Haggai

Good morning Port city. Today we will be reading out of

Haggai. So if you have your Bibles,

we'll be reading Haggai one and two.

If not, you have there's a Bible on your chair and it's page 743.

I believe this is the word of the Lord in the second year of

Darius the King. In the sixth month.

On the first day of the month, the word of the Lord came by the

hand of Haggai the prophet, to Zerubbabel the son of Sheathel,

governor of Judah, and to Joshua, Joshua the son of

Jokhizadeh the high priest. Thus says the Lord of hosts.

These people say the time has not yet come to rebuild the

House of the Lord. Then the word of the Lord came

by the hand of Haggai the prophet.

Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your panelled

houses, while the house lies in ruins?

Now therefore thus says the Lord of hosts, consider your ways.

You have sown much and harvested little.

You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your

fill. You clothe yourself, but no one

is warm. And he who earns wages does so

to put them into a bag with holes.

Thus says the Lord your, the Lord of Hosts, consider your

ways, Go up to the hills and bring wood, and build the house

that I make, that I might take pleasure in it, and I might be

glorified, says the Lord. You looked for much, and behold,

it came to little, and when you'd brought it home I blew it

away. Why, declares the Lord of Hosts,

because of my house that lies in ruins, while each of you busies

himself with his own house? Therefore the heavens above have

withheld the dew, and the earth has withheld its produced.

And I've called for a drought on the land and the hills, and the

grain, the new wine on the oil, on what the ground brings forth

on man and beast and all their laborers.

Then Zurubbabel son of Sheathel, and Joshua the son of Jokhizadek

the high priest, and all the remnant of the people obeyed the

voice of the Lord their God and the words of Haggai the prophet,

as the Lord their God had sent him, and the people feared the

Lord. Then Haggai, the messenger of

the Lord, spoke to the people with the Lord's message.

I am with you, declares the Lord.

And the Lord stirred up the spirit of Zurubbabbel the son of

Sheathel, governor of Judah, and Joshua the son of Jochizadek the

high priest, and the spirit of all the remnant of the people.

They came and worked on the House of the Lord of Hosts,

their God, on the 24th day of the month, in the sixth month of

the second year of Darius the king, in the seventh month, on

the 21st day of the month, the word of the Lord came by the

hand of Haggai the prophet. Speak now to Zerubbabel the son

of Sheetal, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of

Jochizadek the high priest, and to all the remnant of the

people. And say, who is left among you

who saw this house in its former glory?

How do you see it now? It is, is it, as nothing in your

eyes yet. Be strong, O Zerubbabel,

declares the Lord. Be strong, O Joshua the son of

Trkisodek the high priest, be strong.

All you people in the land, declares the Lord work.

For I am with you, declares the Lord of Hosts.

According to the covenant that I have made with you when you came

out of Egypt. My spirit remains in your midst.

Fear not 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.

I will shake all nations, so that the treasure of all nations

shall come in. And I will fill this house with

glory, says the Lord of Hosts. The silver is mine, the gold is

mine, declares the Lord of Hosts.

The latter glory of this health shall be greater than the

former, says the Lord of Hosts. And in this place I will give

peace, declares the Lord of Hosts.

On the 24th day in the ninth month, in the second year of

Darius, the word of the Lord came by Haggai.

The prophet. Thus says, the Lord of Hosts

asks, ask the priests about the law, If someone carries holy

meat in the fold of his garment, and touches with his fold bread

or Stew or wine or oil, or any kind of food, does it become

holy? The priest answered and said no.

Then Haggai said, If someone who is unclean by contact with a

dead body touches any of these, does it become unclean?

And the priest answered and said, it does become unclean.

Then Haggai answered and said, So is it with the people and

with the nation before me, declares the Lord.

And so with every work of their hands, and what they offer here

is unclean. Now then, consider from this day

onward, before stone was placed upon stone in the temple of the

Lord, how did you fare when one came to a heap of 20 measures,

but there was stem that when one came to a wine VAT to draw 50

measures, there was but twenty. I struck you and all the produce

of your toil with blight, and with mildew, and with hail, Yet

you did not turn to me, declares the Lord.

Consider from this day onward, from the 24th day of the ninth

month, since the day that the foundation of the Lord's temple

was laid. Consider, Is it the seed yet in

the barn? Barn indeed the vine, the fig

tree, the pomegranate, and the olive tree have yielded nothing.

But from this day I will bless you.

The word of the Lord came a second time to Haggai on the

24th day of the month. Speak to desirable governor of

Judah, saying, I'm about to shake the heavens and the earth

and to overthrown the throne of kingdoms.

I'm about to destroy the strength of kingdoms of the

nations, and overthrow the Chariots and their riders, and

the horses and their riders shall go down.

Everyone by the sword of his brother on that day, declares

the Lord of Hosts. I will take you, O Zurbable, my

servant, the son of Sheathel, declares the Lord, and make you

a signal ring, for I have chosen you, declares the Lord of Hosts.

This is the word of God. Here's here.

So glad to be with you this morning.

Take a swig of water here. It's that time of year.

Allergies are among us. You know, I want us to start our

time this morning thinking about something that we've all seen,

or at least we could picture in our minds.

It's there's a monument that most Americans in Washington see

that we've seen it, but we haven't really seen it.

You know what I mean? Like, we've, we know what it

looks like. We've walked past it.

Maybe we even seen pictures of it.

But we have you really taking a look at it.

You would notice something about it, but maybe you do.

But think about this. The construction on the

Washington Monument began on July 4th, 1848.

How fitting, right? A celebration attended by

thousands, including a little known congressman named Abraham

Lincoln. And the walls began to rise.

And then in 1854, it stopped. See, funding collapsed.

A political group stole a donated stone for Pope Pius the

9th and threw it into Potomac and seized control of the

project. And so the unfinished shaft

stood there, 152 feet tall, capped with a wooden roof, and

sat exposed to the sky for about 25 years.

So much so Mark Twain and his wit said he called it a hollow,

oversized chimney. That's what he said.

People walked past it and eventually they just stopped

noticing it. Right.

Construction resumed, though, in 1879 and was completed in 1884.

But the original marble quarry, it could no longer supply the

matching stone. Oh, so new marble had to be

sourced from a different quarry, so and it so it was slightly

different shade and a slightly different texture to it.

So there's a line written in stone about the third way up

that is still visible to this day.

If you've ever looked at the Washington mommy and said it

looks like there's just a line there that's not your camera.

There is there is a line, all right.

It's a permanent visible record of 25 years of abandonment,

right? It's built into this monument

itself. That's the image I want us to

hold on to this morning, kind of put in front of us to think

through. There's something you know

you're supposed to do. And at first not doing it kind

of felt wrong. Like we should finish that,

right? There was a friction, a low

grade guilt, a sense that something important was still

unfinished. But then life move forward,

right? The urgency faded, and at some

point, you can't say exactly when, the thing you were

avoiding stopped feeling like an avoidance, right?

It just became a part of the background of your life.

Like the pile of mail on the counter you stop seeing, right?

Like the phone call you always meant to make but you never did.

You got used to it not being done.

This morning we are in a in the Book of Haggai, a tiny, ancient,

seemingly obscure book that speaks with extraordinary

position to the exact condition I just described.

Haggai's message moves in really two directions.

The first direction is a diagnosis.

What is actually wrong? Why does the bag keep emptying

is what he's going to say and set.

And the second one is the response.

What happens when God's people finally hear fear and they obey,

Right? So 2 movements.

And at the center of both there's this question that is

older than Haggai or Jerusalem itself or the exile.

It's what are you building and for whom?

For whom? So the year is 520 BC.

All right. So the Persian king Cyrus issued

A remarkable decree. He kind of, he took over

Babylon. And then he said this.

The Jewish exiles can go home. He sent a lot of people home,

but he sent the Jewish exiles, and 70 years of Babylonian

captivity are suddenly over. The people streamed back into

Jerusalem. The foundations of the temple

are laid with great fanfare. At the time, some were really

elated, others more than they. It lacked the grandeur of the

previous temple, so they wept. So you could hear shouts of

praise and weeping all at the same time.

Then after they laid the foundation of the temple, there

was nothing, nothing years past the foundation sit exposed to

the elements. The people have come home, but

they've stopped building the House of God.

They just stop. Not because they're atheists.

They're not. Not because they've abandoned

their religion. They haven't.

But because life got complicated.

There was drought. There was opposition.

There were bills to pay, houses to finish, fields to plant

right. They didn't stop loving God.

They stopped prioritizing Him. This is the most dangerous form

of spiritual drift. Not dramatic rebellion, but

quiet, reasonable, incremental re prioritization.

It's into this moment God sends Haggai.

All right, Haggai looks at what the people are doing and he

names it. And there's three aspects to

what's kind of going on here as we look.

There's a delay, a competing comfort and for security and a

bag with holes. A bag with holes.

So let's look at the delay. Let's look back at verse 2.

It says thus is the Lord of hosts.

These people say the time has not yet come to rebuild the

House of the Lord. Now notice the word these

people. God doesn't say my people.

There is a tender but unmistakable distance here on

purpose. He's looking at them the way a

father looks at a child who has drifted away, right?

And notice how they excuse themselves.

They say the time has not yet come.

They're not saying we will never build it.

They're saying not yet, right? Not now, soon, Just not today,

not today, right? This is not defiant rebellion,

OK? It is the far more common and

far more dangerous sin of indefinite postponement.

There is an astonishing human human capacity to intend

something good forever while actually never doing it right.

Ask yourself honestly, is there a not yet in your life right

now? A discipline you've been meaning

to start? A relationship that needs

reconciliation, A Kingdom committed commitment that you've

been deferring right? Not yet is one of the enemies

most effective tools precisely because it sounds so

responsible. It's not.

Am I going to do it? I just haven't got to it yet,

right? I could totally relate to this.

Honestly, I could totally relate.

By default, I'm more of a procrastinator.

Confession, right? This is one of those areas where

being married to my wife, Caitlin, it just helps me so

much. You have no idea.

She is truly God's grace in my life.

And when I see the remnant of Israel, I see myself.

Maybe you do too. See, I was listening to a

podcast this week and it was with a a company founder.

And when asked whether his success was due to hard work or

luck, he actually said this. He said, I think it's a third

thing, just doing it. He says many things go undone

because people simply don't do them.

They just don't do them. And that's what we see here.

There are factors at play for sure, but they just never got

around to it. They just moved on.

So the first aspect is that they are avoiding it.

But there is another layer here too.

So that's the delay. This, the next one is the

paneled houses. The paneled houses.

Look back at verse 4. It says it is a time.

Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses

while this house lies in ruins? See, the people's homes were

paneled. Now, in the ancient world, cedar

paneling is probably what they used was a luxury, a symbol of

success, status and arrival. You paneled your house when you

made it, right? That means you've made it.

The contrast Haggai draws out is devastating.

OK, he's saying, God's house, rubble.

Their houses cedar paneled. OK, Now let me be clear though,

there is nothing wrong with having a nice house in in

Norfolk, OK? Whether you're in a renovated

house again, you're in an apartment off of Colley Ave. or

you're just in a new build somewhere in the city, right?

The issue is not the house, OK? The issue is what the house

represents. The issue is the comfort and

security it can become. And the more specifically, the

way that comfort and security quietly and slowly but surely

becomes the organizing principle of an entire life, entire life.

See, comfort and security can become an idol, and it is

perhaps the most socially acceptable idol in the West.

OK, see, precisely because it requires no dramatic act of

rebellion. You don't wake up 1 morning and

just say, you know, hey, so now, today, personal comfort and

security is now important, more important than God, you know,

you just don't say that. You simply begin gradually,

reasonably and almost imperceptible, right?

You're ranging your life around it.

Your discretionary income flows towards it.

Your Saturday mornings go to it, right?

Your creative energy, your best hours, your sharpest attention,

all of it quietly redirected toward making your personal life

more beautiful, more settled, more secure.

Okay. And the Kingdom work.

It gets what's left, right? Which is not much usually.

See, Tim Keller used to say, an idol is anything more important

to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and

imagination more than God. Anything you seek to give, to

give you what only God can give, That's an idol.

See, the paneled house is not an idol because it's beautiful, OK?

It's an idol because it's been asked to provide something only

God can actually deliver, OK. The deep, unshakable sense that

you have arrived, that you are secure, that you are home.

See, the people in Haggai's day were not building paneled houses

because they were godless. They weren't.

They were building them because they were exhausted,

discouraged, and looking for something solid to hold on to.

After 70 years of exile, they wanted, and understandably so,

to feel safe, to feel established, to feel like the

chaos was finally behind them. That might be you today.

And so they built their houses. And God's house sat in ruins.

See, the question Haggai puts to us is not whether comfort and

security is wrong. The question is whether comfort

and security has become a Kingdom, a thing you were

building your whole life around. So whether you've been in

Norfolk for 20 years or 20 months, the question is the

same. What are you building and for

whom? This doesn't mean we necessarily

need to change our Saturday plans.

It doesn't. It just means we need to check

our Saturday heart. What are these things for?

What do I hope to get from them? So there's delay, there's a

comfort and security, but looks like the third aspect.

The third aspect, there's a bag with holes.

A bag with holes. Look back at verse 6.

It says you have planted much but harvested little.

You eat but you you but never have enough.

You drink but never have your fill your wages.

You earn your wages, but you put them in bags with holes.

Now see, God is not describing lazy people.

I need you to see that He's not describing lazy people.

He's describing hard working people getting diminishing

returns. OK, they're putting in the work

and it's not in the the returns are not there.

They're farming, they are harvesting, they are earning,

but nothing is satisfying. The bag keeps emptying.

And before we diagnose this as merely misplaced priorities, we

need to ask the deeper question Haggai actually raises.

Why is this happening? And this answer stops us cold.

Look at verses 9 through 11. It says when you when you

brought it home, I blew it away. Why?

Because my house lies in ruins, while each of you busies himself

with his own house. Therefore the heavens have

withheld the dew, and the earth has withheld its produce, and I

have called for a drought. It was the Lord God was the one

blowing the harvest away. This is not a natural

consequence. This is active, intentional,

personal, divine discipline that's difficult to sit with if

you have been taught that God only blesses and never

withholds. But the God of Scripture is a

father, and he's a good father. Who disciplines?

The question is got to always be, what is the discipline for?

What is the discipline for? And to answer that, we need to

understand what actually happened.

OK. When the Exiles returned to

Jerusalem, they were not passive.

Caesar, Rubble and Joshua rebuilt the altar first.

They built an altar. OK, They didn't wait because

without sacrifice, without atonement, they could not stand

before God. And and they secured materials

and they got it done. And in the second year they

broke ground on the temple with singing celebration.

They started the lay, the foundations of the temple

itself. They started and that matters.

They started. This was not a community, a

community that never intended to to not obey, right?

And then the opposition came. See, neighboring peoples first

offered to help and then that turned into hostility when the

offer was refused by Zerubbabel and Joshua.

See they the the their neighbors began to discourage the

builders. They hired officials to obstruct

their building and and they wrote letters to the Persian

court, eventually to have the whole project halted legally.

And it worked. The work stopped and they

stopped for 16 years. This isn't I stopped doing this

in return to it a year later, 16 years later.

A generation and a half. Long enough for children to grow

up and not knowing the projects had ever begun, right?

Long enough for the unfinished foundation to become just

another feature of the landscape, right?

Something you step around when thinking about it anymore.

Covered by kudzu, right? The altar was there, the

footings were there, but no temple.

A beginning without a completion, obedience initiated,

then abandoned. Right here's the principle

Haggai is driving at and it's one of the most counterintuitive

truths in the Bible really is opposition is not necessarily

evidence that God doesn't want something built or done.

It may be the very sign that he does right.

See the enemy does not organize resistance against projects that

pose no threat. OK, the ferocity of the

opposition was was, if they had eyes to see it, backhanded

confirmation this work was exactly what God had come called

them to. But they read it the wrong way.

They read opposition is closure. And so they stopped and built

their own houses instead. This is too hard.

Maybe the Lord doesn't have this for us.

Maybe we're not supposed to do this.

But delayed obedience is still disobedience.

Delayed obedience is still disobedience.

And 16 years of it, of it becomes something

indistinguishable from outright refusal, right?

See, there are those of us in this room who started something

in obedience to God. Maybe it's a ministry.

Maybe it's a hard conversation, a reconciliation, a Kingdom

commitment that that felt clear and right.

And then the resistance came. Not dramatic, just a slow

accumulation of discouragement. It got complicated.

Someone pushed back. The cost was higher than

anticipated. And so you stopped.

Not permanently, You just told yourself.

Just just for now, right? But for now, has lost, has

lasted longer than you want to admit.

Then I would want to admit you have an altar, A residual

religious practice, a nominal faith.

But the temple is unbuilt. It's like when Northwick

launched the Tide light rail in 2011 with they had genuine civic

assignment, a vision of connect a connected, walkable city that

should could reshape how people lived and moved throughout the

entire Hampton Roads area. And then the resistance came.

Costs were higher than projected, ridership lower than

hoped. Extension stalled, political

will evaporated, and what has was announced as a

transformative vision became a single line running a few miles,

a beginning without a completion.

I'm not here to dispute, you know, Norfolk's transit policy.

But I want you to feel the shape of that story.

Because it's the shape. The same shape as Haggai.

A vision, a start. Opposition stalling, an

unfinished thing everyone has learned to step around, if you

will. Is there a vision?

God gave you that with that same shape.

See CS Lewis in The Problem of Pain.

He wrote this. He said we have a strange

illusion that mere time cancels sin, but mere time does nothing

either to the fact or to the guilt of a sin.

See, 16 years past the foundation sat overgrown, but

the passage of time had not settled the account.

God had not moved on. Time does not close what

disobedience opens. It just doesn't see.

The hole in the bag is not an economic problem.

It wasn't. It's not even primarily A

priorities problem. It wasn't.

It is a courage problem, the courage to look at the

opposition, acknowledge it is real and it's hard, and pick up

the stone anyway, right? The the hole was there was put

there by God so that they might remember and that they might

obey, they might turn to Him. See, that's the diagnosis.

A polite delay in obedience, comfort and security is a

competing Kingdom in a bag with holes, the fruitless result of

misplaced priorities and disobedience.

The Haggai has named it, but the diagnosis is not the

destination. That's not where we're going.

How did they respond? What do they do?

Well, let's look. Look at verse 12, chapter 1.

This is the people's response. Zerubbabel and Joshua, with all

the remnant of the people, obeyed the voices of the Lord

their God. And what does it say?

And the people feared the Lord, so the text says they feared.

Now, in our therapeutic age, fear sounds like a bad emotion,

right? Something to overcome in

therapy, right? Not, you know, it's not

something you would cultivate and worship.

But the fear of the Lord is not the cringing terror of a slave

before a tyrant, OK. It is the awe of a creature who

has suddenly clearly seen the magnitude of the God before whom

they stand. See, when you truly fear the

Lord, your other fears become manageable.

Dangerous jobs, difficult conversations, uncontrollable

changes. The fear of the Lord doesn't add

to that weight. It doesn't.

It reorders it. It reorders it doesn't take it

away, it reorders it. What can man do to me?

Psalm 118 says when I have seen who God is.

See, Haggai's message gave the people perspective.

They suddenly realized it was the Lord who had been curtailing

their hard work. That's when the shoe dropped.

Oh, it was you. It was you who can stay your

hand, who can stop you. See, we were worried about the

political pressure, but the Lord controls all things.

Oh, and by the way, yeah, the reason Cyrus sent them back,

that was Lord, too. It's so easy to get caught up in

circumstances and forget that the Lord is sovereign.

He is. Seeing the Lord and remembering

his character is the key to obedience.

It's the key. See, there needed to be a

reorientation of their situation around the Lord and not apart

from him. OK?

And when that reorientation happened, when they truly saw

who who was speaking, God responded.

Now what? What's said next is short but

profound. So look at look at verse 13.

It says Vin Haggai, the messenger of the Lord, spoke to

the people with the Lord's message.

I am with you, declares the Lord. 4 words in English, 3IN

Hebrew. This is God's entire response to

the people's obedience. Not a detailed reward package,

not a prosperity guarantee, not a theological trustees, just I

am with you. This is the thing we actually

need most and pursue the least. See, we spend our lives chasing

security, significance, and belonging through our careers,

our relationships, and our reputations when the only source

that will not eventually fail us is the presence of God.

I am with you. See, one pastor once said that

the gospel is not that God gives us gifts, it is that God gives

us himself. The reward for returning to God

is not health and wealth, the reward is God.

We get God. This was the whole point of the

temple. See, the altar pushed the people

to remember they were sinners in need of a substitute.

But the temple was a physical representation of God's presence

with his people. Before the temple there was a

Tabernacle which was just a God designed tent that the

Israelites took with them when wandering the the wilderness.

The whole conversation isn't about construction, it's about

presence. OK, there is a very real

symbolism going on here. The people are offering

sacrifice without any desire for presence.

The sacrifice is keeps God off their back, so to speak, but

they are not concerned with his presence.

You see, friends and faith, family, the whole point of the

sacrifice was God's presence. If there's no temple, there is

no point to the altar, OK? The point isn't sacrifice.

It's not. The point is God's presence with

his people. That's what sacrifice would

bring. If we come to the things of God

just to transact, just to perform some duty, sort of duty

or right to keep God off our backs, we've missed it.

We've missed it. See, the greatest thing the Lord

could have said was, I will be with you.

The greatest words you can hear even now are I am with you.

See this is the gospel. See we need an altar and a

temple. We need someone to die in our

place for our sins, the altar, but we need the very presence of

God, we need God see we are image bearers.

We were made for God, we image him.

Life apart from him leaves us incomplete just by design.

Prince, it is through Jesus finished work that you can have

both someone to replace you in a God who will embrace you family

on the other side of the resurrection Jesus he he gives

us our greatest work assignment. He gives us something not to

build a temple. It's not our building project

per SE, but it's go therefore and make disciples of all

nations, but he closes with the same four word structure that

Haggai gives us. He says I am with you always to

the ends of the age. If you remember in Matthew 28,

see the altar in the temple, the sacrifice in the presence.

He does not send us out with a task and leave us to figure it

out alone. He sends us out with Himself,

with Himself. This is our hope and this is our

confidence that He is with us. Now notice what happens next.

Look at verses 14 through 15, He says.

And the Lord stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel, and the

spirit of Joshua, and further down, and the spirit of all the

remnant of the people, and they came and worked on the House of

the Lord of hosts. Notice the sequence there.

God stirred they then they worked, not the reverse.

This is the grammar of the gospel.

We do not work our way into God's favor and then receive his

presence. You don't do that.

We receive his presence. I am with you and that presence

stirs us to work. OK, this is the crucial

distinction between moralistic self improvement versions of

religion and the and the gospel transformed life.

See the moralist says I will rebuild and God will be pleased

with me. The gospel says God has declared

himself for you. Now arise and built.

That's different. See, one is driven by

uncertainty, the other is driven by acceptance.

And only acceptance in the long run has the motivational power

to sustain the work of restoration.

You can do it because I am here. But do not let this theological

elegance of that sequence cause you to miss what actually

happened next in the story. OK, they picked up stones.

They carried timber. They measured and cut and fitted

and plastered. They showed up in the heat of

the day with tools in their hands and sweat on their backs.

The Spirit stirred them, and the Spirit produced calloused hands,

not just warm hearts. Do you see that?

This is not an accident of the text, It's a theology.

See, Genesis 215 tells us God placed man in the garden to work

it and keep it. See, work is not a consequence

of the fall. Work is not a punishment.

Work is part of what it means to be made in the image of God.

OK, the first thing we are told about God is that he works.

In the beginning God created that's work.

See, we are sub creators by design, made in his image,

right? We are made to be makers.

We are made to be makers. That's good.

The fall cursed work. But the redemption God is

working out through history is not the elimination of work.

It is the restoration of work. See.

Freed from futility and reconnected to its original

dignity and purpose. It is no coincidence that the

first people in Scripture described as filled with the

Spirit of God. You can check me on that.

We're not prophets or priests. They were Craftsman.

It's bezel and oh holyab, I'll try to put the pronunciations in

there, but that's where we got look it up.

Exes 35 And they were filled with the Spirit of God.

And what did that result in? The ability, intelligence and

knowledge and all craftsmanship, Right.

To build the Tabernacle. Interesting.

Yeah. The Spirit of God has always

been given for skilled, embodied physical work for the task at

hand. Right?

See, the temple was not built by divine actions, not directly,

anyway. It was built stone by stone, by

people whose names we don't even know.

Right. See Dorothy Sayers, the British

short writer and theologian. She put it plainly.

She said this. The only Christian work is good

work well done. Not work done with the Bible

verse on the wall, although you can do that.

Not work done with a religious motive that excuses poor effort.

Good work done well, because the one and whose image we work and

for whose glory we build deserves nothing less.

See, that is the response. They feared the Lord and were

reoriented around who He actually is.

They received his presence, the four words that are both the

Gospels, heartbeat and the Christian life's foundation.

And they arose and worked, not to earn what God had already

declared, but because they had already had it.

See, the Lord stirred, they arose, they worked, and so can

we. But let's bring this all

together. We began this morning with a

question. What are you building it?

For whom, right? Haggai has given us a diagnosis

and a response. OK.

The diagnosis is a polite delay, a comfortable idle, and an

abandonment of obedience. All of it adding up to a bag

that had holes, Right. And at the bottom of it all, not

a priorities problem, but a courage problem.

And the response? They heard, they feared, and

they received the four words they actually needed.

I am with you. And then not before, Before, but

after they arose and worked. OK.

This is the shape of the Christian life, not striving

towards presence, but building from it.

Building from it. Remember that line on the that

line on the Washington Monument we talked about, right?

The place where the stone changes shade.

You can go see it even today. The visible mark of 25 years of

abandonment written to the structure itself.

We open this morning with that image.

But I want to close with something we didn't say about it

then. All right, That line is not just

where they stopped. It's actually where they started

again. See, the monument was completed

555 feet tall. You can go see it today, The

tallest structure in the world at the time when it was

finished. The scar is real, but so is the

height. The abandonment was real, but so

was the resumption. In the line that marks the

interruption also marks this. The moment someone finally said

enough, we're going to do this. We're going to finish it.

See, there's a line like that somewhere in your life, a place

where the stone changes, where obedience stalled, the work

stopped, and you slowly got used to it not being done.

And CS Lewis was right. Time does not erase it.

It's still there. But here is what Haggai came to

say and what Jesus came to complete.

The line does not have to be the last word on the structure.

It doesn't now before, because I, I want, I want to say

something important because I'm aware that if you hear a sermon

like this and it's easy to walk away thinking that God is

calling you to do something more spiritual, okay?

To quit your job and go into ministry or to add more

religious activities to your week to separate your, your

faith life from your regular life and your more energy into

the religious category of your life, right?

But that is not what Haggai say, and it's not what this sermon is

saying either. Remember the two guys from

Exodus? The guys that was filled with

the Spirit. The first people in all

scripture described as filled with the Spirit of God.

They were not priests, they were not prophets.

They were Craftsman, and the Spirit of God was poured out

specifically for carpentry, metal work, and stone cutting.

God has never been interested in a faith that stays inside some

building. OK, All of life is worship.

Paul said it plainly. Whatever you do, work hardly.

As for the Lord and not for men, Colossians 323.

See Romans 12. He calls us to offer our bodies,

our whole selves, our daily work, our Monday mornings, as a

living sacrifice. That, he says, is our spiritual

worship, not a supplement to it, not a lesser version of it.

The thing itself. OK, this means that the building

project God is calling you to may not look like the way you

expect, right? It may not require a career

change or a ministry title. It may simply require you to

show up to your job, your family, your neighborhood, with

integrity, with the excellence, with love as unto the Lord.

The shipbuilder who welds with precision because he knows God

sees his work. The nurse who stays an extra few

minutes because she knows this patient bears the image of God,

right? The teacher who prepares

thoroughly because she understands that formation

matters to the Kingdom. That is the work, that is the

building, right? But there there is the deeper

thing that Haggai is pressing on even still.

And I don't want us to miss it. I don't want us to miss it.

The people of Israel were not simply neglecting a building

project. They were constructing an entire

life without God present in it. See, they had it.

They had the altar, the religious transaction, the

sacrifice, the duty performed. But they did not have the

temple. And without the temple there was

no dwelling place, no presence. They had religion without

relationship. They had activity without

communion. They were doing life alongside

God while keeping him at a careful distance.

That is what the ruined temple actually represented, not just

an incomplete construction project, a community that had

learned to function without God in the middle of it.

You see that. And that is the question Haggai

is really asking. Not just why isn't the building

finished yet, but why have you become so comfortable doing a

life without me? Friends, the difference in the

Christian life is not ultimately what it not only what you do,

it's about who you do it with. See, there is a version of the

Christian life that looks religious on the outside, that

maintains the altar, performs the duties, attends the

services, but has quietly learned to operate without the

living presence of God at the center of it.

And there's another version that brings God into the shipyard,

brings God into the classroom, into the difficult conversation,

into the ordinary Tuesday that does it's work with him, that

raises the children with him, that makes its decisions with

him, that faces its opposition with him. 1 is a life built

around religion and the other is a life built in relationship.

The temple was never about the building it was about.

It was about the width right. God dwelling among his people,

God present in the middle of ordinary life.

And that is what Haggai was calling them back to.

Not a construction project, but a communion.

Not just the resumption of religious duty, but the

restoration of a life genuinely lived with God in it.

In a few minutes you're going to walk out of this building and

back into Norfolk, back into your work, back into your

neighborhood, your family, your Monday morning.

Every one of you has a building project of some sort.

Not necessarily a physical one, but something God has called you

uniquely to. To construct, to fabricate in

this city and in in your life. A relationship, a ministry, a

vocation, A reconciliation, a Kingdom commitment that may have

been sitting in the rubble for longer than you care to admit.

Then I would admit unfinished, overgrown, something you have

quietly learned to step around. Haggai's question to you is not

are you busy? You are busy.

The question is not are you working hard?

You are working hard. The question is simply, this is

the house that matters most, still in ruins, while yours is

panelled and settled. That's the question.

And if it is, if there is a foundation somewhere in your

life that you laid in in obedience and then abandoned

when the opposition came, Haggai's word to you is not

condemnation. It is the same word the Lord

spoke to the remnant on an ordinary day in the sixth month

of the second year. He said, I am with you.

Not when you have finished, not once you have figured it out,

not after the opposition is cleared.

Now, today in the city with these people and through Jesus

finished work, you can have both someone to replace you at the

altar and a God who will embrace you at the throne.

So good, the sacrifice and the presence, the covering and the

communion, the cross and the empty tomb.

The Great Commission is our temple building project.

Go and make disciples of all nations in Norfolk, in the

shipyards and schools and neighborhoods, in living rooms

of the city, and it closes the same four word promise Haggai

gave us. I am with you always to the very

end of the age. God has not changed the terms,

He was simply in Christ making them infinitely better.

Infinitely better. So hear the word of the Lord

this morning as the remnant heard it on a forgotten day in

520 BC, and let it do what it did then be stirred.

Arise, work, the Lord is with you.

Let's pray, Father, thank you that you, you have continued in

your patience and your constant pursuit of us as your people,

that even when we abandoned the things that you have given us to

do, that you still call us back. You called your people back way

long ago and you call us back today.

Father, stir in us to walk in obedience by the power of your

spirit. Father, help us to to remember

that you are with us and that you have called us to these

things, but you will not do. You don't want us to do them

without you, but we love you. It's a review flame.

Amen.