Nobody Expected That (2)
Haggai: Priorities Make a Difference • Sermon • Submitted
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I was a child of the Space Age.
Born in 1964, as the Gemini program established the American presence in Earth orbit, I spent my toddler years watching rockets leave their launch pads and men learning to walk in space.
And then, 50 years ago this week, at the tender age of four, I watched a Saturn V rocket, the biggest and most powerful ever launched — even to this day — break free from its launch pad amidst the deafening roar of five of the mightiest engines ever built and push its way through the atmosphere atop a column of flames.
Mankind was headed for the moon.
Yesterday marked the 50th anniversary of mankind’s first steps on the moon. Neil Armstrong and Edward “Buzz” Aldrin spent a grand total of two hours and 10 minutes kicking up the lunar dust before getting back into the lunar module for the trip home.
For the past 50 days, I have been reading a series of articles online about the Apollo 11 mission, and one of the articles made a remarkable point that I want to share with you.
For the past 50 days, I have been reading a series of articles online about the Apollo 11 mission, and one of the articles made a remarkable point that I want to share with you.
At its peak in 1965, the Apollo program employed more than 410,000 people form NASA and its contractors.
Now, as you can imagine, NASA keeps impeccably detailed records of its work, and the work of each of those people is detailed in various documents that the writer of this series had researched.
As it turns out, a conservative estimate based on those records shows that 2.8 billion hours of work were dedicated to the Apollo moon missions.
Altogether, stretching across 11 Apollo missions — only six of which landed on the moon — men were in space for a total of 2,502 hours, which means that for every hour an American spent in space during Apollo, one million hours of work was done back on earth to get them there.
That’s the equivalent of the entire 50-year careers of 10 people.
“Imagine doing something for an hour that 10 people had invested their entire careers to get you ready to do, for that hour.” (https://www.fastcompany.com/90364565/going-to-moon-is-hardest-work-weve-ever-done)
The author of this series, Charles Fishman, concluded his series with a look at why the moon landings continue to be important to us today, and I want to read a couple of quotes to you. Perhaps as I do, you will begin to see the connection to what we have been learning from the prophet Haggai in recent weeks.
“When President Kennedy said in May 1961 that America should go to the Moon by the end of the decade, not only was the task impossible—we had none of the tools we’d need to do the job—but at that moment, more than half the country had never even been in an airplane.” (https://www.fastcompany.com/90379334/how-going-to-the-moon-changed-the-world-back-on-earth?fbclid=IwAR14wrLGscagP1ydet9fnCCy68tW8YS9hz5e1nCxyEEytFuBu-BWxkIzSNM)
Even NASA had only given the president 50-50 odds that we would meet his goal of landing a man safely on the moon — and then returning him home safely — by the end of the ‘60s.
“For both Kennedy and America, then, going to the Moon was a leap of faith.” ((https://www.fastcompany.com/90379334/how-going-to-the-moon-changed-the-world-back-on-earth?fbclid=IwAR14wrLGscagP1ydet9fnCCy68tW8YS9hz5e1nCxyEEytFuBu-BWxkIzSNM))
You see, the most important ingredient to our success in this impossible mission was not manpower, and it was not technological savvy — though both of those things were vital. What was most important was faith.
We put our faith into so many things in the course of our modern lives.
I happen to disagree with Lewis’ conclusion that it was wrong for us to go to the moon. In fact, God was honored in the process
If we can have
We have faith in politicians and political parties. We have faith in the justice system. We have faith in technology. We have faith in the safety systems of our vehicles. And, as in the case of Apollo, we had faith in ourselves — in mankind’s ability to do seemingly impossible things when we all work together toward some shared goal.
In every one of those cases, however, it would be easy for us to point to situations in which such faith was misplaced, to show how we had been let down by the very things we had trusted.
We trust the things and the people that have proved they will let us down, and then we fail to trust the One who will never let us down.
We have such great faith in ourselves and so little faith in the omnipotent God who spoke the very heavens and earth into existence. And so, we end up being surprised when we fail and surprised all over again when God succeeds.
And this is the picture that is the backdrop for the last of our messages from the book of Haggai.
As you’re turning to , allow me to remind you what’s going on.
The Jewish people who had returned to Jerusalem from exile during the time of Haggai had been chastised by God for their wrong priorities. For 16 years, they had allowed reconstruction of the ruined temple to languish while they had built and beautified their own houses, and they had experienced God’s correction as a result.
But they had changed their priorities to match those of God; responding to the prophecies of Haggai, they had re-started the reconstruction, and now they had God’s promise that He would be with them.
Their priorities had changed, and then God changed their perspective. Soon after re-starting to work on the temple, the people had become discouraged, because they had realized that they could never rebuild the temple to be as beautiful as the one that had been destroyed by the armies of Nebuchadnezzar.
But God had given them a new perspective. He had reminded them that His Spirit would abide within their midst, and He had suggested that they were far too focused on the external appearance of religion.
And furthermore, He had said through Haggai, the glory of the new temple would actually be GREATER than that of the old one.
So this people had new priorities and a new perspective. Now what they would need would be a new persuasion.
They would need to change their persuasion — their faith — about who they were and about the role of their good works — and even their obedience to God — in their success.
And so, about two months after delivering the encouragement of the prophecy in the first part of Chapter 2, God spoke again through the prophet Haggai, beginning in Verse 10.
10 On the twenty-fourth of the ninth month, in the second year of Darius, the word of the Lord came to Haggai the prophet, saying,
The date here would have been December 18, 520 BC., a little more than eight weeks after the second message through Haggai. Note that this time God is speaking only to Haggai, and He gives His prophet an assignment.
11 “Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘Ask now the priests for a ruling:
Does God require help from the priests in understanding anything? Of course not. So this is going to be an object lesson for the priests and, therefore, the people. It is an object lesson on holiness.
12 ‘If a man carries holy meat in the fold of his garment, and touches bread with this fold, or cooked food, wine, oil, or any other food, will it become holy?’ ” And the priests answered, “No.”
Now this question goes back to the levitical law, the Holiness Code that God laid out for the people of Israel in the book of Leviticus.
The levitical law stated that a garment used to carry holy meat would become holy, but that garment could not convey its holiness to anything that it touched.
Since we don’t come from this tradition, this all seems foreign to us, and it can be a little hard to understand. But let me pull an example that might help from a familiar biblical event.
When Moses walked over to the burning bush to see what was happening, what did God tell him to do?
“Remove
5 Then He said, “Do not come near here; remove your sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”
God spoke from the burning bush, and His presence within that bush had transferred His holiness to the bush and then to the very ground around it, just as meat that had been set aside for the sacrifice would convey its holiness to the garment in which it was carried. But that garment would not make something else that it touched to become holy.
So holiness could be conveyed by a secondary level of contact, but not by a tertiary one.
So then God turns the question around.
13 Then Haggai said, “If one who is unclean from a corpse touches any of these, will the latter become unclean?” And the priests answered, “It will become unclean.”
A corpse would have been considered unclean under Jewish law, and anyone who touched a corpse would then be unclean and in need of ritual cleansing before being allowed to appear in the temple so that they would not transmit their uncleanness to anything there.
So uncleanness can be passed along through a secondary AND a tertiary level of contact.
Here’s the lesson in laymen’s terms: Holiness is harder to come by than commonness. Impurity is easier to pass along than purity.
That shouldn’t surprise any of us. It’s a simple concept that we learned from an early age: It’s easier to get something dirty than it is to get it clean.
But God was making a bigger point here.
Hagg 2 14
14 Then Haggai said, “ ‘So is this people. And so is this nation before Me,’ declares the Lord, ‘and so is every work of their hands; and what they offer there is unclean.
You see, the people had responded to God in obedience. They had restarted the reconstruction of the temple. Three months after having responded to God’s call through Haggai, and more than two months after having been encouraged by God through the same prophet, perhaps they were feeling good about themselves. Perhaps they even thought that what they were doing for God somehow had made them holy.
So God reminded them of who they were.
They were unclean. They were not holy before the perfectly holy God. And everything these unclean people did — everything they offered — was unclean.
They had persuaded themselves that what they were doing had somehow changed who they were.
But God had a couple more lessons for them that would remind them of what made them valuable, and He began teaching these lessons in the next verses.
Hagg 3
15 ‘But now, do consider from this day onward: before one stone was placed on another in the temple of the Lord,
Here, we need to get into the minutia of the Hebrew language.
This word that is translated in the NASB as “onward” can actually mean either “onward” or “backward.”
It’s kind of the same way that inflammable in English can mean either “able to burn” or “unable to burn.” That word actually comes from the Latin “inflammare,” which means “to cause to catch fire,” but our language normally uses the prefix “in-” to suggest the opposite of something, so we often see “inflammable” used to mean that something cannot catch fire, even though it actually means something that can catch fire.
Confusing, right?
Well, commentators have been just as confused by this passage before us because of the double meaning of the Hebrew word that is used.
From the context of the book and that of the passage, though, I think this word is better translated as “backward.” So, God is telling the people to look back in time from when He is speaking, back to the time when they had not started working on the temple again.
16 from that time when one came to a grain heap of twenty measures, there would be only ten; and when one came to the wine vat to draw fifty measures, there would be only twenty.
Remember that they had planted much but harvested little. Remember that God said there was not enough wine for them to get drunk.
Back then, when they had disobediently put their own priorities ahead of His, the returned Jewish remnant had experienced the curses related to disobedience.
17 ‘I smote you and every work of your hands with blasting wind, mildew and hail; yet you did not come back to Me,’ declares the Lord.
And despite the curses of that God had visited upon His people, they had persisted for 16 years in allowing His temple to remain in destruction.
But then Haggai had delivered God’s prophetic Word, and things had changed. And now God encouraged His people to look ahead.
18 ‘Do consider from this day onward, from the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month; from the day when the temple of the Lord was founded, consider:
On the day that they responded in obedience to God’s calling, August 29, 520 BC, the day they had begun rebuilding the temple, something had changed, but the people were still unaware of it.
19 ‘Is the seed still in the barn? Even including the vine, the fig tree, the pomegranate and the olive tree, it has not borne fruit. Yet from this day on I will bless you.’ ”
They had planted their seeds, yet those seeds had not yet borne fruit. But God promised here that they would do so.
“From this day on, I will bless you,” he told them.
So let me ask you something: Had the character of the people changed? Was God blessing them now because they had earned it?
Of course not. God was blessing them, because He is a gracious God.
Nothing had changed between God’s pronouncement in verse 14 that the people were unclean and incapable of building a holy place for Him. His promise of blessing is simply a manifestation of His divine grace.
pronouncement in verse 14 that the people are unclean and incapable of building a holy place for
But we should not miss this important point: God’s grace — at least His SAVING grace — is manifested through faith.
Him. His promise of blessing is simply a manifestation of His divine grace.
8 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;
We are saved BY God’s grace acting THROUGH our faith in Jesus Christ as the perfect sacrifice for our sins.
God gives His common grace to all mankind. His common grace is the thing that ensures that humanity continues without utterly wiping itself out in its depravity.
But His saving grace is reserved for those who respond to Him in faith.
For the returned remnant of Jews in Jerusalem in 520 BC, that meant getting to work on the temple in faith that He would provide the resources to do that work.
For we who live after the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, that means following Jesus in faith that he died on a cross for our sins, that His sacrifice was the only thing that could satisfy the penalty we were due because of our sin and that His resurrection was proof God had accepted the debt as having been paid in full.
But I’d like to suggest to you that God’s grace did not end at the cross or at the empty tomb.
For those of us who follow Jesus, we rely on God’s grace to make us more like His precious Son. We rely on God’s grace to empower us to do the things He has called us to do.
And, just like the Jewish people in Jerusalem in 520 BC, we cannot experience the fullness of that grace without submitting to God in faith.
When we put our faith in stock markets and emergency funds like that little church I talked about last week, we will find only 10 measures of grain in the heap where we expected 20.
But when we put our faith in Jesus Christ — when we trust God to be Who He says He is and to do what He says He will do — then we can expect blessings beyond our wildest dreams.
And that’s the lesson God was about to teach Zerubbabel, the Jewish governor of this Persian province that had once been the nation of Judah.
20 Then the word of the Lord came a second time to Haggai on the twenty-fourth day of the month, saying,
21 “Speak to Zerubbabel governor of Judah, saying, ‘I am going to shake the heavens and the earth.
Remember that the writer of the book of Hebrews had referred to God shaking the heavens and the earth in the end times, explaining that only the work done for God will remain.
Here, God describes through Haggai what that day will look like.
22 ‘I will overthrow the thrones of kingdoms and destroy the power of the kingdoms of the nations; and I will overthrow the chariots and their riders, and the horses and their riders will go down, everyone by the sword of another.’
Nations will not remain. Armies will not remain. Church buildings will not remain. Our history will mean nothing. What will remain is the souls that have been won for Jesus Christ.
On that day, everything that WE have built will be wiped out.
But that which God has built through His Son, Jesus Christ, will remain.
And Zerubbabel, who was of the line of David and who is included in the lineage of Jesus that is presented by both Matthew and Luke, would be represented on that great Day of the Lord.
23 ‘On that day,’ declares the Lord of hosts, ‘I will take you, Zerubbabel, son of Shealtiel, My servant,’ declares the Lord, ‘and I will make you like a signet ring, for I have chosen you,’ ” declares the Lord of hosts.
God will bring judgment on the world through Jesus Christ.
After the Rapture, when the true church, consisting of all those who have followed Jesus in faith, is taken to heaven, there will be a time of unrestrained evil, the tribulation.
Then Jesus will return and cast Satan into the abyss and will reign on earth for 1,000 years.
At the end of that millenium, Satan will be released, and a great battle will ensue. The heavens and the earth will be shaken, Jesus will win the victory, and all of humanity will be judged at the Great White Throne in heaven.
Those who have not placed their faith in Christ — those whose names have not been written in the Book of Life — will then be cast into hell with Satan and his demons.
And then, God will create a new heaven and a new earth, and a new Jerusalem will come down from God.
And the Apostle John records something interesting about this New Jerusalem in light of God’s promise that the temple His people were rebuilding in Haggai’s time would have greater glory than the one that Solomon built.
22 I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.
23 And the city has no need of the sun or of the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God has illumined it, and its lamp is the Lamb.
Solomon built a beautiful temple, and the people of Haggai’s time became discouraged when they realized they could not hope to match its grandeur.
When Jesus entered that temple to teach 550 years later, though, He brought the very glory of God into it.
But even that glory will pale when compared to the glory that exists there when God the Almighty and the Lamb ARE its temple, when their very glory illuminates the whole earth.
As the heir of David, Zerubbabel should have been king of Israel. But the people’s disobedience proved they were unclean, and even their work for God could not change their condition.
But Zerubbabel had faith in God, and God responds to faith with grace. And in His grace, God showed Zerubbabel that He has a plan, a plan in which Zerubbabel had been chosen to play a part.
We can put our faith in ourselves and our technology. That kind of faith might get us to the moon. But what will it avail us when there is no moon and no sun?
We can put our faith in ourselves and investments and in our committees and our constitutions. That kind of faith might keep this beautiful sanctuary cool in the summer and warm in the winter. But what will it avail us when God shakes the heavens and the earth?
Instead, let us put our faith in God. Let us do the work He has given us to do, having faith that He will provide the resources we need to do that work.
Let us seek FIRST the kingdom of God and His righteousness, having faith that He will work out the details for us.
Let us have THAT kind of faith.