Sermon Tone Analysis

Last week I told you about my favorite philosopher.

Does anybody recall who that is?

Right.

Winnie the Pooh.

Well, there was a great scene in the latest Winnie the Pooh movie that I want to tell you about today.

Pooh and his friends were riding on a train with an adult Christopher Robin, headed off on a great adventure.

As the train sped through the countryside, Pooh got everyone to play a game that he called “Say What You See.”

With all manner of sights they’d never seen rushing past the window of their cabin, each of them saw something different.

Scared little Piglet saw “panic, worry and catastrophe.”

Excited and bouncy Tigger saw “speed, danger and recklessness.”

And gloomy, defeatist Eeyore saw “disgrace, shame and humiliation.”

You see, each of us brings our own perspective to life, and because of those different perspectives, we all tend to see the same things from different angles.

You see, each of us brings our own perspective to life, and because of those different perspectives, we all tend to see the same things differently.

And as we grow and mature, those perspectives tend to change, so that we might not even see things today the same way we did 20 years ago.

But God never changes.

In fact, He tells us in the book of Malachi that His unchanging nature is part of what keeps us safe.

So, while we might not be able to trust the perspectives of others — and, indeed, we might not even be able to trust our own perspective on things — we can always trust God’s perspective.

Today, as we continue our study of the book of Haggai, we’ll see how having the wrong perspective on things can keep us from doing the works of God.

As you turn to Haggai, Chapter 2, let me remind you where we are in the story of God’s chosen people.

A remnant of the exiled Jews has returned to Jerusalem, and after a 16-year pause in the rebuilding of the temple, they have begun the work once again, finally responding in obedience to God’s calling.

They “obeyed the voice of the Lord their God and the words of Haggai the prophet,” and they “showed fear before the Lord” (Haggai 1:12).

And then they got to work.

Today, we will look at the second message from God through the prophet Haggai.

It was delivered on October 17, 520 BC, a little less than a month after the temple work had resumed.

Now this second message from God through the prophet Haggai comes on October 17, 520 BC, a little less than a month after the temple work had resumed.

Notice that, once again, God is addressing the political and religious leadership of His people.

But this time, He is also addressing the people.

That’s because the leadership had been successful in encouraging the people to get back to work.

Now that they were once again walking in obedience to God, the people were in a place where they could benefit from the encouragement of God Himself.

We’ll see why they were already discouraged again in the next verse.

How could this people, who were already poor and struggling simply to feed themselves, ever hope to build a temple that matched the glory of the one that Solomon had built with all his vast resources?

themselves, ever hope to build a temple that matched the glory of the one that Solomon had built

Indeed, since this was a little less than 70 years after Nebuchadnezzar had taken the Jewish people into exile, it seems likely there would have been people still around in 520 BC who were among the children who had been taken to Babylon.

Those children now would have been old, but they would surely have remembered the glorious temple that Solomon had built for the Lord in Jerusalem, the one that Nebuchadnezzar had destroyed.

with all his vast resources?

What they were seeing now as the foundations were completed and the walls had been started was that there was no way the new temple would ever match the grandeur of the old one.

But here was the mistake in their perceptions, and it’s one that we tend to make today, as well.

“They were giving an exaggerated importance to the external features in religion and worship.”

[Peter Williams, Opening up Haggai , Opening Up Commentary (Leominster: Day One Publications, 2008), 44.]

“They were giving an

Peter Williams, Opening up Haggai , Opening Up Commentary (Leominster: Day One Publications,

Man looks on outward appearances, but God looks on the heart.

Where is your heart?

2008), 40.

If your heart is not set completely on Jesus Christ, it doesn’t count for a hill of beans if you’re here every week, if you sing in the choir or even if your Bible is riddled with notes.

exaggerated importance to the external features in religion and worship.

So what’s the best way to tell where your heart is aimed? Figure out where your priorities are.

Where do you invest your resources?

So, God was reminding His people that what mattered was not how beautiful this temple would be, but that they had put their whole energy into it because they had turned their hearts entirely to Him.

He did not discourage them from honoring their past, but He did exhort them to turn their attention to the present.

We can honor the history of our church, for instance, but if we do so at the expense of the work that God is calling us to do now, then we are being disobedient.

“Take courage and work, for I am with you.”

God had derisively referred to the returned remnant of Jews as “this people” in His first prophetic word through Haggai, but now He reminds them that they are still His covenant people.

You see, these are nearly the same words He had spoken to them as they came out of Egypt almost 900 years earlier, and God reminds the remnant of this in the next verse.

These words of Verses 4 and 5 are also nearly the same words that God spoke to Joshua as Israel was about to enter the Promised Land 40 years after their escape from Egypt.

These were nearly the same words, in fact, that David had spoken to his son, Solomon, as Solomon prepared to build that first temple.

“Be courageous and work.”

We might say, “Have faith and do the work, because God is with you.

If you are doing the work that God has called you to do, then you can be certain that God is with you.

If you are not, then you are doing whatever it is that you are doing on your own, and however successful you might consider yourself, your results will not be what God intended.

God has a plan, and it’s a greater one than we can imagine.

This is something I keep reminding myself as I face my own discouragements in ministry.

It should be an encouragement to you, as well.

This is what He reminded this returned remnant that was struggling with discouragement as they used their meager resources to rebuild what had once been a glorious temple.

Do you know what should be most encouraging to us as followers of Christ?

We know the end of the story.

Do you know what should be most encouraging to us as followers of Christ?

We know the end of the story.

We know that the great story told in Scripture — this story of mankind’s repeated failure to represent the Kingdom of the God in whose image we were created — we know that this story ends with Him bringing that Kingdom into its full glory in Jesus Christ.

We know that He will make all things new, and that we followers of Christ — we who are being daily made into His image — will, likewise be made new in the resurrection of the saints.

In the end times, this takes place with a great shaking of the heavens and the earth, and the writer of the book of Hebrews talks about it, quoting from this prophecy of Haggai to make his point:

“It is important to put God first now, for ultimately only what we do for Him will not be shaken and destroyed when Jesus returns.

And it was important for the people of Haggai’s day to look ahead, to realize that only what they did for the Lord would remain.”

(Richards, Larry, and Lawrence O. Richards.

The Teacher’s Commentary.

Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1987.)

Richards, Larry, and Lawrence O. Richards.

The Teacher’s Commentary.

Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1987.

It is important to put God first now, for ultimately only what we do for Him will not be shaken and destroyed when Jesus returns.

And it was important for the people of Haggai’s day to look ahead, to realize that only what they did for the Lord would remain.

This building will not last.

Your home will not last.

Your investments will not last.

What will last will be what we have done for the Lord.

And remember, we are not the Jews of the Old Testament, called to rebuild the temple.

We are New Testament followers of Christ.

That means we must be doing what He has called us to do.

And what’s that?

What will last will be what we have done for the Lord.

And remember, we are not the Jews of the Old Testament.

We are New Testament followers of Christ.

That means that we must be doing what He has called us to do.

And what’s that?

What will not be shaken apart during that final judgment is the church, the body of Christ — those whom we have led to the cross in humble repentance for their sins, those whom we have discipled toward greater Christlikeness.

Everything else will be rubble.

That’s the eschatological or end-times prophetic perspective of this verse.

But there was also a near-term perspective in play, as we see in the following verse.

Remember that last week we noted Ezra’s historical account of this period of temple rebuilding?