This is your daily reminder. God has not run
out of mercy, not for you, not today. Welcome
to the New Mercies Podcast. Welcome back to the
New Mercies Podcast today, February the 24th,
Tuesday, and our reading plan today is Haggai
chapter 2. Now, I encourage you, read the whole
chapter. We've just finished Haggai 1. If you've
been following along with us from the beginning,
you've read Haggai 1 at least three times, and
you have heard it preached from the pulpit. I
preached on Haggai 1 on Sunday this past week,
and so now we are looking into Haggai 2. The
story continues. It doesn't stop in chapter 1.
The end of chapter 1 sounds great. The people,
the remnant, had come back. They had been there
for 15 years. They had built their own houses.
They had not finished the house of the Lord,
the temple of God. God calls them out for it
and says, hey, you've delayed your obedience.
That's disobedience. It's time to work on my
house. Get to work. The Spirit gets stirred in
all of them, and they jumped in and started working.
Now, here's where we come to in chapter 2. It
would be nice to say, oh, they started working,
and they finished the task, and now they celebrated.
But there's a part that they got a little discouraged.
I want to read a couple of verses out of Haggai
1 today. Again, I encourage you to read all the
verses. I'm going to read verses 3, 4, and 5.
And then if we have time, I'm going to jump into
verse number 9. But we're going to go through
Haggai 2 again on Friday. So I've got to leave
a little bit more for then. But here we go. I'm
going to read a couple of verses out of Haggai
2. We're going to start in verse number 3, and
then we're going to talk about it. 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? 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. According to
the covenant that I made with you when you came
out of Egypt, my spirit remains in your midst.
Fear not. A couple of things that have happened.
They have started working on the temple. and
they got discouraged. How did they get discouraged?
Well, let's go back a little bit further. Before
they were in captivity, before Jerusalem was
sieged, they had a temple before. The temple
before was Solomon's temple, the most magnificent
temple you can imagine. If you go back through
the scripture, I thought about having this episode
be a lot about Solomon's Temple because it was
so magnificent. There's places in the scripture
that tells you about each nail weighing several
pounds each. Absolutely beautiful, spectacular
feat of architecture and beautiful building that
was the Solomon's Temple. Now, it was overtaken,
destroyed. They were taken captive. They were
in captivity. Then this is the remnant that came
back. It lies in ruins. They're there for 15
years. Nothing really gets done. Nothing really
gets built on God's temple. He then calls them
out. They now start working. Excitement shows
up until someone makes the phrase, makes the
statement, it's not like it used to be. This
is not as spectacular. as the temple once was.
It is a moment of discouragement that begins
to filter through to everybody. You've heard
it said before, if you've been in a church, you've
heard it said, well, the glory days were this,
this, this, this, this. Well, it used to be really
great. Now it's turned into this. I'm a pastor
of a church, and I can tell you that my father
was the pastor of the church that I am pastoring
now for 20 -plus years. And as his son, I came
and accepted the call to be the pastor here about
a year and a half after he had passed away. And
here's what I heard a lot when I started the
ministry here. Well, your dad did it like this.
Well, it used to be really great. Well, New Providence
used to be this great, powerful church in the
community. Now it's changed so much. Now it's
so different. And here's what I'll have to say
about that. We all are inclined to say, to look
back with nostalgia and say something was really
great. And here's the deal. I don't want to take
away from that. Sure, it was great. The things
that the ministries that were going on or the
way that God was moving or the things that happened
before were great in their time. And the time
is different. God is continuing to move. He's
continuing to do things. He wants to do something
fresh and new every day. I mean, this whole podcast
is called New Mercies. Why? Because in the book
of Lamentations, it says his mercies are new
every single morning. He's doing something new
today. Now we just lean in and listen and see
what he's doing. In Haggai 2, what happened was
they began to build, and someone made the phrase,
this isn't as nice as the last time. It's not
as nice as the last building. The temple before
was better than the temple is now. And what does
God do? That scripture, he tells his people,
The first couple of verses, it says that God
is speaking through Haggai once again, and he
tells him to be strong three times. Be strong,
Zerubbabel. He's the secular leader, if you remember.
Be strong, Joshua, high priest. He's the spiritual
leader. Be strong, people that are being faithful
and obedient. We've looked. Haggai 1, all about
obedience. It started out with misplaced priorities.
Now we're going to obey the work and the call
of the Lord. And now obedience has come and the
work has started and it is wonderful and beautiful
and amazing. Here we go. As soon as obedience
starts, there is a discouragement that comes
in. The enemy begins, if he can't stop the work,
he'll discourage the work. If he can't stop the
work from happening, he'll bring some complainers
in and slow the work down and slow the progress
down and bog everything down with negativity.
That's what he'll do. I love how God, he doesn't
even deny that Solomon's temple wasn't magnificent.
You realize that's happened, right? It says in
verse 4, work, I am with you. He's saying, yes,
it was formerly an incredible, beautiful temple,
but I'm asking you to work today, and I am with
you today. part of what you are doing. There's
a couple of things prophetically that happen
here also that point to the future, right? I
can imagine him saying to this remnant, listen,
the temple you build, my son's going to walk
through. You think about that. Jesus didn't walk
through Solomon's temple. Solomon's temple was
destroyed before Jesus came. Jesus showed up
and walked through this temple that they're building.
Have you thought about that? The Son of God himself
is going to walk through. Whenever I was with
my dad on work projects, he always used to say
if we were hanging drywall somewhere or we were
painting or we were doing something at a church
or whatever, his phrase to me was always, I want
you to paint this doorframe as though Jesus is
going to walk through it and look at it. And
I remember thinking, that's a heavy thing. If
Jesus was walking through it, would he see the
brush strokes that I lazily just threw on the
doorframe? Or would he see smooth and well done
and properly executed paint marks and all the
things? I used to think, what if Jesus walked
through here and saw my work? This is what happens
in Haggai. He's saying, listen, the temple that's
being built right now, my son Jesus is going
to walk through. Now, he doesn't say that in
those exact terms, but there is a prophetic emphasis
that happens if you keep reading. And here's
what I know about what he's calling the people
to do. He's saying, I don't want you to be discouraged.
I want you to focus on what matters. What matters
is I am with you. I am with you. And then he
says in verse 5, according to the covenant that
I made with you when we came out of Egypt. Do
you remember what happened when they came out
of Egypt? God was with them in a pillar of smoke
and a pillar of fire. He was leading them. And
then he was fine to stay when they built the
Ark of the Covenant. His presence was fine to
reside between the two cherubim there at the
mercy seat in the Ark of the Covenant. Here's
what I think is absolutely amazing. God saying
to them in that phrase, He's pointing backward
to Egypt before there was ever a temple, before
there was ever a place, before the tabernacle
showed up, right? He's talking about whenever
they left Egypt. Then they built the tabernacle
with very specific instructions. So it was a
tent out in the wilderness. God's saying, listen,
I was with you before there was a temple, before
there was a tabernacle. When I led you out of
Egypt, I was with you. I was with you when the
tabernacle showed up. In the first temple, yes,
I was there, and I'm still here now. No matter
what situation you've gone through, no matter
what circumstance you've dealt with, I have been
with you. I am still with you. I am a covenant
-keeping God. Whatever you are dealing with and
going through today, know that he is a covenant
-keeping God, and he is going to be with us.
So fear not. Why does he say fear not? There's
discouragement. He should have said, be courageous
because discourage and courage are different.
Discourage means you lose your courage. So what
does God say? He says, fear not. Don't be afraid.
Don't let discouragement bring you out of the
courage that I've tried to call you to. It's
courageous to step into a new work and do something
new. It's courageous to do something that's hard,
that's not easy. As I think about this text today,
I want to read one more verse to you, the verse
number 9. The Bible says this, it says, 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.
In those verses that are in between that, God
gives a little bit of an emphasis that he's going
to shake some things, and what remains is what's
eternal. What remains is what matters. I want
to encourage you today to know that here's what
God is saying. Listen, your obedience, what you're
doing is you're measuring your obedience by the
size of the task. He says, I'm asking you to
measure your obedience by the presence of God.
That's what I'm doing. Now, it doesn't mean that
the size of the temple, the beauty and the splendor
of the temple and the materials, it's not the
materials that matter. It's the presence of God
that will reside in it. It's not the flashiness
of your life. It's not the magnitude of how many
influences you have and how many people follow
you on social media and how much greatness is
about who you are. That's not what it is about.
Is the presence of God in your life or not? That's
what matters. We don't measure our obedience
by the size of the task. We measure it by the
amount of presence that is in it. by how much
God is in it, right? That's how we measure things.
We stop measuring how beautiful and how expensive
and how lavish and how many. Is God in it or
not? That's the question that we have in our
heart. The temple didn't need better bricks.
The temple needed the presence of God. That's
what was needed. I want to say that one more
time. Maybe we can grasp it a little bit better.
In verse 9, he says, the latter glory of this
house shall be greater than the former. He's
talking about Solomon's temple. He says, Solomon's
temple had way better bricks, but I'm about to
do something through this one that's eternal
and that's way bigger. His son is going to walk
through this one. You think about that. His son's
going to teach in this one. That is amazing.
That's incredible. The temple doesn't need better
bricks. It needs the presence of God. That's
what it needs. I don't know what God's calling
you to do, but here's what I'm saying. Be obedient
today, no matter the size of the task, no matter
the amount of influence, no matter the amount
of things that come from it or how lavish it
may look or how small it may look. The presence
of God matters more than anything else. What
feels small in obedience could be massive in
eternity. Whenever you obey him today, keep in
mind, if he's calling you to it, then he's going
to walk with you through it.