As you know, the history of these
prophets, Haggai, the prophet, he prophesied to the restored
remnant of Judah when they returned to Jerusalem after being in Babylon,
70 years in captivity. And I put this in your lesson
here, his name means festive, or festival of the Lord, that's
what Haggai means. And his name is sort of a lesson,
a message from God for the returning people as they came out of Babylon
and kept it. They've been there for 70 years.
And now some of the people were coming back to Jerusalem under
the providence of God. And Haggai's name sort of is
a message showing that this was to be a celebration of the glory
of God. They were to give thanks unto
the Lord for their deliverance. And not to man, but to God. And that's the way it is in our
salvation. Salvation is of the Lord who brought us out of the
captivity of sin and death and condemnation. And we're to give
thanks unto the Lord. We thank God for his ministers,
his preachers, his witnesses, his church, but ultimately all
of our thanksgiving goes to God. And our salvation should be in
our hearts and our minds a celebration of the glory of God who saved
us according to his will. Now Haggai, he prophesied along
with Zechariah and Malachi. That's the next two books of
the Old Testament. We'll be finishing this up, Lord
willing, in the next few weeks on this series of Christ in the
Old Testament. But these prophets, there was
Haggai, there was Zechariah, and there was Malachi, who were
all sent back to Jerusalem as prophets. And Haggai and Zechariah
were kind of contemporary. They were sent back with the
first group who came out of Babylon under a man named Zerubbabel.
And this Zerubbabel is really important here in the book of
Zechariah. The last few verses of these two chapters is spoken
personally to Zerubbabel. He was kind of like the governor
that was appointed to guide the people, number one, to build
the temple, rebuild the temple, and number two, to rebuild the
city of Jerusalem. And Zerubbabel, as the governor,
Zerubbabel was in the line of David, the line of Judah. And so he kept that line going. You remember God said the scepter
would not depart from Judah until Shiloh, and that's peace that's
found in Christ would come. And so Christ was, in his humanity,
he's from the tribe of Judah. Well, Zerubbabel kept that line
going, and that's an amazing act of God's providence right
there. Here they were, they'd been in
captivity, all the kings, of Judah at the end, before they
were brought to Babylon, were evil kings. And they were destroyed,
they were obliterated, brought into captivity, yet God, through
this man's irrevable, kept that line going. That's beyond the
pale of man. That couldn't have happened apart
from the power and the glory and the providence of God. So
there were two men that were under, that these men were sent
back to give their prophecy. One was Zerubbabel, the governor,
a picture of Christ, the king of kings. And the other was a
man named Joshua, who was the high priest. And he's a type
of Christ, our high priest. So you've got Zerubbabel, a type
of Christ, our king. You've got Joshua, a type of
Christ, our priest, our high priest. And then you've got Haggai,
who's a type of Christ, our prophet, prophet, priest, and king. And
all those come together in the person and work of the Lord Jesus
Christ. And so here's this prophecy. Now Malachi, he came later on
in the second group under a man named Nehemiah and Ezra. And so I put in here, just for
your information, think about this. Ezra, the books of Ezra,
Nehemiah, and Esther give us the historical record of the
return from Babylon. things happening during that
time, especially, you know, the book of Esther and what happened
there. And then the books of Haggai and Zechariah and Malachi
give us the prophetic record of the return from the view of
the prophets. It's kind of like when you think
about first and second and third Kings and first and second Chronicles.
The Kings, the book of 1st and 2nd Kings give us the historical
record of Israel during that time. And 1st and 2nd Chronicles
give us the prophetic, well actually the priestly view of that history. So it's interesting how God covers
it all. But here they were, they came
back out of captivity, and they were given the commission to
number one, rebuild the temple. Because God was showing them
through these prophets that the most important thing in their
lives was to worship God according to his word. And that had to
do with that temple and the sacrifices and the priesthood, which all
pictured Christ. It's like us today as believers. Sinners saved by grace, the most
important thing in our lives. I know we've got a lot of important
things to do. We've got families, we've got
jobs, we've got relationships, we've got things to do. We have
houses to care for, we have cars to care, we've got a lot of important
things to do. But we never should lose sight
of the most important thing in our lives is to serve and to
worship the Lord God who saved us according to his grace through
the Lord Jesus Christ. And so what they should have
done, they should have come back and set up their tents and worked
on rebuilding the temple, and then rebuilding the walls, the
city of Jerusalem, and then rebuild their houses. But they got discouraged. And I've got in here, they were
discouraged for several reasons. Number one, and they stopped,
that's what happened here. Look at verse one, let's read
this, then I'll give you these reasons. In verse one of chapter
one, only two chapters here. In the second year of Darius
the king, in the sixth month of the first day of the month,
came the word of the Lord by Haggai the prophet, unto Zerubbabel,
the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son
of Josedek, the high priest, saying, thus speaketh the Lord
of hosts, saying, this people say, the time is not come, the
time that the Lord's house should be built. The people were saying,
it's not time to build the Lord's house. But God said it's time. And what God says goes. You understand
that? And so he said, what they were
saying, it's not in our time frame, it's not on our agenda.
And it says in verse three, then came the word of the Lord by
Haggai the prophet saying, is it time for you, O you, to dwell
in your sealed houses and this house lie waste? Sealed houses
means they're elaborate homes. In other words, you're saying
it's time for you to build big houses for yourself. But to let
the temple of God go to waste? You've got your priorities wrong.
And that's the problem. Sometimes we as believers can
get our priorities out of whack, can't we? And it takes the word
of God by the spirit of God to bring them back in order. Well, there are basically three
reasons why they got disappointed. Number one, they were disappointed
that in their eyes, this temple, this second temple, this is what
this is, because the Temple of Solomon had been destroyed 70
years before. And that Temple of Solomon was
a grand building. I mean, it was impressive. But
this second temple was smaller. It was not impressive at all.
It had some things lacking. For example, the Ark of the Covenant
was gone. And I've had people ask, well,
how could they worship God without the Ark of the Covenant? I don't
know except this, that God had established the sacrificial system
of worship, long before this, back in Genesis 3. They could
sacrifice, they had the altar, and so they were to slay the
animals and bring the blood to the altar, and that all pictured
the blood of Christ, the Lamb of God, who is our, Christ is
our high priest, Christ is our altar, Christ is our sacrifice. Behold the Lamb of God, the Lamb
slain, Because without the shedding of blood, there's no remission
of sins. Now the blood of animals, the
blood of bulls and goats could not take away sin, but they pictured
one whose blood could and did take away our sins, the Lord
Jesus Christ. For by one offering, Christ hath
perfected forever them that are sanctified. We're not redeemed
with silver and gold and things like that. We're redeemed with
the precious blood of Christ. And that's what was pictured
in that temple. And they lost sight of that. The beauty of
the temple, even this second temple, which was in comparison
with Solomon's temple was nothing. But even the beauty of this second
temple was not in the bricks and the stones and the curtains
and the paint or whatever it was, the physical makeup of,
the beauty of it was the worship of God, the glory of God, which
was pictured in these sacrifices through Jesus Christ. But in their eyes, it was just
a disappointment. And then secondly, they wanted to build houses for
themselves. They were selfish people, just like we are. We're
all selfish people. We want our ways. We want to
do what we want to do when we want to do it. But God says,
listen, this is what comes first. Somebody said, well, it's not
just first, it's everything. Well, again, we have other things
to do. You have responsibilities. I
have responsibilities. But anything that we do that
eclipses the worship and the service of God is not good. And
so they wanted to build their own houses. And then thirdly,
they got disappointed because they had some opposition. When
they got back into Jerusalem, there were some other folks there,
foreigners, they were called Samaritans, who were there, who
wanted to chip in and help them. But that was forbidden. This
was for God's chosen people. And that's who worshiped the
Lord aright. And it's just like today, salvation
is for God's chosen people. I know people don't like to hear
that. But read your Bibles. What does God's word say? Christ
said, all that the Father giveth me shall come to me, and him
that cometh me I will in no wise cast out. This is for the people
of God. Now who are the people of God?
They are those who are brought by God to faith in Christ and
repentance of dead works. But they got discouraged because
of this. I've got in here the project
of building that temple. It began in 536 B.C. and it was abandoned for 15 to
16 years and then God brought Haggai and Zechariah
to urge the people to continue. You can read about that in the
book of Ezra. Now these next verses in chapter one, verses
two through 11, he's emphasizing here that nothing should cause
us to neglect the worship, the service, the glory of God in
salvation by his grace through Christ. And what he does in these
verses, he describes the life, the vanity of life, the worthlessness
of life without God, without Christ, without His grace, without
His truth. You know, people go through their
whole lives and not even think about these things of eternity.
There's a life to live, there's a death to die, there's a judgment
to face, there's an eternity to spend. And they go through
their lives building things and accumulating things. And they
may feel like they're being blessed by these things. But to live
and die in unbelief, it all means nothing. Read the book of Ecclesiastes,
vanity of vanities. What is that talking about? It's
talking about how worthless all the things of this life are without
God, without Christ. without his truth. And that's
what Haggai does in these next verses. Look at verse seven.
We won't read them all, but look at verse seven. Thus saith the
Lord of hosts, consider your ways. Think about these things. This life is short. You all know
that. We've talked about it. It seems
like that we either talk about our aches and our pains and the
things that we're facing in our old age all the time. It gets
kind of discouraging, doesn't it? Kind of depressing. Me and Randy and Jim were eating
lunch the other day while we were talking about stuff like
this. And I said at the end, I said, man, this lunch was a
downer. I said, let's talk about the
scriptures. And normally we do. But you all know that this life
is not the end. We're gonna face God at judgment.
How are we gonna face him? There's only two ways to die.
You either die in your sins and be condemned under the wrath
of God forever, or you die in Christ, washed in his blood. clothed in his righteousness.
That's the grace of God. And there's no other way to die.
And so when we face judgment, what are we gonna say? What are
we gonna put? Consider our ways? Think about it. What is my way?
Well, I hope and pray my way is God's way. by his grace through
Christ. Think about, what's the standard
of judgment at the judgment? Acts 17 31, God has appointed
a day in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by
that man whom he hath ordained and that he has given assurance
unto all men and that he has raised him from the dead. If
I come before God at judgment, pleading my works, what hope
do I have? None. Because if my works, if
I plead my works, they must equal the perfection of righteousness
that can only be found in Christ. And they don't. Even my works
now as a sinner saved by grace. What I do does not equal the
perfection of righteousness that can only be found in Christ.
So what do I plead? I plead him. Lord, save me by
your grace. I have nothing in which to recommend
me unto God. I must have Christ. I must have
his blood to wash away my sins. I must have his righteousness
for me to be justified before God. And anything less is sin
in the sight of God. You say, well, I'm trying to
do the best I can. Well, you should. All of us should
try to do the best we can in every area of life. But we need
to do it realizing that the best we can do is not good enough
to save us. It's not good enough to cleanse
us from sin. It's not good enough to be righteous
in God's sight. Do you understand that? And that's
what Haggai's trying to get these people to understand, consider
your ways. Look at verse eight, he says, go up to the mountain
and bring wood and build the house and I will take pleasure
in it and I will be glorified, saith the Lord. What he's telling them is this,
build the house of God, but your building is not going to be good
enough for your salvation, but God will be glorified because
it is the work of God. Well, in verses 12 through 15
of chapter one, the people heard what the prophet said. They repented. It says in verse
12, it says, then Zerubbabel, son of Shealtiel and Joshua,
the son of Josedek, the high priest, with all the remnant
of the people. Now there's that remnant again.
And you know the word remnant means a small portion. They obeyed
the voice of the Lord their God and the words of Haggai the prophet
as the Lord their God had sent him and the people did fear before
the Lord. So the message got through for
a little while. Because it wasn't long, a month
later, the work of the temple stopped again. And that's what
you see in the second chapter here. Chapter two. And what happened there, he really
emphasizes this point in chapter two. He says that the people
were so disappointed over the lack of grandeur in this second
temple that they just stopped working. And so they missed,
so what happened? They've missed the point. The
point is not how big the building is. The point is not how elaborate
it is. The point is not all of these
things in the physical realm. The point is is the people have
in their minds and heart to worship the Lord aright through sacrifice,
because that is the grand picture. That's the beauty of the temple,
as it pictures Christ. the Lord our righteousness, how
God can justify sinners through the blood of the Lamb of God,
and how all of this works out unto that perfection of righteousness
that can only be found in Christ, and that's the believer's righteousness
before God. That's the beauty of it. That's
the grandeur of it. And so look at verse five. of
chapter two, he says, according to the word I covenanted with
you when you came out of Egypt, so my spirit remaineth among
you, fear you not. Now in your lesson here, I mentioned
the everlasting covenant of grace, and I failed to make it clear
what this means here. The covenant which God made with
the nation Israel when he brought them out of Egypt was not the
everlasting covenant of grace, that's the old covenant, that's
the law of Moses. That was a conditional covenant
towards them. But the whole point of that covenant
was to show the people the impossibility of salvation by their works.
Do you know that's why the law was given? That's what the New
Testament tells us. It was given because of sin,
to show them their sin and depravity. And really, that's what the law
should do for all of us. We're not saved by our law-keeping. Romans 9 talks about how Israel
sought after righteousness, but they didn't find it. Why? Because they sought it by works
of the law and not by faith, because faith seeks righteousness
and finds righteousness in the Lord Jesus Christ. Faith says
this, Romans 10, 4, Christ is the end, the fulfillment, the
finishing of the law for righteousness to everyone that believe it.
And so that covenant is in line, you might say, with the everlasting
covenant of grace, only in this sense. Only in that it showed
them their sinfulness and the impossibility of salvation by
their works, or their law keeping. And for what purpose does God
do that when he shows us that? It's to drive us to Christ for
salvation. Lord, be merciful to me, the
sinner. I have no hope within myself.
I have no hope to seek salvation by my works. The only certainty
there is death. For by grace are you saved, through
faith, and that's not of yourselves, it's the gift of God, not of
works, lest any man should boast. And that's what he's emphasizing
here, that our only hope is the obedience unto death of Christ,
the righteousness of God. That's why he died on Calvary's
cross, having our sins imputed to him. Charged with our sins,
he went under the wrath of God as the surety, the substitute,
the redeemer of his people, and he drank damnation dry, and he
brought forth that everlasting righteousness which God has imputed,
charged, accounted to all of his people. And here it shows us how it's
in line with the everlasting covenant of grace. Now look at
verse seven. This is where I told you I got the name, the title
of the lesson from. And this, what this is, this
is a prophecy. Let's look at verse six. Verses six through
nine I've got here in your lesson. This is a prophecy of Christ.
He says, for thus saith the Lord of hosts, anytime you see that
phrase, the Lord of hosts, that's the Lord of an invincible army. cannot be defeated, and it's
an army of one, the Lord God himself. Yet once it is a little
while, and I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and
the dry land. I'm gonna shake the world, he's
saying. And verse seven, I will shake all nations, and the desire
of all nations shall come, and I will fill this house with glory,
saith the Lord of hosts, The silver is mine, the gold is mine,
saith the Lord of hosts. The glory of this latter house
shall be greater than the former. Now you know he's talking about
the temple, but he's saying there's a greater house with greater
glory. Saith the Lord of hosts, and
in this place will I give peace, saith the Lord of hosts. He's
talking about not a building here, he's talking about a person.
He's talking about Christ. who is himself the temple of
God. John 1 14, the word was made
flesh and dwelt among us. That word dwelt is literally
tabernacled among us. His church is his temple, he
resides in it. And he's called the desire of
all nations. Now this is in line with the
covenant that God made with Abraham. He said, in thee shall all nations
be blessed. It's not just for the Jews. This
is salvation. And Christ is the desire of all
nations. Now that doesn't mean that everybody
in all nations, every individual in all nations, will desire him. In fact, the Bible tells us,
and I've got this in your lesson, by nature, none of us desire
Christ. Did you know that? When I say
by nature, I mean as we are physically born into this world. Bible says
we fell in Adam into a state of sin, spiritual death, and
depravity. And by nature, we have no capacity
nor desire to believe God, to glorify God. And so by nature,
none of us desire Christ. But what does God do with his
people? In the new birth, you must be
born again, he gives us a new heart. What is that new heart? It's the mind, the affection,
the will, the desires, the conscience. And he makes us, he gives us
a desire for Christ and brings us to submit to his way of salvation
and forsake our own way. And what this is talking about
is God has a people out of every tribe, kindred, tongue, and nation. whom he's a remnant according
to the election of grace, and he's going to bring them to desire
Christ. And in that sense, Christ is
the desire of all nations. So here it is. And then in verses
10 through 19, I'll hurry here. He speaks of the laws of cleansing. He mentions these things. You
read all these verses. But the purpose of what he's
saying from verse 10 to verse 19 is that we're, by nature and
by practice, we're an unclean people. And the only way we can
find cleansing is by the blood of Christ. And that's what that
temple was all about. That's what it meant. What can
wash away my sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
This is all my hope and plea. This is all my righteousness.
Nothing but the blood of Jesus. So by nature, by practice, we're
unclean, but our cleansing comes from Christ. And then he closes
out in verses 20 through 23 by speaking to Zerubbabel personally. Zerubbabel is a type of Christ. The name Zerubbabel means sown
in Babylon, because that's where he was born. Well, how is he
a type of Christ there? Well, Christ was born in his
humanity into this Babylonish world, sinful world. Even though he himself was never
a sinner, he himself was never contaminated with sin, He was
born into this sinful world. Having our sins imputed to Him,
charged to Him, And of course, he went to the cross and he died,
was buried, and rose again the third day. And he was made a
signet. Look at verse 23. In that day,
saith the Lord of hosts, will I take thee, O Zerubbabel, my
servant, the son of Shealtiel, and will make thee a signet,
for I have chosen thee, saith the Lord of hosts. A signet is
a sign that identifies. Something when you see it, it
identifies something. Zerubbabel was the signet of
the people as the leader. Well, who is our signet? Christ
is. And we use the name Christian
awful freely today. What is a Christian? A sinner
saved by grace through the Lord Jesus Christ. A sinner who has
been brought to follow Christ and his teachings. to submit
to him as the Lord our righteousness, and he's our signet, our signification,
you might say. We're identified with him and
by him as he is identified and revealed and distinguished in
the word of God. Okay.