Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction: Last week Pastor Daniel set the stage for 2020, by talking about priorities.

And when it comes to North Hills, we have tried to be be very simple about what our priorities are.

We want to Love God, Serve Others, and Change the World!

But even among these 3 priorities, there doubt that the way that we love God is the most important thing about what we do.

Now if we were to reword this

Loving God is really about worshipping God.

You see worship is a lot like loving someone.

You can watch any movie and know exactly what they think love is.

Notice they never show you what happens after the wedding.

Love is a choice even when you don’t feel like it.

The same is true of worship.

There are times when you just feel like worshipping.

You wake up on Sunday morning and can’t wait to get here.

Other times, you feel a dragging sense that God is distant.

Why should I worship God today when he hasn’t seemed to care about me in the past few weeks.

Now this assumes that God has been distant which he hasn’t…what do you do?

Choose to worship anyway.

Choose to sing loudly.

In the car, in the shower, and in this place not caring who is next to you.

Love God is a choice.

Worship is a choice.

And we come together on Sunday morning we choose to love God through our time of worship.

This week we look at how it’s not just about that you worship God, but how you worship God also matters a lot!

Turn with me in your Bible’s to Haggai 2.

Transition to the text: Last week, Pastor Daniel showed up in how often people don’t make worship a priority at all.

We looked at how the people of Israel had built beautiful houses for themselves while the Temple of God lay in ruins.

And Haggai let a fire under them so that they would finish the work.

This week we look at how it’s not just about that you worship God, but how you worship God also matters a lot!

Read:

Read:

Transition to Big Idea: Since it’s a longer passage, we’ll break it up into smaller chunks.

But I want to give you the Big idea so that as we are going you know what it’s all about.

Big Idea: True worship Leads to God’s blessing.

The reverse of that is if you don’t worship God correctly, you can no expectation of his blessing.

One quick thing.

For some reason we often think about blessing in terms of money and possessions.

This is huge mistake.

As the great sage, once said, mo money mo problems.

The blessings we are talking about are the fruits of the spirit.

Galations 5:22-23

Let’s read .

Haggai 1

One thing that gets in the way of our worship is outward appearances.

Of ourselves and of our place of worship.

Even empty seats.

Main Point #1 - God cares about the heart of the worshipper.

(1-9)

God cares about your heart.

Explanation: After over 10 years of waiting, the temple was finally rebuilt, but it looks nothing like the one some of them remembered.

This gets in the way of their worship.

Perhaps they feel they let God down.

Perhaps they are stuck in the past.

But Haggai wants to remind them that the place of worship in not important compared to the person of worship.

This meager temple will be filled with the glory of God, because God has chosen to.

This idea of shaking the nations speaks to the idea that God will provide all of the means to make sure the temple is taken care of.

But more than that the presence and glory of the Lord (in a little while) will far exceed that of the former temple that Solomon built.

So we have a few encouragements:

1) Be strong for I am with you.

2) I am the same God who dwelt in the temple of Solomon.

3)My spirit remains in your midst.

(Now this is especially signifiant when we read what happens in the next section…this people is defiled by the world.)

4) You are invited you to be a part of His family in love.

5) Greater things are still to come!

Now God does not give all of the information all at once, but God is pretty clear throughout all of scripture that He is in control.

They may not see all of God’s plan, but He does.

These people could not have envisioned the splendor of the temple that was to be built under the reign of Herod.

They could not comprehend the glory that would fill the temple when Jesus (God with us) would walk in it’s midst.

They were looking at small beginnings.

But all great buildings begin with a single stone.

A big part of love and worship is trust.

Do you trust God?

It didn’t matter what the place looked like.

What mattered was if their heart was wholly devoted to the one who promised to be with them and to bless them.

God blesses the heart of a true worshipper.

Illustration: Some of our core values and marks acknowledge this:

We want to experience the prescence of God.

We want to have intimate convserations with God.

We want a heart for God and a mind for His truth.

Even in our church, our building is a not a core value.

What matters is Who we worship, Why we worship, and How we worship!

Application: For us today, we often look at the outward trappings of our church buildings.

Does it look beautiful.

Does it even look like a church?

But across Europe hundreds of cathedrals sit empty on Sunday mornings, monuments to past their cared more about where they worshipped than the hearts of those who worshipped.

For the Jewish people, the temptation was to feel like their temple wasn’t worthy of the One Great God of the Universe, but God was going to do something amazing.

Jesus in a few hundred years would come to the earth and through His death, burial and resurrection would cleanse His people from their sin and renew their hearts so that they might as individuals become temples of the Holy Spirit.

Now the glory of God shines not in a place but in a people.

And we are witnesses of that Glory when we gather together either in this place, or in our Life Groups or in our families.

Or even across the world in the Philippines and China.

God looks not at the appearance but at the heart.

Now the glory of God shines not in a place but in a people.

And we are witnesses of that Glory when we gather together either in this place, or in our Life Groups or in our families.

Or even across the world in the Philippines and China.

God looks not at the appearance but at the heart.

Something that I think is often overlooked is that these people weren’t building this temple for themselves.

They were building it for the generations that would follow.

And even for us, most of us did not build this place.

We stand on the shoulders of those who came before us, and our job is to steward this gift as we pass it on to the next generation.

But that only happens when we keep our priorities in order.

First things first: It is God we worship.

This building is only a tool.