Power and Purpose (Haggai 2:1-9)

Well, good morning. Greetings from Christchurch

Central in England. It is an honour to be with you

and I confess somewhat overwhelming experience this

morning. The first time I ever came to

the States, I got off the plane and went to Chick-fil-A.

The lady there asked me for an extra dime.

I didn't know what a dime was. We started talking.

We uncovered the fact that I come from England, not America.

We chatted a little further. At the end of the conversation

she said to me, can I just say you speak very good English for

a foreigner? So my apology in advance is I'm

aware I do not speak your language.

I hope I will try and speak slowly and clearly in an attempt

to cross cultures. Let me start with a Kennedy.

A story about President Kennedy. You may have heard it visiting

NASA. Walking down one of the

corridors, he came across a man and he didn't realize the man

was just a janitor. He cleaned the bathrooms, swept

the floors, and President Kennedy said to the man, what is

it you do here? The man said.

Mr. President, I'm here to help put a man on the moon.

There is a man with what we would see as a small and

insignificant job, a man whose name is lost to history, but a

man who could connect his life to a greater purpose.

If PCPC is anything like Christchurch, central Leeds, in

many ways it is not, but in crucial ways it will be.

Then like us in the UK, there will be times when your life

does not seem connected to any great purpose, where the

day-to-day tasks that consume your emotions, your heart, your

mind, your money, your time seem incoherent.

They lack connection. And I I hope what the Lord will

do for us this morning through this book of Haggai is sell us

again, set before us a vision for what he is doing, the story

that he is telling, and see how our lives connect into that

story, even in small, seemingly insignificant ways.

To give us a purpose but also a power.

So that missionary work might not be just for those carrying

flags, but for all God's people. The book of Haggai is not a well

known corner of the Bible. So let me just orientate us

briefly. We're at the end of the story of

the Old Testament. God's people have returned from

exile, but the temple lies in ruins.

The temple, you remember, is God's dwelling place on earth.

And if you'd been here yesterday for chapter 1, you would have

seen that through Haggai, the Lord called his people to get

back to the work of building his temple.

They'd actually been back in the land for 1617 years, but they'd

grown apathetic. They weren't anti God, anti

gospel, anti Kingdom, anti temple.

But there were other priorities. They'd poured all their wealth,

all their time, all their energy into building their own houses

and neglected God's house. But by the end of chapter 1, the

Lord had revived them and they were working again.

And yet, as we start chapter 2, we see another problem, verse

three. Who is left among you who saw

the house? The house is the temple.

Who saw it in its former glory? How do you see it now?

Is it not as nothing in your eyes that is the problem for

God's people? Those who remembered what the

temple used to be like in its former glory saw the current

work, and it seemed like nothing.

Those who remembered the prophecies during exile, you'll

have read them, you've heard them preached.

The desert will bloom when you return Ezekiel's prophecy that

the the temple will will be a thing beyond human imagining

that the Spirit will flow to the nations and then they see a few

holes in the ground, a foot or two of walls, a work of God that

seems powerless and purposeless. And so they begin to give up

hope that the prophecy is dated. Did you notice that we're given

a very specific day in verse, one that is unusual for the

prophets. We don't often have the ability

to to pin their prophecy to a particular day.

But Haggai, his name means feasts, my feasts, as in the

celebrations of Israel. And he's preaching here on the

last day of the Feast of Tabernacles, sometimes called

the Feast of Booths. He's preaching on the very day

that Solomon's temple was opened, as it were, when the

glory cloud fell and the people bowed in awe.

And yet now they see a building site as you look around in many

ways, I mean, this morning has been incredible, hasn't it?

I, I, honestly, I've seen nothing like it, heard nothing

like it, the music. And yet, and yet, we know just a

fraction of Dallas are worshipping the Lord this

morning. And that fraction in Dallas is

probably quite large compared to the fractions of the world who

are gathering on the Lord's Day to worship.

It can seem like God's work is not prospering.

I read this week there are now more people identifying as

witches in America than Presbyterians.

That's striking. In my own city, back in Leeds,

one of the largest cities in England, a generous guess is

that 0.7% of people go to church once a month.

That's England, the supposedly Christian nation.

Where is the Lord? What is going on?

Where is the power? Of course, our role is not to

build a physical temple, either in Jerusalem or Dallas or Leeds.

But as the commands of Haggai come to us, they come through

Christ, who sends us out to build the temple of the Holy

Spirit, the church. So in many ways, as Haggai

instructs his people to put their hands to the plow, to pick

up trowel and build a temple, he is saying to us, take the gospel

out, work for the growing of the church, the building of the

Kingdom. And he gives us 2 promises this

morning. First of all, the promise of the

power of God. Be strong.

Verse 4, be strong, but it's not just be strong out there on your

own. Rather, verse 5, my Spirit

remains in your midst. Fear not, you might feel weak,

but my spirit is at work in you. The Lord doesn't send us to work

for Him while He stays off stage to await the results.

Rather, He pours his Spirit into His people to empower them to

build. I've said already that this

prophecy in verse one is dated to the last day of the Feast of

Tabernacles. On that day, Haggai, or rather

the Lord through Haggai, says to God's people, work for me, build

for me, for my spirit is in you. Why did they need telling?

Surely if the Spirit was in them, they'd know already.

They wouldn't need reminding. But the reality is that it's not

always the case for God's people.

We need the Word of God to remind us of the power of God,

even the presence of God. It is the Word that comforts and

strengthens us when we begin to doubt and fear that we are on

our own. Some of you will feel this

morning, or rather worry this morning, that perhaps the Holy

Spirit does not dwell in you, and the cause of those fears is

that your feelings aren't strong enough.

We'll take comfort that on the very same day that Haggai

preached to God's people in ancient Israel, on that very

same day, centuries later, another man came to preach in

John 7. Again, we're given a specific

date, John 737, On the last day of the feast, which is the same

feast that Haggai was preaching in the Feast of Booths, the

great day, Jesus stood up and cried out.

If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.

Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, out of his

heart will flow living waters. And in case we've missed the

point, John then explains. Now this he said about the

Spirit whom those who believed in Him were to receive.

If you put your trust in Christ, you have received the Spirit.

He is in you to empower you. I think it's an incredible thing

that the dates match exactly Haggai's promise.

Build the temple because God's Spirit is within you.

Centuries later, Jesus Christ, the same day, the same feast,

the same festival, Believe in me and the Spirit will be poured

upon you. So believe the Spirit is in you.

Never fear that you are too sinful, too weak, too fallen.

But you've stumbled too many times for the Lord to use you in

building His Kingdom. The Holy Spirit will dwell in

the dustiest of hearts. Your body is a temple of the

Holy Spirit. Your body may be decaying.

It may be a mess physically, and you may be also aware of the

dirt spiritually that dwells within you still.

And yet in His grace the Holy Spirit comes and dwells in us.

There is no less grace and love and mercy in the Spirit than in

the Father or the Son, and He Stoops to dwell in people like

you and me. Believe God's Spirit, He is in

you, and believe therefore that you can do what you thought you

couldn't do. There's a British writer, a

British scholar, who writes on this passage and says this

despondency says I can't, therefore I won't.

The obedience of faith says I can't, but he can and so I will.

That is what the Lord is saying to us through Haggai.

In whatever ways He's calling you to be a part of the building

of His church, be it praying, be it giving, be it going.

Never believe that you have no power to make a difference.

He builds through you. You may say I can't, and He says

you're right on your own. You can't, but He can, and

therefore we obey. We have power, but we also have

purpose. In verses 6 through nine of our

passage, we're given the purpose of God.

Verse 6. For thus says the Lord of hosts.

Yet once more, in a little while I will shake the heavens and the

earth, the sea and the dry land, and I will shake all nations.

So the treasures of all nations shall come in, and I will fill

this house with glory, says the Lord of hosts.

Work is the great command. Verse 4.

Work to build. Go make disciples of all

nations. Why?

Verse 6? Because 4.

For this reason. This is why I'm commanding you

to build. This is why I've given you the

Spirit, because this is going somewhere.

God gives his people in Haggai's day a vision of the future.

He says he's going to shake the world.

And this temple is not just going to be for a few Israelites

in Jerusalem, but for all nations.

I have young children and my youngest likes to play with

sand. And England is always cold.

So we, we bring the sand inside and we, we lay a rug out on the

floor and she sits in the, the middle and she plays with her

sand. And at the end we, we, we tidy

her away, little Iona off the rug.

And then my wife and I will grab the four corners of the rug and

lift it up and shake it and pour the sand back into the box.

God says, I'm going to pick the world up like that rug and shake

it one day and the nations will scream in.

He wants a Church of all tribes, all tongues, all people, and

there will be great glory. The end of the Bible is greater

than the beginning. In fact, this very feast that

Haggai is preaching on, the Feast of Tabernacles, was always

meant to teach God's people. In the Old Testament there was

something greater to come. Two elements of the feast

pointed to that. The first was that this Feast of

Tabernacles, of booths, they had to go and live in the kind of

tents they dwelt in during the Exodus.

And you might think, well, why it's like every, I don't know my

American history dates actually, so let me just not give a date,

but every summer ish when you guys celebrate throwing off the

king. See, we don't study this in our

history lesson, so I can't do the dates every every summer you

serve. It's as if every summer you you

go and get back on a ship and, and lob a load of tea in the

harbour. So recreating what happened

before or you're going to get back on the Mayflower and why

that that that year is over. But nose is God.

This is not just to remind you how I saved you, but also to

remind you that you're not at the end of the journey.

The Old Testament is not the end of the story.

I'm building a temple far greater during that festival. 2

is a second sign that things were meant to be greater.

There was an elaborate series of sacrifices day after day after

day. You can read them in the Book of

Numbers, but if you add up the number of bulls sacrificed, it

comes to 70. Why?

Because 70 in the Bible is the number of the nations.

Right from the book of Genesis with the around the time of the

flood, God sends out 70 nations. That's why Jesus sends out 70

disciples. It is a picture of the nations.

In other words, the sacrifice is meant to be for all nations, not

just one nation. God is saying to his people,

build, rebuild Haggai in your day, rebuild this little small

insignificant looking temple because I promise you it is

connected to a greater goal. God is saying to us this

morning, your life in some way is connected to a great end

goal. The great end goal of the temple

of God that finishes the Book of Revelation.

The temple that fills the whole earth, where every tribe and

tongue and nation is there, where there's no more sin or

suffering, no more death, no more mourning, where we see the

Lord Jesus face to face. Somehow your work is connected

to that end. I don't know how, but it is.

There's an old story in England of three men and each of them

are laying bricks. They're doing the same job.

And as the noble walks past, he asked the first, what are you

doing? And the man says, I'm laying

bricks. He says to the second man, what

are you doing? And the man says, I'm building a

wall. He says to the third man, what

are you doing? And he says, I'm building a

cathedral for the glory of God. He sees the big picture.

As you disciple your kids around the kitchen table, as you turn

up to the missionary prayer meeting, as you increase your

standing order, or whatever it may be seemingly so significant,

tie it to the end goal. God is achieving that end

through your small acts of service.

That is how he builds In Haggai, too.

You will see that the action begins, or rather the commands

are addressed, first of all to Zerubbabel, who's the king, to

Jehovahadak who's the priest, And they come through Haggai,

who's the prophet. 3 anointed offices, prophet, priest and

king. They are, as it were, the

messiahs of the Old Testament. Nothing looked powerful or

spectacular, and yet God was changing the world through them.

And of course they point us forward to the Lord Jesus.

What would you have seen? What would you have seen with

your eyes when the Lord God Almighty decided to change

eternity? You would have seen a small, not

particularly good looking Jewish man walking the streets of

Jerusalem. Nothing spectacular in the

moment where God rescued millions upon millions from the

flames of hell to the glories of heaven.

What would you have seen? You'd have seen a man upon a

cross. You'd have seen three men on

crosses. You'd have seen, frankly, A

mangled corpse of a man nailed, bleeding, choking to death.

It would have looked as of nothing.

And yet there was the temple of the Holy Spirit.

Remember, that's how Jesus describes himself.

He is the true temple, His body, because he was God dwelling on

earth. And that temple was destroyed on

the cross. Why?

Out of love for you and love for the nations.

In order that He might rise again on the third day, pour out

His Spirit on the body, and the disciples might be made to the

ends of the earth. His desire to build His church

far exceeds our desire to build for Him.

His love for you far exceed yours for Him.

And even the way Christ saved and began to build that church

in its atoning death on the cross looked weak.

To the eyes of this world it looked as of nothing, and yet

all the power of God was at work to transform eternity in Him.

All your sins forgiven in Him, your eternity secure in Him the

gift of the Spirit, and in Him to that call not to be passive,

but to work. First four, be strong.

OPCPC declares the Lord be strong, PCA be strong, Dallas,

be strong brothers and sisters this morning, for I am with you.

My Spirit remains in your midst. Work, work to that great end

goal of the renewed heavens and earth.

What is it specifically? The Lord this morning is calling

you to do in that great task? You are called not to put men on

the moon, but you are called to put men and women and children

into glory. And the Lord has equipped you

for that task, and He's got ahead of you in that task.

And he's even walked the path that you will walk, a path of

seeming weakness, despised by the world, and yet to the eyes

of faith, transformative of eternity.

PCPC, in his power, brothers and sisters, in his power, go and

build and connect your story to the great story that God is

telling, the story that ends in everlasting glory, everlasting

peace, and everlasting joy. Let's pray.

Our Father in heaven, forgive us our lack of faith.

Forgive us those times we have doubted the work of your spirit

within us. Forgive us the times we've lived

incoherent lives, seemingly detached from the great story

you are telling, the great building project you have

embarked upon. But we asked this morning that

you would show us where it is that you want us to work for

your glory, for the building of your Kingdom.

Use us, we pray. Our time, our money, our gifts.

Use all that we are to see the Kingdom built.

We pray that for Dallas, for Texas, for the USA, for the

United Kingdom, for every nation on the face of this earth, but

we ask in the name of Jesus, Amen.