people of Croatia and Serbia. They took the Hebrew kids and they dashed their brains out against the walls of the city of Jerusalem. Clank, clank, clank.

The Hebrews are led off into the land of bondage. And they had said to Micah, God would never allow that to happen. We can live as we want to.

And God says no. And what God said to the redeemed community in the eighth century B.C., he says to the church of Jesus Christ today. God does discipline his children.

And sometimes the most appalling things happen as a result of what God allows. The consequences of our sinfulness. Now some 70 years have elapsed you see.

This is where it all starts to come together. And the Israelites are back from the land of Babylon, from the land of Assyria because the Assyrians and the Babylonians they were both involved in bringing the Israelites from their own country. And so they start to come back, some 50,000 of them.

Now can you see the sight? They approach the holy hill on which Jerusalem has been built. They see the ruins. They see the temple.

Some of those temple stones are so huge in size. They weigh tons, not one standing on top of another. And they have the task of rebuilding the city, rebuilding the temple.

It's a difficult assignment. They've got the religious leader with them, Zerubbabel. They've got Joshua the high priest.

And these men first of all give good leadership and then well you know what it's like in the purposes of God. The work of God is difficult. You start to do something and your enthusiasm wanes.

Well this ginormous task, that became a millstone round the necks of these returning people from exile. And so they left undone the things that they ought to have done and they started to do the things they ought not to have done. Again how modern is the Old Testament? It anticipates the new.

So enter Haggai, this man who's only on the stage of Hebrew history for about five months and he speaks that number of addresses and most of them are so short. But he's a man who's utterly convinced that the spirit of God is upon him to the extent that time and time again in the short messages that he brings he makes reference to the authority that is ours, that is his rather. This is what the Lord God Almighty says.

Verse three. Then the word of the Lord came through the prophet Haggai. The New Testament, the NIV translators there have tried to improve on the Hebrew.

Maybe they've got it right, maybe they haven't. Then the word of the Lord came by the hand of Haggai. Then Haggai is instrumental in bringing the word of the Lord to these people who have returned from exile.

And what does he have to say? Well he says it's a question of priorities. It's a question of self. It's the taming of the self.

Here you are and you've left the major thing that you ought to be doing, attending to the house of God and you are spending time in lesser interests. Now he doesn't say that those interests were dishonorable. If you read this quickly and you come at it as a full-blooded socialist you might make that conclusion.

The Bible does not speak against wealth. The Bible speaks of the abuse of what you control. The Bible doesn't speak about you having a house.

What it does speak against is if you do not use that house for the glory of God. It's not so much what you have, it's how you use what you have. It's not so much what you do, it's the priorities that you build into your daily agenda.

And if the lesser becomes the most important then God says no. Here is the temple. Here is Jerusalem and its walls.

Here if you like from the New Testament perspective is the work of God and you are dealing with and putting a priority on those things which though of importance in their own right are not of supreme importance. Priority. Look, Haggai is a man I think that many of us would get on with because he always addresses what he has to say to the mind.

Look at verse 5, those of you who are following the NIV. Give careful thought to your ways. Look at verse 7. Give careful thought to your ways.

Move over into the second chapter, verse 15. Now give careful thought to this from this day on. And verse 18.

Give careful thought. And the end of verse 18. Give careful thought.

You see, Haggai is logically reasoning with his people. That's what I try to do from this pulpit. I don't know whether I achieve it but I want to reason things with you.

Reason things out. Now what is of prime importance in the advance of the work of God today? I can't answer all the questions. I can put some of them up.

And to what do you apply the time that God gives you? What takes the priority? You see, because unless you answer this question you might find yourself in the same position as these returning exiles who should have been so pleased that they were in Jerusalem, that God had brought them back after 70 years of bondage, that they should have learned the lessons of yesteryear. But I'll tell you something. The words, I think it was of the French philosopher Pascal, are right.

History teaches us that history teaches us nothing. You see, they're in the same mess. Don't condemn them.

Look in the mirror. The taming of the self. What about you? What about me? To where do you give your time? Do you give it? Oh yes, honorable things, of course.

Your work is necessary. You're a man, you're a woman, you've got responsibilities to your family. But what about the rest of the time? When you're not working.

Where then does it go? The work of God. Yes, you're committed to it. You want to see the work of God expand in Asia and Africa and what have you.

Okay. Hey. What are you doing about the ministry of prayer? The ministry of giving? Many of you give a lot.

Well, that's fine. I'm not here to make anyone feel uncomfortable apart from myself. I really do mean that, incidentally.

That's not just a flip comment. But I am concerned because the problems of Haggai and the problems of Haggai's day are the problems of today. And we need a Haggai to come along with a short sermon and give us a real thump.

To work things out in terms of our priority, give careful thought to your ways. You see, here is another lesson that Haggai is going to teach. It's there replete in the whole of the Old Testament.

Economic prosperity is very much correlated with spiritual faithfulness. When was Britain great? I would like to move the movement for the abolishing of the word great as a description of British society in the latter part of the 20th century. I really would.

Honesty demands that one has to be a little bit more humble as far as being a citizen of this place is concerned. Britain was never greater when Britain recognized who God was, the Lord of Sabaoth, the Lord of hosts. She was great spiritually and she was great economically.

But take away the spiritual and the economy also declines. And that's true, you know, not just on a national scale, not just on a historical scale. It's also true, I think, at an individual level.

The Lord is faithful to those who are faithful to him. That doesn't mean to say he never allows them to go through hard times, but he does retain his fidelity. You planted much, says Haggai, as you came back full of enthusiasm.

You planted much, verse 6. You harvested little. You eat, but you never have enough. You drink, you're never full.

You put clothes on, but you're not warm. You earn wages only to put them in a purse with holes in it. Why is that? Well, because you've never given careful thought to your ways.

You haven't appreciated what are the primary things that you were here to do and that was to make Jerusalem secure and to rebuild the temple. Now, you may not like this concept of God. That's one of our problems in the 20th century.

The God that we want is not the God who is. Is that not true? This is Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Excuse me, I've repeated this before, but this man won't let me go.

Bonhoeffer was killed by the Nazis 40-odd years or so ago. He said the problem with Christians when they read the Bible is they read the Bible for themselves but never against themselves. In other words, you read the nicer verses and you forget the more judgmental verses.

But that will then distort the image of God that the Bible presents. Look, isn't it amazing how the quality of print fades as the years go by? Verse 9. What you brought home I blew away. Now, this is not God talking about the Assyrians.

This is not God talking about the Babylonians. This is God talking about himself. You thought that by just sheer activity and looking after number one you would advance yourself.

But you put on one side the things that you ought to have done first and as a result I went... It's easy for me to talk in some ways, though I was brought up just after the, within the Second World War and knew something of the years then. Those of you who have financial problems at the moment, the horrendous mortgage and the job having been lost, God does relate to those problems, you know. You see, you need to put, we all need to put these economic problems back where they really stem from and that is within the sovereignty of God.

He can blow away and he can bring back. He can cause an economy to disintegrate. He can bring economy back to life.

And within the disintegration of a national economy, God does not turn his back on his own people. And what God is asking of this church, what God is asking of me is faithfulness in attending to the essential things. Keeping him and his work and our spiritual disciplines primarily.

It says the Lord here, verse 10, Because of you the heavens have withheld their due, the earth its crops. I call for a drought on the fields and the mountains, on the grain, the new wine, the oil and whatever the ground produces, on men and cattle and on the labor of your hands. Isn't it interesting that God says that the inanimate aspects of creation are more obedient than the men and women into whom he has breathed his own breath.

He speaks to the mountains. He speaks to the earth. He speaks to the dew.

And these inanimate aspects of the phenomenon of creation sometimes give a singular lesson to people like ourselves because they respond to what God is saying and asking. They become far more obedient than ourselves. And so God speaks to the Hebrews through Haggai.

And constantly he uses this term, The Lord Almighty. The Lord of Sabeoth. The Lord of hosts.

The Lord who is controlling all circumstances. You see the Old Testament doesn't put it in the language of 20th century economics. But what the Old Testament says is this, The gold and the silver are mine.

The cattle and the thousand hills, it's mine. The earth and all that is in it, it's a fairly comprehensive statement, belongs to the Lord. You see, sometimes we get ourselves into a tiz, believing that somehow, God bless him, our Prime Minister controls everything.

And he's probably in a tiz thinking that he controls very little. And actually he's quite right. You see, in the overarching purposes of God, he does bring about his will within our will.

Oh yes, there is horrendous tragedy, which he allows, although he doesn't promote. So you get Serbia and Croatia. And you get the horrors of Somalia.

But this is what God is asking. Look, you put the emphasis where I say it should be. As far as your life is concerned, the temple, the walls of Jerusalem, they have priority over your homes and anything else.

Alright, put it through into the New Testament. Let the Old Testament be the negative, and the New Testament be the developed picture. Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you.

You know, we've got people here, not me, who went through the First World War, as well as the Second. We've had people here who've been held by the Nazis. We've had people here who've come to the end of themselves at the human level, and yet they will get up and testify that in their hour of greatest need, he never left them.

God never forsook them. They kept the primacy where it should be. You know, one of the things that is a problem for preachers is this.

Lord, I did my best, but I'm not too sure whether I got through. I mean, in a sort of cause and effect relationship, I don't think that there was much response to what I was sharing this morning. Or last week, or last year, or the last three decades.

The devil sort of sits on the shoulder of the preacher and says, all right, well, you got a little bit worked up, but it didn't make any difference whatsoever. Haggai was not, as I say, a long preacher. 21 days elapsed since he brought his first message.

And maybe he was going through a fit of depression as to whether he'd hit the target or not. But look at verse 12. You see, this prophecy is very concerned about dates.

I think Haggai was the first person who sold filofax machines. Or filofax diaries. You see, he's going to tell us, verse 15, on the 24th day of the sixth month in the second year of King Darius, something happened that didn't happen on the first day of the sixth month in the second year of King Darius.

What happened? Well, in the date that I've just quoted, at the beginning of the chapter, Haggai spoke. 21 days or so elapsed, and after that, they responded. The Lord's messenger comes along, and he discovers Zerubbabel and Joshua, the politician and the clergy, speaking on behalf of the people, and they are going to get their house in order.

The high priest and the whole remnant, verse 12, of the people, obeyed the voice of the Lord their God. And then Haggai preached the greatest message in the Old Testament. I am with you, verse 13, declares the Lord.

Go into all the world and preach the gospel, and I am with you. That could become the motto text for 1993. You see how quick God is to respond to the correctives that his people show.

One of the easiest things, let me weigh my words so you don't misunderstand me, but one of the easiest things God has made possible is for you to get right with him. You see, even before these people had started to shift some of these great stones that constituted the temple, even before they got stuck again into the work, God was saying, I'm with you. He didn't say, well, I'll be with you when you've got it up two feet high or three feet high, or what have you.

He's not like that. It's the father in the story, the prodigal. He rushes down the hills with his legs bared, a thing that people would not normally do who are senior in the Middle East then or to this day, because he wants to show how quickly he responds to the response of the prodigals.

God doesn't want you to give him the phagedons of your time. He wants you to give him prime time. Those paneled ceilings that the Israelites, if you read the whole chapter carefully, were putting in, it wasn't that that was wrong, that they were attending to their homes in such a fashion as that, but everything else that should have taken priority over that, that went by the way.

And one old preacher says, on the day of judgment, those paneled ceilings will speak out a word of condemnation to these people, not because they had their houses, not because of things that they had, but because of the things that they did not do. Obedience to God advances his glory. This is what he tells us in this chapter.

When the people obey him, he is glorified. I bring this to a conclusion. Haggai is, as I say, one of the shortest preachers, and this book is one of the shortest chapters, or shortest books, two chapters, in the Old Testament.

Born on a festival, Haggai comes back, and probably on a feast day, actually speaks his first message. And he's so concerned that the people get their house in order, and they respond to him, and he's grateful. That's what I want for the tab.

A house in order. Look, 1992 will soon be out. I'm not putting a fetish on attending meetings.

I don't pressurize you in these areas. But I am concerned that for some of you, there are four weeks or just three weeks left. You've never been to a prayer meeting.

We have a day of prayer on Wednesday. Some of you bless your hearts you can't give, because, well, you're in financial difficulties. Some of us have more than enough, each according to his need.

This is how we show the love of God. There was a time when I needed to receive, because I had very little. I could never repay the people who helped me then.

They didn't need to be repaid. But I have a debt to people who owe, who are in need now. That's how you show the love of God, from one generation to another generation.

Brothers and sisters, let's go to that. Let's deal with that. And let's appreciate that this God, who does not smile on sin, makes it so very easy to come back.

He is a God of all mercy, the God of all comforts, the God who wants the people of God to be today, as ideally Haggai wanted the people to be in his day. Take this message and apply it to your own soul. Let's listen to a song and then we'll start to sing it.

Bow our heads in prayer just for a moment, as we listen to the melody being played. It's number 50. Words on the overhead, I think.

Let's stand. Peace. God of love, we behold him now With reverence and fear In him our sin is hung Christ, our Lord, holy God We still for the presence of the Lord The Holy One exists His spirit for the glory of the Lord Is shining all around He burns with holy fire With splendour he is strong Everyone.

How awesome is the sight How radiant is our light We still for the glory of the Lord Is shining all around Unaccompanied. Be still for the power of the Lord Is moving in this place He comes to cleanse and heal To enter his grace No word to follow him In faith his spirit cometh Be still for the power of the Lord Is moving in this place