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A Monumental Task

Haggai 2:1-9

Sermon Transcript

The following is a lightly edited transcript generated from the audio; it may contain small errors.

Scripture Reading

Haggai. You can turn there to chapter two. Starting in verse one, Haggai chapter two.

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 Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua, the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, 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? Is it not as nothing in your eyes? Yet now be strong, O’s 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. For thus says the Lord of hosts, yet once more in the little while I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land 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. The silver is mine and the gold his mind declares the Lord of hosts. 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.

(Haggai 2:1–9)

Opening Prayer

Let’s pray. [audio unclear] …You that you are gracious to us—we thank you that you always show us the way that your word is a lamp to our feet. We thank you that you shine bright Lord in a world of darkness and that Lord, you are calling people to your side daily. So may we be the faithful remnant that seek after you, that lift up your name, that declare your praises to the nations, that you send us out to be faithful witnesses for you, Lord. We pray, God, that you would continue to bless our time. We pray for our children that you’d be gracious to save them, that you would grow them up to do your work and your will, Lord. May the same be true for us, God. Change our hearts,, put us on the track of righteousness with you and your Son Jesus we pray. Amen.

Recap and Context

Last week was the first sermon in this series on the book of Haggai, so that is the more full introduction. So if you missed last week, it’d be good for you to go and listen to that sermon. But I’ll just do just a brief recap. What we’re having here in the book of Haggai is this occurs after the exile.

So the Northern Kingdom was basically demolished and destroyed around 722 BC. And then the Southern Kingdom, sometimes referred to as Judah, was exiled in 586 BC. The Northern Kingdom, the destruction happened at the hands of the Assyrians, where the Southern Kingdom, Judah, and also Benjamin was exiled at the hands of the Babylonians. So we have at this point where a decree goes out from the king for the exiles to be able to return to the land, and his decree is to actually rebuild the temple.

So. We have three waves that come back. The first wave of exiles is the largest, and Zerubbabel, which we just read a couple times in this passage, he really leads the way for this first wave. There is a second wave that occurs.

That’s with Ezra. There’s a book named after him. Zerubbabel doesn’t get his own book. And then there’s a third wave, and he gets his own book named after him, Nehemiah.

But the first wave is the largest wave, and the focus on the first wave is return return and rebuild, and I’d even say reform. So they return under Zerubbabel, they’re given a task by this pagan king to rebuild. In about 16 or so, maybe 18 years ago past, they had started doing the rebuilding and and they stopped. And then Haggai, that’s where we essentially come on the scene with Haggai rebuking the people for not finishing the temple.

Once they begin this process and they receive the rebuke from Haggai, it takes them about three and a half years to rebuild. So there’s four messages in Haggai. Last week we looked at the first message. This week we’re going to look at this second message.

This second message is going to really focus on encouragement, encouraging the people to press on, encouraging the people to go with the task at hand and be faithful to complete it. So the second message, that’s where we’re at in chapter two. This second message is given about seven weeks after the first message. So that guy comes, he rebukes them because they stop building and seven weeks later he comes and this time instead of a rebuke, it’s an encouragement- it’s an encouragement to really continue building.

The Feast of Booths

I want us to notice just kind of the, I guess, a overall context here as we get into this second message. Do you guys know how many feasts there are for Israel that they were supposed to celebrate? Major feasts, we could say. Seven.

Seven major feasts. And really, if you kind of break them down and look at what time of the year they occur, kind of a spring cluster and then there’s a a fall cluster. So the spring cluster is Passover, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the Feast of First Fruits, and the Feast of Weeks, sometimes called Pentecost. That’s the spring cluster.

Then we have the fall cluster which is the Feast of Trumpets, the Day of Atonement, and the Feast of Booths. Well I want us to notice something here. Go back to verse 1. It says, in the seventh month on the 21st day of the month.

So every time Haggai gives a prophecy, we can actually, like I said last week, we can nail it to the day, the month, even the year. Okay, we can go all the way back to a specific date in history when he gives it. Not all prophecies and prophets work like that, but Haggai does. So here it is, he says, on the seventh month of the twenty-first day, well, what would that be?

This would be the last day of the Feast Well, the Feast of Booths commemorate in part the redemption from Egypt. You could also call it the Feast of In-Gathering. It primarily commemorates the wilderness years. How many years were they in the wilderness? 40.

I rarely ask trick questions up here. I’m not trying to make you look bad. Okay, so it commemorates the wilderness years. Israel lived and basically in tents and booths for, you know, 40 years in the wilderness.

Leviticus, you don’t have to turn there. Just listen. Leviticus 23 verse 42 and 43. You shall dwell in booths for seven days.

All native Israelites shall dwell in booths that your generations may know that I made the people of Israel dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God. And also in Deuteronomy 16 starting in verse 13, you shall keep the feast of booths seven days when you have gathered in the produce from your threshing floor and your wine press. You shall rejoice in your feast, you and your son and your daughter, your male servant and your female servant, the Levite, the Sojourner, the Fatherless, and the widow who are within your towns.

For seven days, you shall keep the feast of the Lord your God at the place that the Lord will choose, because the Lord your God will bless you in all your produce and in all the work of your hands, so that you will be altogether joyful.“ All right, this is the feast of booths. So it’s the seventh day. It’s the very last day. They’ve been living in tents or booths for seven days.

And what is the message? Well, part of the purpose of the feast is to remind the people where they came from. This happens way after the exodus, but they’re reminded of where they came from and every day and every night you go to bed, you’re sleeping in a tent for seven days. Now sometimes if you’re growing up as a kid, your parents throw out a tent in the backyard, that’s kind of fun for one night, right?

If the whole family’s out there, that might get old kind of quick. But it was a reminder of where they came from, remind them of their history, and really remind them of what God accomplished. I mean, they’re living in the booth, they’re like, man, well, 40 years, but why 40 years? Well, one, disobedience, but what had God done?

He had taken them out and was taking them to the promised land. Well, this is true for us. I want to encourage this just one a little bit. Every time you read the word, I mean think about it, you’re reading the same storyline and the same history that they read, right?

I mean their history is our history. Every time you’re reading the word, I mean you have, now we have a bit more of the story, but every time you read the word, it’s like a history lesson and you’re seeing how God has been faithful time and time and time and time again. Being reminded of what God has done for his people. So that’s the purpose of the feast, a reminder of the past of what God has done.

But what’s the current context? Well remember last week the Israelites had been living in anything but boosts or tents. What were their houses like? Well look back at Haggai chapter 1 verse 4.

Is it a time for you yourself to dwell in your paneled houses while this house house lies in ruins. I mean that’s the first message. It’s a rebuke for their houses are great. I mean they’ve got like the upgraded exterior siding.

They got the Hardie board, right? It’s fancy stuff. They don’t got that cheap vinyl siding that most of us have. And you go inside, right?

It’s got, I mean it’s all great inside. You know, it’s got the granite countertops and it’s got some nice trim around each of them. I mean they’ve upgraded everything. It looks awesome.

And there every day as they’re going to work, there’s the Lord’s temple laying in ruins, right? So they’re getting rebuked in chapter one by the prophet. So it’s a little bit of a reminder to them. They’re in the tents.

Well, I mean, yeah, that’s probably more appropriate as the Lord’s house lays in ruins.

Discouragement and Disillusionment

Well, the second message here though is he’s addressing is, I’d say three Ds, discouragement, Disillusion, disenchantment. The temple doesn’t seem quite as good as it once did. The results aren’t completely satisfying. And it even says it’s possible, it looks like, that some of the people that were exiled, the exile went for 70 years, that some of them were there and were actually part of the exile.

Now some of them were born in exile, but some were part of it. And that’s why he says in verse 3, who is left among you who saw this house in its former glory. Now a lot of them would have died, b70 years. But how do you see it now?

Is it not? There’s nothing in your eyes. So some of them know they would have been younger children. They would have remembered the original temple in all its glory.

And then here they see it and it’s been wrecked and destroyed and they’re trying to rebuild it and it’s discouraging. So some of them remember it. There’s an additional setting here. It’s the seventh month like verse one says.

Well the seventh month is when Solomon’s the original temple was dedicated. That’s when that work was completed. The temple gets dedicated. So the seventh month, I mean the Israelites, they know their dates.

They know their history. It’s like we don’t forget Christmas or the 4th of July or Easter. I mean, they know when the temple got dedicated. So it’s the same month.

The point here is there’s continuity. They’re not building a new temple. They’re rebuilding the old temple. It’s not construction of the new, it’s rebuilding the same one.

Yet, as they’re progressing and building it, they realize it’s nowhere close to what it originally was. That’s the discouragement, the disillusionment, and disen So, Haggai comes along and here’s really what his message is. It’s this. Press on.

Press on. And we’re gonna press on in a couple different ways.

Press On Through Obstacles

One, he tells them to press on in the midst of obstacles. Now, they stopped 16 years earlier. Why? Because of obstacles.

The Lord had given them a task, a pretty monumental task, but He had given them a task, and obstacles from 16 years earlier had prevented them. Well guess what? Guess what they found out when they picked up that hammer and they picked up that shovel to start rebuilding the temple again after it had been a few years? Those obstacles hadn’t gone away.

The same obstacles were there. What were the obstacles? Well, one of them, if when we look in Ezra, we see the obstacles was the people. Even Nehemiah on the third wave, he ends up seeing it.

Ezra with the second wave, they end up seeing it. It’s the people, not the Israelites. It’s the non-Israelites. The unbelievers at the time are opposing the work.

Well, that makes sense. The kingdom of darkness will always oppose the kingdom of life every single time. It might be intentional. It might be unintentional, but they will do it.

They don’t like the temple being re-obstacles. Well that hasn’t gone away and listen brothers and sisters There will always be obstacles when you try to accomplish something good All right, there will be people against you. That’s an obstacle part of it is just the discipline to do it. I Mean if you think of tasks to do You have to.

You have to have discipline to do different things. So, sometimes the obstacle is just a discipline. Will you be lazy or not? Will you be disciplined to walk through something that the Lord has put before you?

Sometimes it’s just a time issue. That’s true. But there will always be an obstacle to you accomplishing something great for the Lord. And listen, the enemy loves to, throw obstacles in your way.

And he will find every single possible reason he can to throw a wrench in your plans. And he doesn’t care if he gets the credit. He’s happy to use things simply not going your way, so you get frustrated. Something as simple as a printer not working.

He’s happy to let that get in your way and frustrate you. He’s fine with people being rude to you. He’s fine with pagans from 2,000 years ago trying to disrupt the temple being rebuilt. He’s fine with cars breaking down.

He’s fine with the mundane as long as it disrupts what God wants you to do, whether it’s big or whether it’s small. And sometimes he doesn’t have to do too much because sinful people do it for him without any prompting. Sometimes we just help him out. So the message here is press on.

The Lord, listen, the Lord has tasks for us to do. Big and small, but he has tasks. He has work for us and he has a will to be accomplished. Listen, the Lord, as we find out, usually is gracious to take care of those obstacles, sometimes by just pressing through them, sometimes by ignoring them, sometimes by directly dealing with them.

Listen to Isaiah 40. Every valley should be lifted up, every mountain and hill made low, the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plane. Anything that is a hindrance to what the Lord wants to accomplish is removed. That’s really the idea there.

The Lord has a plan, whatever is in his way is gonna be cleared out and gonna be taken care of. For what reason? So God’s glory shines. That’s what we see in the very next verse in Isaiah.

It says, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall seep together for the mouth of the Lord has spoken. So God makes it clear why he’s removing obstacles. It’s for his glory. It’s not just for when he returns, yes it’s that, but it’s also for anything that comes for His own, anything that gets between us and the Lord, it’s removed.

Anything that gets between the Lord’s will, it’s is removed. Was cleared out. That’s kind of what Isaiah is drawing on here. Why is that?

Because the king had a mission. He had a mission and he wanted to make sure it got accomplished and nothing was going to prohibit him or hold him back. So we press on.

Menial Tasks and Monumental Work

We press on when the work seems menial or small. Listen, the Israelites were discouraged. They’re given this monumental task, rebuild the temple. But individually think about it, the specific tasks they each might have had might have seemed menial.

I mean when you see that construction, which it feels like in St. Charles we got going all the time these days. But when you see construction of like a huge bridge, you know they redid the 40th, the Daniel Boone Bridge, it’s been a few years now, but you see the construction of like a huge bridge across the river. It takes hundreds of workers, probably tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of hours.

It takes them sometimes years to build it. And you know the guy, you know hanging from a rope over the edge, putting in one bolt at a time and and then screwing the nut on, it’s probably like, how does this help accomplish building this bridge? Well, because monumental tasks don’t happen, just like that. As the saying goes, Rome wasn’t built in the day.

So it’s small things. It’s that guy doing a bolt, and that guy doing a bolt, and that guy doing a bolt, and all of a sudden, you got hundreds of thousands of bolts put together for the bridge. And it’s the same with anything in our life that is a monumental thing. I mean even if you think about going to school, whether it’s high school or college, I mean yes, that four year going through college, that might seem big.

But at some point it breaks down into one class and that class breaks down into 50 minutes and then you have a paper to write and you maybe have a 20 page paper to write which seems big to people. But at some point, what you have to do, well, you have to write the first page. Like these things get broken down into smaller tasks. We have a monumental task.

The Israelites were given one. What’s our monumental task as the church? It’s the Great Commission, right? Like disciple the nations, go into all the world.

Well, I mean, that doesn’t happen in a day. But what does it look like happening? It is small tasks added together, accomplish the Great Commission. So some of us, R.

And that we’re accomplishing for His glory. So we press on regardless of if we think the task is small or menial. When the Lord gives us a task, it doesn’t matter if it’s smaller but smaller. And we’re not going to do it.

We’re going to do it. We’re going to do it. And we’re going to do it. Big, he gives us a task, we work at it.

Moms, dads, giving a task, right? Changing diapers, playing with your kids. Family is given a task. We’re all given tasks.

We have tasks as neighbors. We’re living in neighbors. Maybe they’re above us, below us, beside us, wherever our neighbors are at. We have tasks with our neighbors.

Love our neighbor. Well, what does that look like? Sometimes it’s as simple as just listening to them as they’re going through something. Sometimes it’s as simple as helping them out and being available.

Small things like that. You know sometimes our neighbors go out they’re like, oh can you just take our a trashcan back to the side of the house because we’re gonna be out of town for a few. I mean it’s small stuff right? But listen, we have family, we have v church and we have society and all of us we need a much bigger view for each of these areas.

We are not building, listen we’re not building for today. We’re building for tomorrow. And too many of us are guilty of just seeing hardly past the front of our nose, let’s just say. We can’t see very far into the future.

We’re short-sighted. And we have these things. You know, the Lord wants us to pass on, even if you think about 2 Timothy 2-2, the things you’ve heard me say in the presence of many witnesses, these things entrust a reliable man who will be qualified to pass it on to others. A little I mean there’s like four generations right there.

Paul to Timothy to other men who pass it on to other men. Four generations and a lot of times we’re just focused on hey I got to make sure that I can retire in 15 or 20 years and my retirement is big enough. That’s so short sighted. We’re trying to do something for the kingdom that is much bigger than any 401k could ever be.

So what does it look like? Well, that’s why we want to be having the generations built up. And we’re thinking about the next generation. And we’re not even just thinking about the next generation.

We’re thinking about the generation after that. And we’re thinking about the generation after that. Think of the times that the word talks about to a thousand generations. Now that’s forward thinking.

I mean, has there even been a thousand generations in the history of the world? No. I mean God’s thinking a thousand generations. He’s thinking way into the future.

And we’re sometimes so short-sighted we can’t even think past tomorrow. Well the gospel, if we want to accomplish the gospel, we got to have some big thinking. So look what he links this with.

The Lord Is with Us

We press on for the Lord is with us. In Haggai 2, 4 that’s what he says. He says work at the end of Haggai 2, 4 for I am with you declares the Lord of hosts. He gives them a task and then he gives them a promise.

Press on with the task for I’ll be with you. I mean, that’s honestly the best part of this whole passage, really, I think. I mean, there’s a little bit better part even coming, but it’s tied to this part. The Lord is with us, and He’ll always be with us.

The Lord is with us, and He’s going to do great things. So the Lord is with us. What covenant does He say? Look what He says in verse 5.

According to the covenant. So, work for I am with you, declares the Lord of hosts. Verse 5, according to the covenant that I made with you when you came out of Egypt. What covenant is that?

Covenant is that. I mean, it’s the covenant made at Mount Sinai. Covenants are important to God. So you have the redemption, David mentioned it in his communion exhortation, where the members of the Trinity, the Son agrees to be sent, the Father sends the Son, the Spirit agrees to apply the work of the Son to a people for God’s own pleasure.

The covenant, some people call it the covenant of redemption. We see this mentioned in Hebrews 1320, now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant. Well, what’s the eternal covenant? It’s the covenant that the members of the Trinity covenanted together.

That’s really the first covenant. The one we see first mentioned in the word in Genesis is what some people call the covenant of works. Some people don’t like that because the word works, right? Some people call it the Covenant of Creation.

Well, that’s made with Adam. He’s representative of humanity. And b what’s the Covenant? Like obey and you get the tree of life.

The sign there is normally seen as the tree of life. Well, then you get the Noahic Covenant. It would probably be the next major one. Sometimes you get, some people talk about about an Adamic covenant, which is post-fall.

Some people wrap that up to the covenant of works, that’s fine. But the Noahic covenant, what’s the sign of the Noahic covenant? The rainbow. And that covenant is with Noah, his descendants, and it’s really with every living creature.

It’s like the whole earth. And what’s the promise there? God won’t ever destroy the earth again via a flood. Then we come to the Abrahamic covenant?

That’s made with Abraham, his offspring, and it says all the nations will be blessed through the Promised. What’s the Abrahamic covenant? Circumcision. Then we come to the one mentioned here, the Mosaic covenant.

Right? Primarily made with the nation of Israel through Moses. What’s the sign of the Mosaic covenant? Sabbath.

Most people don’t know that. It’s the Sabbath. All right, so he’s saying, Hey, I brought you out. Hey, you’re in the seventh day you’ve been living in that booth being reminded of being brought out and living in the wilderness for 40 years.

And what I’m still with you. What went with them when they came out of Egypt, right? Pillar of fire by night, the cloud by day, all them years. Cloud and fire, cloud and fire.

The Lord, it was God’s visible presence. And here he’s promising it again, I will be with you. So that’s the Mosaic Covenant. There’s a couple other covenants if you wanted to talk about we won’t.

You can talk about the Aaronic Covenant, the Land Covenant, the Davidic Covenant. But the one that Jeremiah talks about and other prophets as well is the New Covenant. Who’s that made with? Well all who enter in, right?

The offer goes to all. Jeremiah promises to the house of Israel and the house of Judah and then to all who are in Christ. What’s the sign of the new covenant? Right there.

That and that. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper entrance into the covenant is which one? Baptism. Continuing in the new covenant, Lord Supper.

The order is important. Baptism before the Lord Supper. Why is all this important? Because God is a covenant-keeping God.

Has he ever broken his covenant? No. None of those covenants. He’s not broken, not a single one, which means what?

He’s faithful to his word. He’s faithful to his word. He’s a covenant-keeping God who does what he says he will do. So you don’t have to doubt.

If he says, like he says here, I am with you, then he’ll be with you. And over and over again we get encouragement that the Lord will stay faithful to His covenant. Deuteronomy 7 9, know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love Him and keep His commandments. And here it is to a thousand generations Over and over again we see that.

Joshua 21 45 notes, not one word of all the good promises that the Lord had made to the house of Israel had failed. All came to pass. Not one word. Isaiah 54 verse 10 for the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but my steadfast love shall not depart from you, and my covenant of shall not be removed, says the Lord, who has compassion on you.“ That’s Old Testament, but we see the same thing in the New Testament.

Verse 23 of Hebrews 10, “…let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.” And then this one, which is really convicting, 2nd Timothy 2 13 if we are faithless, He remains faithful. For He cannot deny Himself. You ever feel like that at times? Like, Lord, I’m not being so faithful here.

I’m not doing so great. Well, guess what? The Lord is still faithful. And probably one of my favorite verses, 2 Corinthians 1.20, for all the promises of God find there yes in Him talking about Jesus.

That is why it is through Him that we utter our Amen to God for His glory. This is also why He continues to go on in verse 5. He says, according to the covenant I made with you when you came out of Egypt, my spirit remains in your midst. Right?

Basically reiterating what had happened in the Exodus, the spirit remains, and then He says, fear not. Why it will because God is with them.

The Best Is Yet to Come

And then additionally press on because, listen, the best is yet to come. The best is yet to come. Press on because the best is yet to come. Listen, we haven’t arrived.

God has future blessings. He has current blessings and he has blessings for tomorrow, but he has blessings for next week and next month and all the way into eternity. Blessings for today but also So what does that mean for us? Well, be strong.

That’s what he says in verse 4. He gives it, if you think about it, he gives it to Zerubbabel. Really Zer to Zerubbabel is representative of the civil leader. Then to Joshua, really Joshua is representative of the religious leader.

And then to the people. But three times he repeats it. Be strong, be strong, be strong. Each time to one of them.

Them, the people you could maybe… Maybe as individuals, but he wanted them all to be strong. All areas, all aspects, all spheres. He wanted them to be strong.

Be strong in what? Well, in him. In him. So the best is yet to come.

That’s why we press on in the midst of obstacles. When the work seems menial or small, we press on because the Lord is with us. A lot of people, they want to try to get back to like a golden age. Some people want to get back to like life, you know, on Little House on the Prairie or something.

They still want the air conditioning though. Some people want to get back to, you know, the Puritan lifestyle. They want to get back to a period in history that seemed to be the idealism. Listen, that longing though, it’s almost like we’re looking in the wrong direction.

It’s a longing for something that we probably idealized more than it really was was. But it’s a longing that’s put there by God. It’s something that won’t be fully satisfied in this lifetime. It’s really a longing for heaven and eternity and for God Himself.

We realize something’s not quite complete. As Cornelius Plantinga says in his book, the title, Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be. Talking about sin in this world. Something in our soul realizes the world ain’t quite right.

And we want it to be. That’s why when we see what appears to be injustice, we’re we’re rightfully outraged. When we see good things, we’re blessed by it. We’re encouraged by I.

Because we realize like the world’s not quite as it should be. It’s broken and it’s fallen and it. Yet God says what? I’m gonna restore it.

That’s what he’s hinting at when he goes into verse 6, for this is the Lord of hosts. Yet once more in the little while I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land 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 The latter glory of this house will be greater than the former says the Lord of hosts and in this place I will give peace Declares the Lord of hosts will this language of shaking the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land I mean that’s the language of theophany and appearance of God God appearing in our midst But it also harkens what? Well, it’s a hint that God himself is gonna appear in our midst. First, as a baby, the God-man, the Savior.

And remember the Pharisees, Sadducees, they’re all arguing about the temple and swearing on the temple. And what does Jesus say? I tell you, something something greater than the temple is here. Who’s he talking about?

Himself. Talking about himself. He’s testifying about him. Even Nahum gives this idea idea.

The mountains quake before him. The hills melt. The earth he’s before him. The world and all who dwell in it.

So we have the whole physical creation trembling at his presence. Ultimately, the language points to a new heaven and a new earth. Symbolized by the latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former. Yes, there’s a physical aspect, but there’s very much a spiritual aspect to it.

It’s not about the temple itself, it’s about what the temple represents. God’s abiding presence among his people. Even Jesus, when he comes back, is like, it is good that I leave you. You’re like, huh, what’s that about?

Well, what’s the reason he says? For I will send the comforter. I’ll send the comforter. And he’s gonna fill you, and he’s gonna help you, and he’s gonna show you how to walk in my ways, and he’s gonna make it possible.

All those things, right? It’s not about the temple itself, it’s about what the temple represents. So Christ’s first and second coming, right? His first coming as an infant, his second coming in the future, all pointing to the greatness of who the Lord is.

Because of that, and that alone, brothers and sisters, that should be enough for whatever task the Lord put before us that we should work at it heartily with everything we got, small or big. And sometimes the Lord gives us tasks, I’ve been doing tasks before, sometimes for my family, sometimes for this church, I’m just like, man, what is the point of this thing? But I know there’s a point and I know the Lord wants me doing it. Sometimes it’s clean in bathrooms.

Sometimes it’s menial, it’s small. Sometimes it’s bigger tasks. But brothers and sisters, God gives us tasks. And all of that is for His glory.

How we walk about it is important. Is our attitude communicate something? We’re communicating something when we walk in a righteous attitude before God with those, even those, what seems to be menial tasks. But I’m telling you, you’re trying to raise your kids.

That’s like the big picture, raise your kids. Again, it has to be broken down into specific smaller tasks. If we just say, hey, do a great job raising your kids, well, that doesn’t help anyone out. They need to know some nuts and bolts about that.

Same with the Great Commission. We have to help people walk that out. What does that look like? Well, at the base, it’s us opening our mouths and sharing with people about the gospel.

But somehow, you have to reach that unreached people group on the other side of the world that’s never heard about Jesus doesn’t even have a written language. So how do we do that? Well, yeah, that takes planning. That takes effort.

That takes time. That takes a willingness to support and a willingness to send and a willingness for people to R willing to go. That’s the cooks, right? But we’re all my point is we’re all playing a part in that.

That’s the great commission in action. God does not call all every single one of us to go to Southeast Asia, but he does call some. And I do believe he calls all of us to be a part of that work of sending in some way, shape or form. Encouragement, prayer, financial support, those are, I’d say, the key things.

But we’re involved somehow. We either, you know, put our money where our mouth is, basically. We either say we believe it and then we act on it or we just talk cheap. Well, let’s not talk cheap.

Be serious about the work. So I’m sure all those Israelites for them 16 years were like, R. Yeah, yeah, man, we’re gonna get to that work at the temple. They’re talking about what they’re gonna do for the temple and how they’re gonna fix it and someone probably had great plans for it.

Talk’s cheap. 16 16 years go by. Temple’s still there. Hardly any work done on it. At some point, brothers and sisters, you got to pick up a hammer.

At some point, you got to pick up a shovel. And that first shovel full of dirt doesn’t look like much accomplished. But give it a few days and you’re going to have a big hole and you can start laying foundations again. And that’s what we’re trying to do when it comes to the gospel, when it comes to our families, when it comes to society, when it comes to this church and the church in general.

Laying biblical foundations from which things can be built on. That’s what Paul’s talking about in Corinthians. You know, I’ve laid a foundation and now people are, some are building with cheap materials. What happens with cheap materials, as any builder knows, doesn’t last very long.

But some are building with gold and silver. That’s going to last a rile.

Build to Last

So we’re doing these tasks, let’s build to last. Let’s build to last. We should build our institutions to last. I remember hearing a story that one particular theology that was in this church and they were trying to build and they’re just like you know what we want to build this we want to start a school but the liberals always end up taking everything over so we’re not even going to build the building at all.

That’s like a loser mentality. They’re like, the liberals always take everything over. Well, how about we try to flip the script for once? How about we build to last?

How about we make sure we pour into the next generation and the next generation to a thousand generations so that the liberals don’t take it over? But that kind of thinking is a loser mentality. You won’t accomplish much with that if you’re always concerned about something. No, you can put in safeguards and if it’s getting taken over then at some point someone started building with that straw and the hay.

They stopped building with the gold and the silver. We got to build with the gold and silver and we got to show the next generation and the generation after that how to build with gold and silver too. We might be the best builder out there but at some point we’re going to And then other people have to step up to build. And if we haven’t trained, i.e.

Discipleship, they’re gonna start building with bad materials or the wrong materials. So let’s build two lasts. Let’s think about the future generation and the generation after that. I’m not just thinking about my kid’s generation.

And I’m not just thinking about their kid’s generation when that occurs for me. I’m not thinking about their generation. No, I’m thinking R-E-F-F- When he’s thinking, he’s thinking, thousand generations. Some of us, we can’t even get past our own generation or the next generation.

We gotta scrap a way of thinking and we gotta think like the Lord. A thousand generations, let’s build something to last. That means whenever those small works come along, we know we’re helping build something, that’s gonna last. I mean, some of those great castles and even great churches, sometimes that sometimes those people that started on them, they didn’t even see them get completed.

And they were okay with that. They because we know it’s part of a bigger picture. Just like Haggai and the Israelites, you know, putting one brick doesn’t finish the temple, but it sure helps get it started. It sure keeps the task going along, and that’s what we want to do, to be faithful to build.

That’s why we press on.

Closing Prayer

Let’s pray. Lord, thank you for giving us the task of the Great Commission, of seeing your gospel go forth, of seeing the nation’s disciples. So help us to do that near and far. Help us to be faithful, whatever the task, big or small, because you promise to be with us. You are a gracious God who’s a covenant keeping God. And we pray God, many, many, many people will be brought into the new covenant. The covenant with you, the covenant of forgiveness can be made right with you. Sin forgiven, washed away, righteousness given. Reconciliation with the God of the universe, who’s our heavenly Father. You all have this through your glory, Lord. Amen.