Sermon Tone Analysis

Overall tone of the sermon

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Do you ever have any times when it seems like the work you do for the kingdom of Jesus Christ doesn’t amount to very much?
Sure, you raise your children in the fear of the Lord, maintain a good testimony at work and perhaps occasionally even take advantage of an opportunity to witness to an unbeliever.
But then you remember a Christian friend who goes out of his way to evangelize everyone he comes into contact with, or you come to church on Sunday to hear how everyday certain missionaries are literally putting their lives on the line for the gospel in far-off lands.
Your comparison makes you question the value of your own service.
Let’s face it: there’s not one person here today who couldn’t be doing at least a little better in every area, and we should constantly challenge one another to improve.
But let’s not think that God can’t use our work just because it’s not as obvious as someone else’s.
There were a few believers in the church at Corinth who depreciated the value of their own gifts.
Paul admonished them as follows: /For the body is not one member, but many.
If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body?
And if the ear shall say, Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body?
If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing?
If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling?
But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him.
And if they were all one member, where were the body?
But now are they many members, yet but one body/ (I Cor.
12:14–20).
This is essentially the same situation that Haggai faced in today’s text.
The temple, as it was being rebuilt, just didn’t measure up to Solomon’s standards.
Those who were doing the work thought that it just wasn’t worth the effort.
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God’s Covenant with his People
Haggai’s second sermon, which he summarized for us in the first nine verses of chapter 2, was in response to the situation I’ve just described.
Again, the first verse gives us the exact date that he preached it: the twenty-first day of the seventh month.
On our calendar, that would be October 17, 520 BC — about a month and half after his first sermon, and a little less than a month since the actual work on the temple had begun.
This date is also important.
It was the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles (cf.
Lev.
23:34, 36, 40–42), and the next day was a “holy convocation” or a day of rest (cf.
Lev.
23:36, 39).
In other words, the Jews were commemorating their deliverance from Egyptian slavery almost a thousand years earlier.
It was an opportunity for them to look back to the past, which would have invited them to ponder their present situation as well.
The purpose of the Feast of Tabernacles was to make them thankful, but on this particular occasion it made them discouraged.
In terms of God’s blessing, they had taken huge steps backwards.
The glory they had was as nothing compared to the glory of the united kingdom under David and Solomon, and the glory of their temple was overshadowed by the greater glory of the edifice that Solomon had constructed.
Thankfully, the Lord is not one to leave his people in despair.
He sent Haggai his servant to them once again, this time to lift their spirits.
Haggai’s second sermon, like the first, began by reminding the people of his message’s divine origin and authority.
Jehovah, their covenant God, mercifully addressed their concerns.
And once again, Haggai spoke directly to Zerubbabel, the political leader, and Joshua, the religious leader, but he also addressed himself to the people as a whole.
Everyone needed the prophet’s encouragement.
Although Haggai left us only a very brief summary of his message, it’s clear that he immediately went right to the heart of the problem.
The people were comparing what they had before the Babylonian captivity with what they had afterward.
The prophet said, “Okay, if that’s what you’re worried about, then let’s talk about it.”
Note here that he didn’t pull any punches.
In verse 3, he asked three rhetorical questions that emphasized that the people were right: their temple would not be anywhere near as glorious as Solomon’s.
First, he asked if there was anyone present who could remember the former glory of Solomon’s temple.
In spite of the fact that seventy years had gone by since its demise, the book of Ezra (3:8–13) indicates that there was a significant number of people still living who had seen the first building.
Perhaps even Haggai had seen it.
He then asked them how it looked.
Remember that they were less than one month into a four-year project, so the building was nowhere near completion, but the prophet wanted them to make an educated guess based on its present status.
He then asked them, “Don’t you think it looks a little shabby?”
In addition to the fact that the present building was smaller and shabbier than the first, the Babylonian Talmud lists five things that it lacked that contributed to its lesser glory: the Ark of the Covenant, the holy fire, the Shekinah glory, the spirit of prophecy (the Holy Spirit), and the Urim and Thummim.
It’s no wonder that the older men wept!
Here the prophet almost seems cruel.
The people were concerned that their building would not measure up to its former glory, and Haggai comes along and says, “Do you know what?
You’re right.
Your temple is really pitiful.”
It sounds at this point like his purpose was merely to rub salt in their wounds, but this was not the case at all.
To the contrary, he wanted them to start looking at the temple from God’s perspective.
The Lord often sees things differently than we do.
I Samuel 16:7 says, /But the LORD said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the LORD seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart/.
In regard to the temple, God definitely saw something that the people of Haggai’s day could never have seen apart from divine revelation.
Before explaining this further, the prophet encouraged people in verses 4 and 5 with a reminder of God’s covenant favor.
He told them no less than three times to /be strong/ in their work, and then cited two reasons for this, viz., God’s covenantal presence among his people, and his commitment to keep his covenantal promises.
You might remember that this is exactly what David said to Solomon when he gave him the directions for building the first temple (cf.
I Chron.
28:10, 20).
In a sense, it doesn’t really matter whether their temple would match Solomon’s in size and beauty.
What’s important is that the people walk with the Lord, trusting him to keep his promises and obeying his commandments.
The historical context shows up again in verse 5.
As the Jews celebrated the Feast of Tabernacles, they thought about how God had delivered their forefathers from Egyptian slavery.
At that time, he took them out into the wilderness and renewed his covenant with them.
They also affirmed their obedience to it as well.
As long as they remained faithful, God himself guaranteed his favor toward them.
That promise had not changed, even though nearly a thousand years had passed in between.
We tend to think that God changes as much as we do, but this was a good reminder of his never-changing faithfulness to those who put their trust in him.
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The Glory of God’s House
So, if God does not see the temple as man sees it, then how does he see it?
Haggai answered this in verses 6 through 9, where he also explained why Zerubbabel’s temple would surpass that of Solomon’s in glory.
The first thing he said here is that God will shake the heavens, the earth and the sea one more time.
The fact that he would do this one more time meant that he had already done it once.
The Jews knew exactly what Haggai meant.
When the Persian king Darius assassinated his predecessor, several provinces that had been under Persian control revolted.
Darius then shook heaven, earth and the sea to squelch their rebellion.
He succeeded in this after nineteen separate battles.
Haggai, on the other hand, wrote that a much greater shaking would take place in the future with the coming of the Messiah.
Daniel also described this shaking as follows: /And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever.
Forasmuch as thou sawest that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it brake in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold; the great God hath made known to the king what shall come to pass hereafter: and the dream is certain, and the interpretation thereof sure/ (Dan.
2:44–45).
In preparation for the Messiah’s coming, the work of rebuilding the temple was even more necessary.
The temple was to become the religious center of the world (cf.
Isa.
2:2–4), but it would only find its meaning in the finished work of Jesus Christ, who in his flesh made one sacrifice for sin forever.
Lest anyone object that the shaking of the heavens, the earth and the sea in Haggai’s prophecy must be understood literally, let it be noted that Peter in his sermon on Pentecost did not give a literal interpretation of a similar prophecy from the book of Joel (Acts 2:19–20; Joel 2:30–31).
He said that the sun became dark and the moon turned to blood with the coming of Jesus Christ.
In the Bible, the disruption of cosmic forces is often a metaphor for God’s judgment of the nations.
Verse 7 of our text specifically says that this is what Haggai intended: God will shake the nations.
This is also how we should understand similar statements in Matthew 24:29 and Revelation 6:12–14.
But which nations did Haggai’s prophecy include?
To answer this, we go back to the second chapter of Daniel, which foretold the rise and fall of four successive world kingdoms: Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece and Rome.
By the time Haggai wrote, the Lord had already removed Babylon from the picture.
This left the other three.
One at a time they would appear on the scene, and one at a time they would be destroyed.
Only one thing would remain after the Lord shakes heaven and earth, viz., the kingdom of God.
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