Haggai 2:1-9 Promises for Discouraged Builders

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Intro:

Today we continue our way through the book of Haggai. We come here now to the 2nd chapter and we find that this theme that we have followed throughout the first chapter continues. The people are to build the house of the Lord, to build the Temple!
As we have seen there is so much here in this little book for us to learn and take to heart about the very great task that God has set us to. We are to be at this very same task, the task of being built up together into the House of God into a Temple not made with hands but a Temple that has as its cornerstone Jesus Christ and the materials for the building of that Temple are His Saints as they are called out of the nations and made His through the redeeming power of the gospel to save them from their sin, cleanse them, and present them to God holy and without blemish, apt material for the building of this Temple, the true Temple to which all of the others have pointed.
We have learned much already about the paramount importance of pressing on in this task of seeking to worship God rightly, not as we would prefer or as we deem helpful and practical but as He has called us to do it. To not settle for the pragmatic approach of these exiles as they had built the alter and were keeping the feasts and generally feeling pretty positive about their spiritual engagement and yet utterly falling so short of committing themselves to the task of doing all that God had called them to in worship and building the Temple that they might have the right and proper place to do all of those things.
It is so easy for us to approach church with a “what do I prefer” “what works” sort of pragmatism and yet God calls us to so much more than that and as we have seen, when we commit ourselves to being built up together into the building that God desires in the way that He desires it is not as though we need to worry that somehow we will be missing out on something, that we will be unfulfilled in our worship, no rather it will be then that we truly experience what it means to be not “these people” but to be God’s own people, His precious remnant preserved through His mercy and Grace to worship Him to His great glory. Be assure that there will be nothing lacking in that experience even if there may be some hardship in the process of having our own worship expectation moved from being tuned by our preferences to being tuned by the commands and precepts of God.
And so as we head now into this 2nd chapter and see the next message delivered to the people by Haggai we ought to be prepared to be pressed by this Word even more deeply into this great and wonderful task.

Pray and Read

Take note here as we start into this passage that another month has passed.
Haggai’s last message, the one delivered on the heals of the completed harvest had been delivered on:

15 on the twenty-fourth day of the month, in the sixth month, in the second year of Darius the king.

It is now:

the seventh month, on the twenty-first day of the month,

Now this would have been the last or nearly the last day of the feast of tabernacles that we read of in Leviticus 23:33-36
Leviticus 23:33–36 ESV
And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the people of Israel, saying, On the fifteenth day of this seventh month and for seven days is the Feast of Booths to the Lord. On the first day shall be a holy convocation; you shall not do any ordinary work. For seven days you shall present food offerings to the Lord. On the eighth day you shall hold a holy convocation and present a food offering to the Lord. It is a solemn assembly; you shall not do any ordinary work.
And so again it is likely that this message was delivered to the people, a people who had heeded the prophets message and set themselves to the task of building the temple, that this message was delivered to them as they were gathered to celebrate this holy feast, a feast that was designed to remind them of God’s deliverance from the land of Egypt, a deliverance that we saw in our previous messages was primarily about God’s having a people dedicated to the worship of Himself as He lead them into the wilderness and richly provided for them in the plundering of Egypt to there build for themselves the Tabernacle where they could worship God rightly and where He could be present in their midst.
All of these threads and symbols converging as God continues now to move His people to this task that He has set before them.
We then see that again this message is delivered to the governmental leader of the people in Zerubbable, the religious leader of the people in Joshua, and also the the remnant of the people themselves. Again this reminds us that the task of building the Temple is not just for one group or another, specifically in our context as we are built up together into this living temple it is not just the pastors and elders of the church that are responsible to apply themselves to this task, the members of the church are to be as equally committed to the task. Even the younger ones here are to be about this task! Now we have varying responsibilities but the command to be set to the task is the same for all:

build the house, that I may take pleasure in it and that I may be glorified, says the LORD.

Former Glory

The message begins on kind of a dour note:

3 ‘Who is left among you who saw this house in its former glory? How do you see it now? Is it not as nothing in your eyes?

There were still those among them who had been alive to see Solomon's temple and even in the degraded state that it had been in by the time that Babylon had destroyed Jerusalem it had still been a magnificent structure! We read of those who wept with loud cries as the foundations had been laid for this rebuilt temple. These would have been very aged people, 70 years had passed and these were people that could remember seeing the temple likely only as children, though we aren't given specifics.
However, this question brings to the forefront an important reality that will dominate the expectation of the temple in the post exilic world.
Solomon’s temple had been grand. Even those who had seen it as youngsters could remember its glory and greatness and had likely often told stories to those who had never seen it.
I think of older folks today describing some momentous thing they remember, like the moon lading. It is hard for us who never saw it to even imagine it.
So here as Haggai continues we see that this new temple wasn't shaping up to meet the expectations of the people, especially the older people who had seen Solomon's temple.
To these people Haggai continues:

How do you see it now? Is it not as nothing in your eyes?

Clearly what was shaping up before these people as they had now begun the rebuilding process again was a bit discouraging. If you remember we mentioned that this idea of the expectations that the people had for the rebuilt temple might have been one of the things they had used as an excuse for not building in the first place. They just didn't have the resources or the ability to build a temple that would equal the one that Solomon had built. And on top of that there were the expectations that had been laid by the exilic prophets:
(Advance to Temple Slide)
Isaiah had said:

6  “And the foreigners who join themselves to the LORD,

to minister to him, to love the name of the LORD,

and to be his servants,

everyone who keeps the Sabbath and does not profane it,

and holds fast my covenant—

7  these I will bring to my holy mountain,

and make them joyful in my house of prayer;

their burnt offerings and their sacrifices

will be accepted on my altar;

for my house shall be called a house of prayer

for all peoples.”

8  The Lord GOD,

who gathers the outcasts of Israel, declares,

“I will gather yet others to him

besides those already gathered.”

A house of prayer for all the peoples! That sounds like something that would need to be pretty large!
Most notably though Ezekiel had told of a rebuilt temple of gigantic proportions. You can read about it starting in Ezekiel 40 but size wise it was described as being like 8 to 10 times larger than the Temple of Solomon and even about 3 times larger than the expanded Temple that Herod would eventually complete for Israel.
These exiles had been carried through their exile on the hopes of a renewed Israel even greater than she had ever been with a temple to which the nations would turn that was larger by magnitudes than the one that Solomon had built and now that they had returned and set the foundations and begun building them it had quickly become clear that what was coming together before them was not going to live up to the hype, to use our expression.
It isn't hard in looking at the comparisons up here, especially when you see the size of Ezekiel’s temple to understand where this sense of disappointment might have come from.

Ups & Downs

As I think about it, it is interesting to see the ups and downs demonstrated by the people. They return to the land and build the alter and lay the foundations to a great cry that can be heard from a great distance. Then they hit adversity and they cave and content themselves with the status quo of worship for 17 years and then they are moved through Haggai to begin the building again and it seems as though God here knows that there are again, after just a month or so of work, doubts creeping into their minds.
We would do well to remind ourselves of this. I know that Jake and I can certainly feel these kinds of ups and downs in the work of the church here and you can maybe relate to. People come, people go. The body gets larger and smaller, we have had times where it can get as slim as having to preach to each others families. There are constant challenges with the varying expectations that many believers carry about what the church is and shoudl be and seeking to as faithfully as possible see those expectations formed through scripture all the while continuing to learn and grow ourselves and go through the various seasons of life, and we haven't even been at this for that long.
The key is what will come next. We are going to see God remind these people of who He is, His faithfulness, His great and precious promises, His position as the One who musters angel armies on the behalf of His people and for His glory.
When we go through the ups and downs that come naturally to the work of Temple building we ought always remind ourselves to hold fast to the word of God, lean on His promises, trust in His plans and His power and then keep putting the shoulder to the plow and driving forward with the task.
The result of this is worship, true and God glorifying worship as He has commanded it to be, a worship that defines the people of God, a worship that, while it does not make us God’s people, remember we saw that even as Haggai’s people were described as “these people” they were indeed truly God’s chosen remnant but they were experiencing for a time the lack of God’s presence of blessing because they were not worshiping Him rightly, and so it is not that this true worship as God’s Temple makes us His but it does cause us to experience the fullest sense of what it means to be the Children of God here in this world.

Promises

And so now lets take a look at the promises that Haggai delivers and consider what they mean for us as we set to the task of being built together into the living Temple of God here in this place.
As we consider the rest of this text we are going to see 6 specific elements of trusting God in this work.
God’s Presence, God’s Protection, God’s Promise, God’s Power, God’s Provision, and God’s Peace. 6 P’s you might say.
We read:

4 Yet now be strong, O Zerubbabel, declares the LORD. Be strong, O Joshua, son of Jehozadak, the high priest. Be strong, all you people of the land, declares the LORD. Work, for I am with you, declares the LORD of hosts, 5 according to the covenant that I made with you when you came out of Egypt. My Spirit remains in your midst. Fear not. 6 For thus says the LORD of hosts: Yet once more, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land. 7 And I will shake all nations, so that the treasures of all nations shall come in, and I will fill this house with glory, says the LORD of hosts. 8 The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, declares the LORD of hosts. 9 The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former, says the LORD of hosts. And in this place I will give peace, declares the LORD of hosts.’ ”

God’s Presence

The first element that we can see in which we can place our trust as we set out to accomplish this work of Temple building is that God is going to be with us in the task. God’s presence is with His people.
We read “I am with you” and as if to add emphasis we read “Declares the Lord of Hosts!”
We read of Jesus as the Emmanuel, that He is the very embodiment of the reality that God is present with His people. We see tremendous promises toward this regard in the NT.
We read in Matthew 18:20
Matthew 18:20 ESV
For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.”
A precious promise that is especially relevant to the work of Temple building as it directly relates, not to gathering for worship or hanging out with Christian buddies but to the discipline of the church. Christ is promising that when we have to enter into the discipline of one of His children that He is going to be with us as we seek to win the brother back.
How precious is the promise that God will be with us! This is the exact opposite of the “these people” of the previous chapter. When we are committed to worshiping God rightly and being built up together into a true gathering of God’s people as His Temple then He promises to be there with us. After all this is what the Temple was all about, that God’s presence could come and dwell in the midst of the earth in the Temple!
God’s presence will be with us!

God’s Protection

Next we see the protection of the Lord.

I am with you, declares the LORD of hosts,

6 times in these verses we read that title for God, The Lord of Hosts. The God of Angle armies that we considered in our last time together. That God has command of the greatest force in Heaven or on Earth and He martials it in the aid and defence of His people as they set about doing His work here in the midst of a wicked world.
Lord of Hosts, Lord of Hosts, Lord of Hosts, Lord of Hosts, Lord of Hosts, Lord of Hosts! 6 times!
God meant for them to get this and it was utterly important for Israel to be reminded about this aspect of God as they existed there as a small, barely even a nation of people with no real army surrounded by hostile nations and ruled over by a Kingdom that was not guaranteed to remain friendly to their cause. But, when the Lord of Hosts in on your side the scales are eternally fixed in your favor!

God’s Promise

Next we see the people reminded of God’s promise.

5 according to the covenant that I made with you when you came out of Egypt. My Spirit remains in your midst. Fear not.

Now there is a lot to consider in this text if you were to do a deep dive into it. The difficulty is in that word that the ESV translates as covenant. It more readily is translated promise or word and is not the word that is used to describe the covenants that God made with Israel. And so when you turn back and look for a specific promise to Israel that as Haggai summarizes “My spirit remains in your midst” you aren't going to find chapter and verse for that promise.
And so what is this that God is promising to continue to fulfill to these people that He had originally promised to do for those whom He had delivered from slavery in Egypt?
You could see ti as just a general promise to be with them but I think there is a greater connection and a more specific connection to be found here.
I most closely see this associated with Exodus 31 and God’s providing of His Spirit to enable the building of the Tabernacle through the filling of Bezalel and Oholiab.
It is as if God is telling them that as His chosen covenant remnant of His chosen covenant people that He is going to be with them in the rebuilding of this Temple just as He has always been with them in equipping and enabling them to construct the place where He would dwell in their midst and where He can be rightly worshiped.
Again, God’s promise to us is that in the same way He will be with us as we set about his same task in our day, as we seek to be obedient to Him just as the people were in the days of Haggai.

God’s Power

Next we see the power of God on Display.

Yet once more, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land. 7 And I will shake all nations, so that the treasures of all nations shall come in, and I will fill this house with glory, says the LORD of hosts. 8 The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, declares the LORD of hosts.

The verse is better translated “Yet a little while and I will be shaking” It isn't really a once more thing or a one time deal. The promise is that a day is coming when God is going to take hold of both the earthly elements, and also the nations and He is going to exercise His authority over them to serve the purpose of building His Temple.
Now notably we see this language of the heavens and earth being shaken associated most often with the coming of Christ into the Word.
We see this as the only portion of Haggai that has a NT quote. In Hebrews 12 we read:

25 See that you do not refuse him who is speaking. For if they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less will we escape if we reject him who warns from heaven. 26 At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.” 27 This phrase, “Yet once more,” indicates the removal of things that are shaken—that is, things that have been made—in order that the things that cannot be shaken may remain. 28 Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, 29 for our God is a consuming fire.

This text starting in verse 18, a bit earlier than we picked up there contrasts the temporal earthly kingdoms and even the temporal structures of the OT Theocracy in Jersualem and the Temple Mount with the new and unshakable kingdom of Christ.
Admittedly this is Kingdom language not simply Temple/Worship language but God’s Kingdom is always arranged around the center of His worship. In the OT that Kingdom was arranged around the Tabernacle and then the Temple as the Land of Israel and now that Kingdom is organized and grows around the gathering of God’s people into local assemblies where they are committed to being built up together into that Temple of flesh where again, God is rightly worshiped.
The main thrust here is that God is exercising His sovereign power to now move to accomplish these ends.
We see a bit of a fulfilment of this shaking begin just a little while after this prophecy is given when in Zachariah 6 we read of a group of exiles who return to Jerusalem shortly after this prophecy was given and they bring with them gold and silver that is taken to make a golden crown for Joshua the High Priest.
This is then followed by a prophecy that clearly points to Christ and also a promise that God is going to marshal the nations to aid in the work of building the temple.

15 “And those who are far off shall come and help to build the temple of the LORD. And you shall know that the LORD of hosts has sent me to you. And this shall come to pass, if you will diligently obey the voice of the LORD your God.”

Again, when we examine the post exilic period we see these kinds of thing, small tid-bits of fulfilment that really simply serve the purpose of pointing forward to the ultimate fulfilment of these things in Christ and His Kingdom. God is going to exercise His power and authority to the end of moving through the nations to see this Temple completed!

God’s Provision

In this prophecy and these events we also see the reminder that God is the one who provides the materials and the ability for the building of the Temple.
We don't need to spend much time here but we see God promise to take the wealth of the nations, which is in reality already His, and He now moves to bring that for the building of the house. Again this is clearly exemplified in the story from Zachariah as we see immediately some wealth coming in to support the work. And we see it even now as you see so much given in so many nations to support the work of the Church around the world!

God’s Peace

Now I cheated a bit on the last point and grabbed the word peace there from the latter part of verse 9 because, well, it fit with the P’s!

I will fill this house with glory,

And in this place I will give peace,

What we see here is the end result toward which all of this Temple construction is headed. We see here the Temple being filled with Glory. This clearly hearkens back to when the Glory of the Lord filled the Tabernacle and when the glory of the Lord filled the Temple and other times that we see God’s glory made manifest before His people. And this glory merges well with that closing thought of peace.
God’s glory signifies his presence and God’s presence in His Temple where He is being worshiped rightly by His chosen people is a presence to bless and where the presence of God rests on His people to bless them there and only there exists true peace!
We hear much about peace in the world today. Love and Peace both things that everyone wants to claim and everyone thinks they know the way to get there but in reality there is only one way to experience the true and lasting peace of God and that is to enter into His presence as a member of His people committed to worshiping Him rightly.
Now we know that the only way that sinners can do this is through the blood of Jesus. Apart for Christ and His sacrifice on the cross we remain under the curse and just punishment and indignation of a Holy God. But Haggai’s God is also the God of Micah who we read:

18  Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity

and passing over transgression

for the remnant of his inheritance?

He does not retain his anger forever,

because he delights in steadfast love.

19  He will again have compassion on us;

he will tread our iniquities underfoot.

You will cast all our sins

into the depths of the sea.

When we turn from our sin, when we place faith and trust in Christ and truly repent we will find that we have been granted access by His grace into His presence where, as we have seen already this morning, we have been cleansed from sin and made into holy and righteous building material for this great Temple and in this Temple we are called to commit ourselves now to the task again of being built up into that Temple and persisting on in the right worship of the One who has made this great salvation possible.
In THIS place, in this Temple, there will be peace, peace with God and peace with each other as we join together as the people of God and live out lives of worship to Him!

Closing

And so as we close this morning lets be thankful to God that as He has commanded us to be about this task of being built up together into His Temple and to carry out the right and proper worship of Him among us as we gather, let us give thanks that He is the God who will be with us in this task, the God who will protect us with His great power, marshaling angel armies to the defense and aid of His people, the God who in great power and might will shake the world and its nations wielding them for this great task and providing abundantly for it filling this place with His glory and giving peace to His people.
These are great sources of support and encouragement to lay hold of whether we see this body growing or are experiencing times when she gets smaller, whether the road is seeming smooth and pleasant for a time or it has gotten rough and challenging. In the midst of it all this great a might God is with us and has promises to be with us as we set to this task of being built up together and rightly and faithfully worshiping Him with one another.
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