How To Break the Cycle

0:12 Hey, if we've never met, my name is Taylor. I get to be one of the pastor here. I'm just so glad that you are here. I say this every time, but I do mean it. Wednesday nights are my favorite service that we have here at this church. It's something so special. God really infused a love of his word in Wednesday nights. So these are very near and dear to my heart. But perhaps some of you remember from high school or college days or grad school days, you'd be looking at your syllabus in front of a new class. There'd be a section called required reading, right? So these are books that you have to purchase or you have to read if you want to do well in the class, right? If you want to get a good grade, you're going to have to interact with these books in some way. If you choose not to do, which I'm gonna believe that nobody in this room has ever done. And I certainly always did my reading, right? I never, you know, spark notes, certain books, and didn't read them, right? But if you want to do one in the class, you're gonna have to interact with them. I skipped the readings a lot, I'm ashamed to say. But I believe this, is that, and I would assume that most of us in this room would probably agree, is that all scripture is inspired by God, right? That's what Paul says in 2 Timothy, that all scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for rebuking, for training in righteousness.

1:37 So what that means is that all of scripture, every sentence, every word is ultimately required reading, right? Every sentence has something to say to us. I'm sure you've heard of the term flyover states, right? You've heard of that. We are, according to some in our country, we live in a flyover state. That's where some people, maybe they're from the West Coast or the East Coast, they only fly over New Mexico. They only fly over Nebraska or Oklahoma because they don't feel like there's anything worth traveling there for. It's a flyover state. Well, what Paul said to Timothy is true, that all scripture is breathed out by God. And that means that there are no flyover books in the Bible. There are no flyover books. Every single word of scripture is inspired and therefore has something to say to us today. Amen?

2:32 So what we're going to do is we're going to be going through a series tonight and for the next couple Wednesdays in this month. Pastor Skip graciously invited me to cover the pulpit for him on Wednesdays while he's out of town. So as we jump into this series that I'm calling Required Reading, We're going to launch it off by doing a survey through the book of Haggai. So if you brought your Bible, turn to Haggai chapter one. And again, if you're excited about doing a Bible study, I do have to tell you, we're not going to be jumping into maybe the more commonly known books like Genesis or Exodus or Psalms or Isaiah or Romans. Those are also inspired by God, but those tend to be the greatest hits of the Bible. There's a lot of you who your quiet time probably looks mostly like just reading Proverbs over and over.

3:25 And so I think that there's value in diving into the books of the Bible that maybe we don't tend to visit as often, that maybe we do tend to treat certain books of the Bible as flyover books. And tonight we're going to be looking at Haggai. If you are frankly like me, and maybe you missed Haggai and you're wondering, okay, where is it? Just so you know, it's one of the shortest books in the Old Testament. It's the second shortest book in the Old Testament. It's only two chapters. So if you're in Zechariah, you've gone too far. If you're in Zephaniah, keep going. You will get there, but it's easy to miss. But Haggai is this very interesting little book and I'm glad we get to spend some time with it tonight. And I'm wagering that at least some of you in this room have never read the book of Haggai. You've never read it. You've never, maybe it's one of those where you're doing some reading plan and this is the book that you have it on audio and you're just listening to it at three times speed to get through it.

4:20 Because you'd never do that, right? We'd never do that. Again, I will confess I've done that as well. Haggai is a very interesting book. It's a peculiar book because it's one of the minor prophets in the Old Testament. What the Hebrew Bible would call the book of the 12. These are 12 shorter books. Minor doesn't mean minor in importance. It just means shorter in length. But these are prophetic books in the back part of the Old Testament. But Haggai, even in that collection of the minor prophets, is unique because it doesn't fit the same form or structure that many of the other books do. It doesn't read the same way. It has lots of phrases in Hebrew that are kind of grammatically difficult. They're challenging to translate. But what I also like about Haggai is the fact that he doesn't write in the same way, that he's not as much of a poet. He doesn't use the flowery language of the other prophets too.

5:15 He's actually very concise. He's very to the point. He's very direct. What's also interesting is that as we will read, Haggai is the most historically linked, historically verifiable book in the entire Old Testament. Every single time this man got a prophecy, he said, I probably better write down the date. Old Testament scholarship would be much easier if all of the authors of scripture did this. So this is very helpful. We know exactly when this story takes place. It takes place between August and December in the year 520 BC. We know exactly when this story happens. That's not a mystery. And if you hated history class, maybe you're just one of those people who you're just like, you know, I heard all those dates and I just tuned out. If that's you, all I'm asking, just hang tight with me for a couple minutes. You can do it. Just hang tight because this is one of those books because Haggai includes the dates.

6:07 We do need to talk about history for a second. And we do need to backtrack a little bit to understand the context. Because you are Old Testament scholars in this room, you know your Bible, then you'll know that in Israel's history that God was using certain prophets, people like Isaiah or Micah or Habakkuk, more on him in a couple weeks. God was using these prophets to deliver a message of warning, of correction that his people telling them, you need to repent. You need to turn from your idolatry, your injustice. And if you don't, everything that Moses promised you in Deuteronomy 28, all of the curses, namely that a foreign country will come into your nation. They will conquer you and they will take you captive to their own nation. The exile was prophesied in Deuteronomy 28. And that's exactly what happened. Beginning in 605 BC, the Babylonians invaded the southern kingdom of Judah.

7:07 They started taking the Israelites captive, taking them to Babylon. And ultimately, this process of conquest culminates in the destruction of Jerusalem, of the destruction of the temple. Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, invades. He besieges the city, knocks down its walls, defeats, slaughters thousands of people, and takes many of them into captivity. That's a major event in Israel's history. Again, many of you already know this, so this is a review.

7:38 And it would be easy to say, man, look at that. Look at God's plan. It ends in human failure. But we need to remember that humans are not the main character of the Bible. God is. So what happens is that God does not end the story in a moment of human failure. In fact, just as he promised in 539 BC, a Persian king, because the Persians by this point had conquered the Babylonians, Persian king Cyrus comes in and he says, you know what? I actually want to send the Jews back. They can go back to their homeland. In fact, I actually have a photo to show you. It's called the Cyrus Cylinder. And this is a government document from the reign of Cyrus that we have here. And what's happening is he was actually a pretty good leader compared to the Babylonians. So he said, hey, all of these captured people, let them go home. They don't need to stay here. Let them go home.

8:30 In fact, I'm actually gonna fund and subsidize them rebuilding their religious facilities. So that's what is happening here. The Jews who were taken captive were part of this policy and Cyrus told them that they could go home. Three years later, 536, we see this talked about in the early chapters of Ezra, the people go back to Jerusalem. They start rebuilding the temple. They make a little bit of progress, but then the problem is that they run into opposition. And so the building of the temple stops. And that's where we pick up the story 16 years later in 520 BC, 16 years, no progress has been made on the temple. Nothing else has been done. And you might be tempted to think, man, how could you do that? How could you not do anything? Well, I'll just say this. If you have young boys, you have young children, I can tell you exactly how it happened. Yesterday, in fact, we were doing some cleaning around the house.

9:22 and we have some company coming in at the end of the week. So I told my boys, hey, go clean your room. It looks like a nuclear bomb went off. So go do something about it. It's terrible. Go clean it up before we have company over. 30 minutes later, I hear lots of noise. I walk in, nothing has been done. Nothing has been done. There has been zero progress. In fact, it looks worse than it did when I first assigned them to go clean their room. So I think we should be able to understand exactly how this happened. But as we look at this story, what I have been struck by is that this little book that only covers about three and a half months, 2,500 years ago, has such a timely word for us today. So I'm going to call our study, How to Break the Cycle. How to Break the Cycle. If you've lived here for any length of time in this state, then you will know, it's no secret, that this can be a difficult place to live, to thrive. And I was reading one study this week that the rate of recidivism, which means that people who were behind bars, the rate of them who will then at some point return to prison is as high as 40%.

10:34 An all-time high for our state. That 40% of people who are behind bars, who serve their time, who are released, will end up back behind bars at some point. Due to addiction, due to just economics, impoverishment, you name it. 40% of people who are behind bars will likely end up back behind bars. That's recidivism. So I want to talk about the problem tonight of spiritual recidivism. That is the cycle that could be at play in the life of any believer where you are doing good in your walk with Jesus. You feel like you're making progress, but you fall away. You fall back into the same habits. You fall down, you hit rock bottom, and then you have a crisis. you turn back to God, you get close to him, but then the cycle repeats. You start to draw away from God. You get distracted again. And this cycle over and over and over and over the ups and the downs, this rollercoaster faith that so many Christians live on that, I believe is the cycle that Habakkuk addresses, that Habakkuk can give us tools on how to break free from.

11:36 So my agenda tonight is very simple. My hope is that this will be either preventative or corrective preventative or corrective, but I most hope that this is encouraging for all of us. For new believers, of which we had 450 plus people come forward at Freedom Celebration, how incredible is that, by the way? So I'm hoping that there are new believers in this room, and I'm also hoping that our time together will be preventative, that you will learn what not to do, that you can be prevented from falling into the cycle that so many have. But for everyone else, I'm hoping that this will be a time of correction where if you are caught in this cycle of doing the same thing over and over where you get close to God and you fall away from him, you get close to God, you fall away from him. I believe that this time in Haggai can give you the tools to break free from that.

12:30 So as we survey this book, I think that there are three principles that you and I can draw from it. So if you're taking notes, I hope you are, Here's the first principle. I can drift away without trying to. I can drift away from God without trying to or intending to. So we're gonna jump straight in in verse one of chapter one. In the second year of King Darius, in the sixth month, on the first day of the month, the word of the Lord came by Haggai the prophet to Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua, the son of Jehoshadak, the high priest. You are gonna get very well known with those titles because we're gonna say them a lot, saying, thus speaks the Lord of hosts, saying, the people says, the time has not come, the time that the Lord's house should be built. Then the word of the Lord came by Haggai the prophet, saying, is it time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses and this temple to lie in ruin?

13:27 That's quite the opening to the book. A few weeks ago, I was in Dallas. My brother-in-law, it was his wedding. So I was out there, we were staying in a hotel, and I went to go work out early in the morning. And after I finished my workout, I was kind of cooling down on the treadmill. And I am a distractible person. If you know me, I'm very easily distracted. I struggle to sometimes maintain focus on things for long periods of time. So I'm walking at a pretty brisk pace. I'm speed walking. I didn't really want to jog, but I'm speed walking and I'm doing okay, but then I kind of get bored. And so I checked my phone. I'm scrolling through texts. I'm scrolling through Instagram. And I realized that I have slowed my pace and I'm actually very close to falling off of the treadmill. I'm very close to tripping off of it. Why? Because I drifted away. I got distracted and I lost focus. It happens and that's what we are reading. That is what has happened to the people in Haggai's day. They have lost focus.

14:18 They have drifted from where they started and they are a discouraged people. We need to understand that these are a very discouraged, a very beat down people. Some of them, as we will see, were alive when Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the temple. They were there for that. They saw that. They survived it. They survived Babylon and Persia. They survived coming back here and then being discouraged and defeated. They survived watching the temple program not progress. They are discouraged. They are beat down. They are weary. And all the excitement that they had, all the optimism and hope that they were filled with when they returned home. Because you have to remember, they wanted to be here. Nobody forced them to go back. they wanted to be here. All of that early excitement is gone in a moment. I'm sure some of you in this room can absolutely relate to that. All of your hope, all of your dreams for the future crumble in an instant, in a diagnosis, when you're laid off from work. You can relate to this, I'm sure. However, in the 16 intervening years from that moment to now, they've fallen into what I believe is one of the most dangerous traps for the believer, and that's apathy.

15:36 They've fallen into apathy. Look at verse two with me again. Thus speaks the Lord of hosts saying, this people says, the time has not come. The time that the Lord's house should be built. This is something that we as people who dwell in the land of Manana can relate to it. I'm not going to do it today. I'll do it tomorrow. I'll work on that later. That's the attitude that they had adopted when it came to building the temple. They'd kind of given up. They kind of said, hey, we'll get to it. It's not the right time. The circumstances aren't quite right. We don't really have anything we need. We'll wait. We'll wait for a later time to get back to that temple thing.

16:18 Discouragement turned into depression and depression over time settled into apathy because time moved on. They had jobs. They had children. They had jobs. They had to earn money. They had to run errands. They had to go get groceries at Jerusalem Mart. They had other things to do. Time kept moving. And so the fervor that they had early on of rebuilding the temple just started to cool over time. The mission to rebuild the temple, to reestablish their identity, was just less urgent as time went on. And that's why I love the Bible, because it's so honest about the failures and the weaknesses of its protagonists. However, before we're tempted to judge them, I think we ought to humanize them. I think we ought to understand that we are very like them, that they are people like us.

17:13 Think about it this way. Have you ever cracked the screen on your phone? You've cracked it, you've dropped it, you know, oh, you drop it on a rock, right? It just happened to the phone lands exactly at the right angle to crack your screen. It's like, oh, I can't believe it. Happens, you're frustrated. You can't believe it's gonna happen. But over time, you get busy. You forget to get it repaired. You forget to get it fixed. And what happens over time, you start to notice the crack less and less. Yes, it's inconvenient, but you're managing. You're dealing with it. You can handle it. You don't have time to go get it fixed right now. You don't have enough margin, right? And so come two months, three months down the line and your phone screen is still cracked. That's what is happening to these people. The temple project, which used to be so important, so obvious to them, it just isn't as important anymore because life has continued to go on. They had other priorities.

18:07 So what are they doing is they didn't have a temple, but at least they're making sacrifices outside of it on kind of a ramshackle altar. They're making sacrifices. It's not good. None of them like it, but it's not awful either. It's workable. We can deal with this. and one day we will get to rebuild the temple, but not right now, we're doing okay. The problem is that God isn't okay with workable. God wasn't looking for just workable when it came to his temple. Verse three, then the word of the Lord came by Haggai, the prophet saying, is it time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, your fancy houses that you built and my temple to lie in ruins?

18:48 God basically saying, hey, why is it okay that you get to live in houses that you finish construction on and my house isn't even built yet. What happened there? Apathy. They just stopped caring. They lost sight of their priorities. And here's the deal. Rarely, if ever, have I met a Christian who just out of nowhere says, I am abandoning, rejecting my faith. I don't believe in God anymore. I'm never coming to church again. And I'm gonna give in to every wanton, sinful desire that my heart can conceive of. I don't meet people like that. that's apostasy. That's when you are abandoning the faith. You're saying, I believe this, but I don't believe it anymore. I reject it. That wasn't the problem of these people. They believed. They believed. They wanted to be in Jerusalem doing this. Nobody forced them to. They wanted to be here. Apostasy wasn't their problem.

19:40 And I'm gonna wager, if you're here on a Wednesday night, apostasy is also probably not what you are battling either. I hope that none of you in this room are in danger of abandoning your faith altogether. If you are, please come talk to somebody before you leave. Apathy, on the other hand, is very easy to fall into. It's much more malicious. It's much more subtle. And that is what looks like in our life as believers. That's when you wake up late and you say, oh man, I didn't have time to do my quiet time. I didn't have time to spend time with God. I'll do it later, but you never do. spiritual apathy can look like i need i need to go to church i need to get connected i feel isolated i feel alone i want to go to church i have community but you never talk to anybody who sits around you you leave as soon as we start playing the final song you you make a beeline for your car you don't know anybody here nobody knows you spiritual apathy looks like saying man i need to get more involved at church i want to start doing something for the lord but you haven't taken life track. You haven't joined a team. I'm just calling it as I see it. Like, you haven't joined a team yet. And we just went through a season of very big events with like VBS and Freedom Celebration. You're hearing us on stage saying, hey, we need help. We need more hands. In the moment, you're just like, ah, I'm sure they got it. They got it covered. I'm sure they'll make it work. Spiritual apathy. New Testament scholar, Frank Gabelene says this, a particular call comes to serve in some way, but we put it off.

21:11 Deluded by the error that to wait for a more convenient set of circumstances justifies procrastination. It is all too easy to take refuge from duty in saying that the psychological moment to do what God wants us to do has not yet come. In other words, life has become distracting. The demands of life, what Jesus calls the cares of this world have distracted us from what is most important. And we've drifted away. We've drifted from what we were called to do. Again, rebuilding the temple was not their only job. They had other things to do. They were legitimate priorities. It's not like they were out sinning. Like they were doing good things, normal things, things that are productive for society. These are good priorities to have. However, their sight, their focus, their vision for the mission had gotten cloudy lately. Organizationally, we would call this mission drift. Maybe you've heard the term in organizational leadership. When a team or a new company starts, they have a very clear vision, a purpose statement. Why do we exist to do this? But over time, as the company or as the team grows, the mission becomes broader.

22:27 More priorities are added, more deliverables happen, more objectives crowd out where it's not as clear what that initial vision was. We call that mission drift. The people in Jerusalem were suffering from mission drift. Like Pastor Skip often says, if a good thing keeps you from the best thing, it becomes a bad thing. and that describes where the people in Jerusalem were. The result of their apathy is, as we will see, decreased blessing. Decreased blessing. Look at verse six. You have so much, this is God speaking to his people, you have so much and bring in little. You eat but do not have enough. You drink but are not filled with drink. You clothe yourselves but no one is warm and he who earns wages, earns wages to put them in a bag with holes. Man, amen. I know how that feels, especially with inflation, right? The fact is God is a good father. He loves to bless his children. And even when we are not walking in the right path, we are not walking with him wholeheartedly. He is such a good father. He's still blessing us. He's still loving us and providing for us. However, we're not getting all of the blessing that we would be getting if we were being obedient to him.

23:46 That our sin, our unbelief can actually prevent God from doing all that he wants to do in our lives. That might sound controversial, but we see this played out in a famous story. I'm sure you know that Jesus goes home in Mark chapter six to his hometown of Nazareth. He's preaching, teaching, working miracles. Lots of people are starting to follow him. So he goes home, goes to his hometown. He wants to do miracles, but what does it say? It says this, that now he could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them. And he marveled because of their unbelief. He could do no mighty work there. Jesus wanted to go back home to do many miracles and he was only able to do a few. Meaning that their unbelief prevented him from doing all that he wanted to do. The people in Haggai's day were the same.

24:40 They were giving God their leftovers and expecting God to just be okay with it. So they didn't receive all of God's provision, all of God's favor. Look at verse nine. You looked for much, but indeed it came to little. And when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why, says the Lord of hosts? Because my home that is in ruins, well, every one of you runs to his own house. how many times if we're being honest have we done the exact same thing again let's let's not be tempted to judge them let's be reflective how many times have we given god the leftovers we haven't given god the first fruits and then we're also wondering why does nothing in my life seem to be working the way it's supposed to why do my why do why can't my wife and i get along well? Why can't I get along with my kids? Why is the business not taking off the way it should? I don't have an answer for that question, but I would encourage you to be reflective. Is it possible that you are struggling with the right priorities in your life? Are you failing to give God the first fruits of your life? This is a matter of you just need to have more faith.

25:51 God forbid, this is certainly not a matter of you just need to give more money like some TBN, word of faith, charlatan, nothing like that. No, please, please understand me. It's not a matter of how much faith you have. It is a matter of where your priorities lie. Are you truly loving and serving God with your heart, soul, mind, and strength, or is something else getting top billing in your life? What are your priorities? We need to understand this. Jesus, when we say that he is Lord of our life. He wants all of our life. He's not content with lordship over just a little bit. Well, hey, Jesus, I go to church on Wednesdays and I go to church on Sundays. That's good, right? No. Jesus wants lordship over all of your life. We see that the cure for spiritual apathy, and this is really the core of Haggai's message, is contained in verses five and seven. It's the phrase, consider your ways. In Hebrew, it literally means set your heart to your ways.

26:54 Reflect on what you're doing. Reflect on the way you're living your life and ask, am I going in God's direction or am I going in my own? Am I going towards God or away from him? Is he Lord of my life or am I Lord of my life? Consider your ways. Exactly what the psalmist says in Psalm 119.59, I thought about my ways and turned my feet to your testimonies.

27:20 And I think tonight, I think God is inviting us to ask that same question. Consider your ways, Calvary Church. Are you, am I, are we going in God's direction? Am I going in God's direction or am I walking in my own? Have I set priorities above God where it's not that I don't believe in God. It's just simply that I've made, I'm not making time for him. I've given my attention to other things that seemed important in the moment. Consider your ways. I love what Pastor John Tyson says this. He says, men, and we can include women, drift from their calling, not by saying no to God, but by saying later. Later is the enemy of obedience. And a journal full of unacted plans is a graveyard of obedience.

28:09 So if you're honest, if you are considering your ways right now and you are realizing that perhaps you have drifted, perhaps you have fallen into apathy, the good news is that it's a very easy problem to fix. Look at verse 12. And all the remnant of the people obeyed the voice of the Lord their God and the words of Haggai the prophet as the Lord their God had sent him. The people feared, they gave reverence to the presence of the Lord. Then Haggai, the Lord's messenger, spoke the Lord's message to the people saying, I am with you, says the Lord. So the Lord stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah. Like I said, we're going to get used to these titles. So get ready. The spirit of Joshua, the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, and the spirit of all the remnant of the people. And they came and worked on the house of the Lord of hosts, their God. God is with you as you return to him. So if you have found your place where you have drifted from obedience. You've drifted from devotion to him. Don't think that God is up there with folded arms, just glaring at you. Wait, you know, angrily waiting for you to come home. In fact, that's couldn't be further from the truth. God says, I'm with you. I am with you. God is saying I'm with you before they resume work on the temple. I'm with you. God is with you when you do what he wants you to do. And the problem is you can drift away from him far faster than you realize, but you can turn back to him in a moment. It's an easy problem to fix in the grand scheme of it.

29:41 And this is the beautiful promise that we see in 1 John, that if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Open invite. God says, I am with you. So God is saying to us right now, here's the second principle. My past is a poor motivator. My past is a poor motivator. We're about to see that nostalgia can be just as dangerous for the believer as apathy can be. Look in chapter two, we're going to jump over. In the seventh month, on the 21st day of the month, this is about a month and a half after Haggai's first prophecy, the word of the Lord came by Haggai the prophet saying, speak now to Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel. I told you, the governor of Judah and to Joshua, the son of Jehoshadak, the high priest, and to the remnant of all the people, saying, who is left among you who saw this temple in its former glory? And how do you see it now? In comparison with it, is this not in your eyes as nothing? Nostalgia can be difficult.

30:41 I was reminded of this a few weeks ago. We were driving around my old neighborhood with my kids. And so sometimes when I'm in the old neighborhood in the house that I grew up in, I'll go drive past, just like, hey, what's the house look like? I drove past it, and I don't think it looks very good. I think they painted a really dumb looking color. They took down my tree house, right? It just gets kind of sad. It's like, oh, this isn't what I remembered it. This isn't as cool as it used to be, right? All the good memories that I had there, it's like, oh, that's a bummer. This isn't what I remember. Nostalgia can be very dangerous. Remember, Haggai delivers this set of prophecies between August and December of 520 BC. There were people in this audience who were living in Jerusalem, who'd gone back, who were old enough to remember what Solomon's temple looked like before it was destroyed 60 plus years ago. They were much older and wiser now, but they could remember. They remembered what it looked like in its heyday. And yet now they've survived everything. They've survived Babylon. They've survived the purge and conquest. They've survived going back to Jerusalem and being opposed and resuming the work. And yet they're looking at the temple 2.0 and it just doesn't feel the same. It just doesn't look as good.

32:00 There's no gold. There's no adornment. The artistry isn't there. And just like, there's like, this just doesn't feel right. This isn't how it used to be. and I'm sure many of them were tempted to say, you know what? If we can't ever build it back to how it was, why even bother? Why even bother rebuilding it if it's never going to be the way it used to be? And I think that we as believers, no matter your age, I think we can easily fall into a similar mindset because the longer you've been a Christian, you're going to have a longer testimony of what you've seen God do. You've seen answered prayers. You've seen God heal yourself. You've seen God heal people in your life. You've seen people, friends and family and co-workers come to the Lord. You've seen him do incredible things. And you give praise to him for that. Those were faith-defining moments. But over time, you have those in the back of your head. That's what Christianity looks like. That's what it's supposed to feel like. And so you see things that are happening now. You see maybe young people or new believers and they're filled with such zeal.

33:08 They're so excited. And you almost have this tendency to dismiss a lot of that. You know, hey, they'll figure it out in the long run. They'll realize it's not as exciting as this. They're going to have their heart broken. And you're thinking, man, it's like, man, I remember we tried, they didn't even ask us. We tried that and it didn't work. It's not gonna work for them.

33:31 Or man, you know, hey, this is cool. But do you remember what God was doing back then? Ah, spirit was really moving back then. That was wild. Those were wild days. I've heard people say that and there's kind of this unspoken assumption and it's not as cool as it was back then. It's not as cool now. Maybe you're tempted. Maybe you're at Freedom Celebration. You're thinking, man, this is awesome. But it's not as cool as Promise Keepers was back in 97. It's not as cool as Easter sunrise was in 2004. The weekend in 2010, insert whatever meaningful event that you were at. Doesn't feel the same. God doesn't seem to be doing the same thing, so it must not be as good.

34:11 We look back at those moments, and that's good. We should remember those moments where God encountered us in a new way. Those were formative to who we are. But we need to be very careful when we project those expectations onto every move of God and say, well, it has to feel the way it did for me back then. Because guess what? It usually doesn't feel that way. Many moments in the Christian life are mundane. They're not always exciting, spirit-filled moments where we can see people raising their hands. Sometimes it's just praying for a friend. Sometimes it's just being faithful to read your Bible every day. If you're always trying to look back to, man, that's what it's supposed to be like, you're gonna be disappointed. You're actually gonna become cynical because you look at what's happening now and you're just like, okay, it's not as good. It's not as good. what we can end up doing unintentionally or maybe intentionally is we work very hard to replicate the way it felt for us back then. We try to make everything around us feel the way it did then. And ultimately it just leads to bitterness. It leads to discouragement. It leads to sometimes cynicism. It can happen at a personal level too. You think back to an early time in your faith when you were so excited to read God's word.

35:31 You just couldn't believe it. You were so excited to open God's word. You'd spend hours every day reading his word. You couldn't wait to be at church. You went to every single service we had here. But now things have changed. You've made mistakes. You've fallen into sin. You've come back to God, but it just doesn't feel the same as it used to. And so you're working hard to try to get back to how it was. You're trying very hard to reconstruct an older version of your faith and you're leaving disappointed. what happens when we try to go back, we also need to acknowledge our memory of the past is biased and flawed. The good old days were usually not quite as good as we remember them. And yet if we're so focused on trying to reconstruct what we remember as the good old days, we will miss what God is doing now.

36:24 I'm so glad, truly, I'm so glad that God moved in your life in 1975. Praise God for that. I'm so glad that God moved in your life in 1999 or 2009. I don't know. I'm so glad for that. Praise God. I could tell you all the times that I remember God really radically changing me, but you wanna know what I, what's God doing now? What are you learning about God right now? What did you read in your quiet time this week that just you can't stop thinking about? What challenges is God helping you overcome right now? I don't really just wanna hear about what God did. Tell me what he's doing now. That's what I need as a believer. That's what I need to learn from. What is God doing in your life right now that I can learn from?

37:04 The remnant in Jerusalem was afflicted by a very serious condition, and it was a limited imagination. They couldn't possibly imagine that what God was going to do could be better than what God had done. They had survived national trauma in a way that probably most of us don't understand fully. but they said surely things will never be as good as they were what is god's solution well we see it's actually god reminds them that he's the same god now that he was back then look at verse four with me yet now be strong zerubbabel says the lord and be strong joshua son of jehoshadak the high priest that will be on a quiz later so you better memorize it be strong all the people of the land says the lord and work for i am with you says the lord of hosts according to the word that I covenanted with you when you came out of Egypt. So my spirit remains among you. Do not fear for thus says the Lord of hosts. Once more, it is a little while. That's God's timing for you.

38:05 And I will shake the heaven and earth. I will, the sea and the dry land. I will shake all the nations and they shall come to the desire of nations. And I will fill this temple with glory, says the Lord of hosts. Look at the present tense there. I am with you, says the Lord of hosts. My spirit remains with you. He's talking to the people who are looking back, saying, I'm still there. I haven't gone anywhere. I haven't changed. You have. I'm still here. I'm still the same person. I'm still with you. My spirit still remains with you, even after everything.

38:39 God is saying that I am the same God back then as I am now, but he's also saying, I am still going to be the same God in the future. Because look at the future tense. I will shake heaven and earth. I will fill this temple with glory. You can look down to verse nine. And in this place, I will give peace. Future tense, looking ahead to what he will do, but hasn't done yet. Our hope as believers is anchored, not in the past, but in the future. Christianity is actually a very future focused faith. we are looking ahead to what God will do. we are looking ahead to what God will do. We are looking ahead to the ultimate hope, the new heavens, the new earth, when God is reigning, that all sin and death has been done away with. That is a future event.

39:31 That is what we are hoping in. We are looking towards the hope of resurrection, things that have not yet happened. And in the meantime, we realize that the same spirit who raised Jesus Christ from the dead is the same spirit that is in me and is in you and is working in us to do and to will his good pleasure. The same spirit that did the most marvelous miracle in human history is the same spirit that right now is in your life and is equipping you for the good works that God has planned in advance for you to do like Ephesians 2 says.

40:06 Stop looking back to the glory days and start looking ahead to what God will do. The Christian worldview is one that says better days are ahead, not behind me. better days are ahead. I don't know what God could do, but I believe it's going to be good. What I find fascinating is if you're a bit of a Bible nerd like I am, if you know your Old Testament, then you'll know about when it talks about God's glory, his kabod, right? His Shekinah, the cloud that was in the tabernacle and in the temple, that was the visual representation of his presence. That presence, his glory never returned to this second temple the way it was in Solomon's temple. It wasn't there. In fact, it says in Ezekiel, it left. It left because of the people's disobedience. And it never returned to this second temple as great as it is because they do end up rebuilding it. They rededicate the temple about six years from now. They rebuild it. They rededicate it. But God's glory doesn't return in the same way. And so many of those people are saying, see, I told you it wasn't as good.

41:09 God's glory didn't show up again. This isn't as good. But what they could not have known, what they could not have imagined is that 500 years later, something far better than a cloud symbolizing God's presence showed up. Yahweh himself showed up. Yahweh himself in human flesh, in the person of Jesus, walked into this same temple and taught and preached and prophesied and worked miracles. They could not have imagined that God himself would stroll into this temple. We see this in John 1, 14, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we beheld his, what? Glory. The glory is of the only begotten of the father, full of grace and truth. So God's glory did return to the temple, but not in a way that they could have expected or imagined at that time.

42:03 But it was far better than a cloud. God himself in human flesh walked into that temple. So there's nothing wrong with looking back on the past with fondness. Where you look back and you celebrate what God did in your life. Those moments, 1975, 85, 95, 2005, you name it, you celebrate those moments. God did something special for you. The God of heaven and earth looked down on you, the individual, and he loved you and he cared for you. and he changed your life. Commemorate those moments. But at the same time, don't try to reconstruct your memory of the good old days. Because just because God did something special in your life in a special way, doesn't mean that's how he's always going to move. In fact, I believe that the best days are ahead of us, that God is going to move in better and bigger ways than we've seen before. And I don't want to limit him by my unbelief. I don't want to limit him thinking that he can only do it in a certain way. I don't want to put God in a box that's defined by what he did in my life. So he always has to do it this way. God can do whatever he wants. And we, as his people should be future focused where we're looking ahead saying, Hey, I don't know what God can do, but I believe he's going to do even greater things.

43:22 And I'm, I'm, I'm optimistic about the future. Rebuilding something that once was is ultimately impossible. It's ultimately impossible to try to rebuild something that once was and isn't anymore. And oftentimes it will prevent you from seeing what could be and dreaming about and being excited about what could happen, what God could do. You can't move forward if you're always looking back. Amen? Your past is a poor motivator. And the final principle tonight is, I am alive today to see the blessing tomorrow. I'm alive today to see God's blessing tomorrow and every other day after that. As a kid, I loved road trips. I'm a road trip guy. Even now as a family, it's not just budgetary wise, I actually kind of prefer road trips. I think they're more exciting. But as a kid, I loved road trips.

44:13 I loved traveling with my family. And one of my favorite parts of that road trip would be checking into the hotel for the first night. Like you've just been in the car, it's hot, you're tired. You've been eating like gas station junk food all day. And you walk into this air conditioned building, you check into this marvelous room that's like heated to, you know, it's cool. It's 68 degrees, it's perfect. I didn't have cable growing up, so it had unlimited cable, right? It was perfect. And part of that was because I was so excited because of what lay ahead. I was looking ahead to the vacation, all the fun things we were going to do. So that first stay in that hotel, that first night was actually one of my favorite nights of the entire trip. but the night that I hated the most was the last day in the hotel, the day before you go home because now there's nothing to look forward to. The fun is gone. You've had it.

45:05 It was great. It was good fun but it's in the past now. When I go home, I'm now traveling back home and normal life resumes. The vacation life with all of its fun, I'm going back to normal routine, a normal rhythm, especially when it's a summer vacation, you're going back and school's gonna start it again. Work's gonna get started again. Normal life resumes. It's kind of a bummer, that last night of the vacation. The same thing happens when God's people are stuck in the past. They become discouraged about their future. The best days are ahead of me, or I'm sorry, the best days are behind me, not ahead of me. The fun is behind me. It's not all the best stuff isn't gonna happen anymore. They're discouraged about the future. The fun, the excitement, the optimism is all in the rear view mirror. You're saying is basically, it's all downhill from here.

45:57 It's not gonna get better. It's not gonna improve. And I'm just gonna be real with you. I struggle with pessimism. I tend to be by default, a generally pessimistic person. I fight against it. I don't think it's biblical to be that way, but I tend to fall into that attitude. And I'm also a news junkie. So I'm reading headlines. I like to stay up on current events. And let's be honest, This year has brought a lot of headlines that are discouraging. There's a lot of world events that are happening that are kind of anxiety-ridden, that cause some stress, right? You think about AI and data centers and what does that look like? You're looking at this on-again, off-again war with Iran. You're paying for more gas. You know, gas is more expensive. Everything's more expensive. And I find that I can very easily fall into a very pessimistic attitude about the future, that it's going to get worse. It has to get worse. It's definitely not getting better.

46:50 The best days are behind me. And I've just been convicted recently, I'm just being real, that that's not really a Christian way to look at my life. To look and say, oh man, best days are behind me. It's not getting any better. I don't think that's really a Christian way to look at the world, to look at our life. Yes, we know. We know how the story ends. We know that things are going to get more difficult before Christ returns, but that doesn't give us license to be perennial pessimists and to believe that nothing good is ever gonna happen again. But I resonate with how these people feel. Because again, when we pick up this story and we're gonna read here in verse 18, it says this, consider now from this day forward. There's that phrase again. Consider now from this day forward, from the 24th day of the ninth month, from the day the foundation of the Lord's temple was laid, consider it.

47:43 is the seed still in the barn as yet the vine, the fig tree, the pomegranate, the olive tree have not yet yielded fruit. So these people, they've resumed building on the temple. This is the last prophecy we really see in this book or the last day of prophecy. It's been three and a half months. They've made real progress on the temple. They have gotten back to it. They've repented. They've turned back to God, but that does not make up for the 16 years of neglect, of apathy. So they're dealing with a bad harvest right now. They're saying, God, we turn back to you, but we don't have enough. Our harvest is still lackluster. We don't have enough for the next spring. You know, what do you mean? You're going to provide for us. You're talking about all these future blessings. Where are they? We've been serving you. Where is everything? completion of the temple is still years off. Won't be completed until 516 BC. So they still have a few more years of work and they're dealing with a, with a bad harvest. Things objectively look bad. Things objectively don't look any better than they were.

48:52 so they're discouraged. Again, they're thinking, man, what did coming back to God even get us? We've still got empty barns. I don't have enough cattle. I don't have enough fruit on the trees. My crop is not what it should be. Was it even worth turning back to God in the first place? I'm sure that's what some of them were thinking, and as I've found, sometimes when people give their lives to Christ, they kind of expect that because they gave their lives to Christ that all of the problems that led them to give their lives to Christ automatically get better. And yes, the ultimate problem of them being in a place where they're not reconciled with their creator has been solved. Praise God. They've been forgiven of their sin. However, there are still problems. There are still broken relationships that have yet to be mended. There's still trust that has yet to be rebuilt. There's still pain and drama. There's still suffering that they're dealing with. There's still unhealthy habits that they still need to break.

50:00 As a pastor, when I talk to these people, and especially in that early phase, after they give their lives to Christ, and then almost like they return to normal life, and they realize that normal life is still there, and it's just as hard as it was, and in fact may have even gotten harder because at their decision to follow Jesus. Sometimes they'll feel discouraged. They'll even feel disillusioned. Like, I thought it was supposed to be better from this. I thought this was supposed to be better. I thought this was supposed to get easier. And again, we know that the ultimate problem, the sin problem has been dealt with definitively. Romans 5.1, therefore, having been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Done, accomplished. but just because you've been justified doesn't mean the earthly consequences of sin have been erased. Just because you came forward at freedom celebration or at an altar call doesn't mean your wife is ready to take you back yet.

50:58 Just because you came forward, you gave your life watching online, which is beautiful, doesn't mean that your kids are ready to have a relationship with you again. It doesn't mean that your boss who fired you is ready to rehire you. the earthly consequences of sin persist. I, as a pastor, cannot stand up here and promise you that everything is just gonna be great from now on. That all those problems that were there that might've even led you to the place of wanting to become a Christian, they're gone now, they're fixed. That'd be a lie. I would be dishonest if that's what I told you. what I do know is that your ability to handle those situations, your strength to endure those situations, and your sense of purpose in the midst of those situations has changed. Because before Jesus, all you had was pain and emptiness.

51:54 Before Jesus, all you looked at yourself and you saw yourself with self-loathing and despair. Jesus never promised to take away your pain. but what he has done is he's given you purpose in the midst of your pain. He hasn't taken away the pain but he has given you a new purpose and a new outlook as you walk through that same pain. You were on your own before that. Now God is with you and Jesus has promised, take heart, I have overcome the tribulations of this world.

52:29 The remnant, the people living in Jerusalem, they looked around, they're saying, God, this doesn't look any better. This doesn't look any better. The harvest is still disappointing. Nothing seems to have gotten better. The temple is nowhere near completion. And they think, man, this is, I don't understand why I even did this in the first place. Why did we even come back to Jerusalem? And I'm sure some of them truly believed, thinking we've messed it up so much that even our best efforts aren't enough. we're never going to get to where we're supposed to be. We've messed it up too much. We're too far gone. See, we even turn back to God and it's not working. And they think that they've squandered their potential, that they've squandered God's plan for their lives. But look at verse 19 one more time. Is seed still in the barn?

53:23 As yet the vine, the fig tree, the pomegranate, the olive tree have not yielded fruit. but from this day, I will bless you. But from this day, I will bless you. Christianity is predicated on hope. Our faith is predicated on hope. That no matter how dire life might be right now, no matter how difficult it might look right now, we believe even when we don't feel like it's the case we know we know the God that we worship when we know that he is the God who redeems things our faith is built on hope if God can redeem the worst moment in human history when the savior of the world lay dead in a tomb and he can bring Jesus Christ back from the dead, if that's the God we worship, then I believe that he can do anything.

54:28 There's no circumstance that he cannot turn around. That's why Peter says in 1 Peter, blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ because of his great mercy, he has given us a new birth into a living hope, a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled and unfading, kept in heaven for you.

54:54 No matter what your life looks like, no matter what pain you are bearing and suffering with right now, I need you to understand that to be a Christian means that you say, I'm still alive today. And because I'm still alive today, that must mean that God still has blessings in the future like he did for these people. From this day, I will bless you. Well, if I'm still alive, I guess I'm gonna believe it. I'm gonna get to see those blessings. But I haven't yet.

55:22 I don't know how badly you've messed things up. I don't know what relationships you've damaged, what trust you have broken. I don't know what your proverbial harvest looks like right now. I don't know if you have a good crop right now. But because of verse 19, I know this. If God were truly done with you, you wouldn't be here right now. if God were truly done with you, if you had messed things up so badly that God was done with you, you wouldn't be alive right now. You wouldn't be breathing right now. You'd be gone. God would have punched your ticket, but you're not. You're here. You are sitting in this room right now. Meaning if there is still breath in your lungs, that means that God is certainly not done with you. Amen?

56:14 You got blood flowing and pumping through your body, God ain't done with you. He's not done with you. But from this day, I will bless you. Things look bad right now. They probably are. But you cling to that. I don't see a reason for things to get better, but I know that God's gonna bless me. And I'm still here. So I'm gonna believe that I'm gonna get to see that blessing. And guess what? these people look dire right now in 520 BC but again in a few years they rebuilt the temple they re-established their national identity and five years later the the peace that God promised back in verse nine that I will fill this place with peace guess what the prince of peace walked into that place because of the prince of peace we have peace with God just because it looked bad right now doesn't mean that that's how it's always going to stay because that's not a God that we worship. We hold to a living hope. No matter how bad things look right now, you don't know what God has in store. Have the humility to admit that. Things look bad, but I don't know the future. I don't know what God is going to do. So I'm going to believe that he's going to turn it around.

57:34 because ultimately the book of Haggai, this strange little obscure book you can easily miss when you're flipping through the Bible. It's a story of hope. It's a story of hope. It's a story that God blesses obedience. It's a story that no matter how far you've drifted from him, he's still there. He is with you as you return to him. He will bless your obedience. And even when things look dire now, he's not done. That's the message of Haggai. That's a message of hope. That should encourage all of us. Amen. Father, we thank you for a message of hope, God. We are believing that there are people here tonight who need that. I pray that the study of your word about a book that is easy to miss, easy to skip over. I pray that your word would speak a word of encouragement, a word of comfort to them.

58:30 I pray that everybody in this room, that we would all leave more encouraged and more hopeful than we were walking in here. God, I pray that you would displace pessimism, displace cynicism and replace it with your hope. The optimism of a living hope that is based on the resurrection of Christ Jesus from the dead. God, we thank you for that. We thank you for your love. We thank you for this family. And we thank you not just for what you have done, as marvelous it is, God, we thank you for what you are going to do. We believe that we are gonna see more blessings that we haven't experienced yet. We ask this in Jesus' name, amen.