All right, returning to the second
chapter of the book of Haggai. Now, I'm taking the very last
sentence of the portion that we read, the last part of verse
19 of chapter two. Might call that the title or
the theme. The Lord says, from this day on, I will bless you. Now, there can be no more wonderful words spoken, if we
understood what it meant in its fullness. There can be no more
wonderful words spoken by God to us than this, I will bless
you. And why would they be so wonderful? Well, they'd be so wonderful,
we might say, first of all, because they concern us. I mean, that's
what always gets our attention first. I will bless you. We who trust the Lord Jesus Christ
are the you he is talking to. I will bless you. But he blesses us, and we're
going to learn this from what we read earlier, He blesses us
not because of anything that we have done. If he were to take into account
what we have done, we would not be blessed. I will bless you. Now, who was
he speaking to directly here? Now, we apply these things spiritually,
but when you look at who he's applying these to, At the very
time they were spoken, it was to a very spiritually lazy people,
a people who had obeyed the word of man rather than the word of
God. who had experienced first the
judgment of God in captivity, but had experienced the salvation
of God and being sent back to Jerusalem to rebuild. And they
had begun the work and everyone was excited, but the people who
lived around them got upset about it and got the king to write
a edict that said they had to stop building the temple. And so they quit. They listened
to the word of man. more than the word of God, they
feared man more than they feared God. They still had the altar
of incense, it was there, they had gotten that built, probably
brought it back with them, because that was one of the things that
was carted away. So the altar, I may have said altar of incense,
the main altar out in the courtyard where all the burnt offerings
were offered, all the offerings for sin, They had that, and they
probably thought that having that, they needed nothing else. Why cause trouble with your neighbors
by building a building they don't want to see? We've got the altar,
we'll just be satisfied with that. However, they went on building
their own houses, and they didn't just build something suitable
to live in, something satisfactory to live in, they were building
rather fine homes. Now there's nothing wrong with
a nice home. But the point is, and this is
what God was bringing out to them, they were building these
fine homes for themselves while giving no attention whatever
to the house of the Lord. You see, our lives do show what
is important to us. One famous preacher, and I won't
give his name because I don't want you to think that I actually
believe what he says, but you know, someone once said even
a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while. He made a statement
that you don't determine how great a man is by what he's able
to accomplish. You find out how great a man
is by what it takes to stop him. Now we realize we're not accomplishing
anything. Nonetheless, when it comes to
the matters of worshiping God and seeking his face and doing
those things in this world that pertain to the kingdom of God,
our sincerity in that matter, our devotion to those things
is revealed in this. What does it take to make us
stop? Sadly, not much. Not much. And yet it's to that very sort
of people that the Lord says, I will bless you. That statement's great because
of the verb, bless. We have within us the knowledge
that we deserve the curse of God. Isn't that true? and therefore to hear, instead
of cursing, a word of blessing. I will bless you. I will provide
you with all you need. I will cause the works of your
hands to bear fruit instead of come to nothing. And then there's the word will.
One thing you won't find in this text, in this promise from the
Lord, is the word if. If you will, I will." That's
not what he said. This is not an offer. This is not a negotiation. He is not setting out a contract
where we fulfill our part and then he'll fulfill his part. He simply says, I will. Bless you. Now here's one thing
I know about the word of the Lord, particularly compared to
the word of man. The word of man can't be trusted. And it
can't be trusted because man is by nature a liar. Secondly,
he doesn't have enough wisdom to really be able to predict
the future. And he probably doesn't have enough energy to carry it
out, even if he did. Even if he were an honest man
and wanted to keep his word, there's a good chance that he'll
fail simply because he can't get it done. particularly if
it's a matter of any real seriousness. But when God says, I will, you
can bank your soul on whatever he says. The gospel of the Lord Jesus
Christ is not an exhortation about what you must do. It is
not a declaration of if you will do this, that, and the other,
God will give you these blessings. It is God declaring what he's
going to do. And then that word, I. I. I will bless you, says the Lord.
The world won't bless you. You can't bless yourself. The world can give us things,
and I'm not against things. I like some things. They make
it so maybe we enjoy life a little more than we might otherwise.
I was talking to one of the brothers beforehand. I said, I'm glad
I live in the day of modern medicine. You know, you go back, even within
my lifetime, a lot of diseases that we don't even think about
anymore. You just go to the doctor, get a shot, get a pill or whatever,
and go on your way. It was debilitating to people.
I'm old enough, I remember kids wearing braces because of polio. Who here is afraid of polio anymore? See what I mean? I'm glad for
those things. I'm glad for nice homes and nice
cars and plenty of food. I'm glad for all those things,
and these things come through the world. But the blessing of God cannot
be compared with that. It is so highly above anything
the world could give, even if the world gave you everything,
it couldn't compare. The psalmist said, praise the
Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, praise his holy
name, and forget not all his benefits, all his blessings.
And the very first one, I read that psalm and I almost just
want to stop right there. He says, who forgives all your
iniquities. Now imagine that. Is there anything
else you want more than that? And is there anyone else who
can give you that? And yet he says, I will bless
you. And he goes on to say, who heals
all your diseases? Say, wait a minute, don't Christians
die? Yes, they do. And when they die, God heals
them once and forever and they're never sick again. Oh, come on,
they died. Their body died, that's all.
And they got rid of that old thing and got one that never
gets sick at all. All the blessings of God. You
know, when Esau came in from hunting and there was Jacob,
and Jacob was typical of his nature, he was setting up Esau. And Esau
was supposed to get the birthright because he's the oldest of the
two boys. And Jacob wanted it. He wanted
to be head of the clan once dad passed on. And so here comes
Esau in from the hunt and he's hungry and Jacob's got a pot
of stew. I guess he asked his mother,
what kind is Esau like? And they made up exactly the
kind that would tempt and tantalize Esau. And Esau smelled that and
he said, give me some of that. Jacob said, well, I will, if
you'll give me the birthright. And Esau, now here's his response,
well, what good's a birthright do me if I'm dead? As though
he were about to fall over dead because of lack of food. And
he'd been out hunting, didn't catch anything, you know? He
despised the birthright. He didn't think it was worth
anything compared to immediate food. And so for a bowl of soup,
he sold, essentially worked out his soul. He paid for a bowl
of soup with his soul. Because the birthright in the
household of Abraham meant a lot more than just simply being the
head of a natural household. And when it came time to receive
the blessing, Jacob had already gone in there and taken it. And I'm not commending what Jacob
did, but he saw the value of the birthright and then the blessing.
And then when Esau goes in there to get the blessing and Isaac,
his father realizes that he's been deceived as well. And it
was Jacob whom he had blessed, but he saw it was from the Lord.
For the Lord had said, the elder will serve the younger. And he said, I've given the blessing. That's the way it is. And it
says that Esau cried out, broken. Everything's been lost. He says,
is there nothing left for me? And essentially, no. I gave it
all to Jacob. And when this Life is over. Those who have preferred the
blessings of the world to the blessings of God will discover
that they have sold their birthright for a bowl of soup. And when
it came time for the blessing, there was nothing left for them. But here he says to this people, I will bless you. Now going back to the first part
of this passage, God speaks again through the
prophet Haggai and he says in verse 11 of Haggai chapter 2,
this is what the Lord Almighty says, ask the priests what the
law says. Now the priests are the ones
who are supposed to be well trained in the law, that is that covenant
that God made with the Jewish nation back on Mount Sinai, nearly
a thousand years before this. And they're to ask the priest
this question, if a person carries consecrated meat in the fold
of his garment, now what's consecrated meat? That means meat that's
been used in sacrifice. The animal was examined, it was
without spot, they killed the animal, and they offered it in
sacrifice, but a portion of the meat of the animal was to be
given to the priest, and of course that's what the priest lived
on. And so that was consecrated meat. And so someone's carrying
some with him. He's got in the fold of his garment
or whatever. And as he's walking along, the fold
of his garment rubs up against some bowl of stew or bottle of
wine or some oil or some other kind of food. Now, does that
other food become consecrated? Because it rubbed up against
some consecrated food. The priest answered, no. All
of that's dealt with in the law. They knew the answer to that.
You cannot make a thing holy or consecrated by touching it
with a holy thing. Now this question. Then Haggai
said, if a person defiled by contact with a dead body touches
one of these things, does it become defiled? Now, part of
the law was if anyone touched a dead person, dead animal, dead
anything. They were, I think for the remainder
of that day, defiled. And they were, you know, there
were things they couldn't do. They were considered unclean
until the end of the day. Now it says, if this person or if a person defiled
by contact with a dead body touches one of these things, this stew,
wine, oil, or other food, will it defile that food? And the
answer is yes. Yes. And if they did, then the wine
would have to be thrown out, the oil couldn't be used, the
food couldn't be eaten. It had been defiled by the touch
of one who had been defiled by death. So you can't make a thing
holy and consecrated unto the Lord by it merely coming in contact
with something else that is holy and consecrated to the Lord.
But you can defile something by bringing it in contact with
that which is defiled. Then Haggai said, And the priest might have been
wondering, why is he asking these questions? These are simple things that
anybody taught in the law should have known the answer to this.
Then Haggai said, so it is with this people and this nation in
my sight, declares the Lord. Whatever they do and whatever
they offer, offer there is defiled. Now, there are people who are
very much taken up with doing the right thing. I'm talking
about in terms of religion, you know. And churches have ceremonies
and they have moral expectations and they have certain ecclesiastical
expectations about, you know, attendance and how much you should
be involved in a church. They've got all kinds of rules. And these all involve things
that are outward. Now it's not that these things
are wrong in and of themselves. It is good to live in a moral
fashion. It is good to attend the worship
services of the church and to be involved in whatever capacity
God enables you to. It is good to read your Bible,
good to pray, These are the things like the wine, the oil, and the
other food, the stew, and all that. There's not an essential holiness
to them, but neither is there an essential defilement to them. But he says, whenever these people
do it, they are defiled, and they defile everything they do. And how does that apply to us?
Anything that we do in the strength of the flesh or motivated by
the flesh is what the book of Hebrews calls dead works. It's
defiled. It's been done by one who's dead
and trespasses and sins themselves. Or they have, spiritually speaking,
touched dead things. You know what's dead, spiritually
speaking? besides our persons, our works. Everything that a man does to
earn a blessing from God is a dead work. It's a defiled thing. And what were these Jews doing
in this day? Well, they'd been told to build
the temple. They got stopped from doing that, but they had
the altar, and so they went on doing that. And they were bringing
the proper animals in. I'm sure that their sheep were
properly inspected so that they were spotless and the goats and
the bullocks and the pigeons and all that kind of other stuff
that they offered. All of that was up to snuff. The things themselves
that they were doing, there was nothing wrong with them. But the people were defiled. Why had they become defiled?
Was it because they had refused to build the
temple? No. That was simply proof of
their defilement. What we do isn't what defiles
us. Our defilement causes us to do what we do. What was it that defiled them
and made all their works defiled? They were doing their works to
earn the blessing of God. They thought, we got the main
thing. Here, look at here, I'm bringing
this little one-year-old of the flock, little lamb, all nice
and white, and I cleaned him up real good, and I checked him
over, and there's no spots, blemishes, never broke a leg or anything.
Oh, the Lord's going to be pleased with this, and I'll tell you,
I'm going to get a crop this year. My vines are going to have the
best grapes, because I'm offering the best lamb. I'm looking around
at other people's lambs, and they're OK, but they're not as
good as my lamb. And they would go, and with hearts full of pride,
would go into that place wherever the altar stood,
and the priest would offer it, and they'd go away thinking,
OK, God has now been, and they wouldn't put it in these words,
but this is what they're thinking, God's been paid off. He'll bless me now. And that was a dead attitude
that defiled all these things that they were doing, even though
they were doing them according to the law. There are many people in our
own community who are this day very busy trying
to earn God's blessing. There may be somebody like that
today. They're going to church. Why
are they going to church? Because they're afraid if they
don't, God will curse them. being involved in everything
they can get involved in in the church. Why? Because they think
the more they're involved in that, the more God will give
them. They're working for the blessings
of God. And that flows from a defiled
heart, and it defiles everything it touches. Then why did God say to these
people, from this day on, I will bless you? I mean, they made
a mess of everything. They're defiled, everything they
did was defiled. And they should have caught on
to this a lot sooner, because they kept doing these things, and
the Lord withheld. any real blessing. He gave them
enough to get along, but when they, you know, I mentioned here
that when they went somewhere looking for a heap of 20 measures,
there were only 10. You know, it was like one, like
a person around here goes out at harvest time and he thinks
he's going to get 150 bushels an acre and he gets 75. That's
what was happening to them. And when they went to the wine
vat, thinking that they were going to get uh, 50. There were only 20. He says,
I struck all the work of your hands with blight, mildew, and
hail. And you know something? If God
is going to do a work of grace in your heart, if he's going
to do something to bring you to a knowledge of Christ and
to trust him, he is going to put a blight on everything you've
been doing to earn his blessing. God does not tolerate our works,
period. And if he's going to be gracious,
or if he is gracious toward us, He is going to cause all of our
religious works to come to nothing. He will hit it with a blight.
We will think we're doing good, and then suddenly we'll realize
we're not doing good. We were doing all this to gain
blessing, and yet there is no peace in our hearts with regard
to our souls being saved. We thought we were doing good,
and we have no real sense of spiritual union with Christ or
with God. For all that we thought we would
obtain by our efforts, we got nothing. We tried real hard to
be good and all it did was accent just how not good we are. So the Lord says, give careful thought to the day
when the foundation of the Lord's temple was laid. Give careful thought. Is there
any seed left in the barn? No, we ain't got nothing. Until
the vine and the fig tree, the pomegranate and the olive tree
have not yet borne fruit. Until now, till the laying of
the foundation stone, nothing's happened good. But from this
day on, I will bless you. Now was it because they did a
work of obedience? No, because our obedience is
never what brings it about. It's what that foundation stone
represented. Paul said, there is no foundation
laid except that which has already been laid, which is Jesus Christ. When they laid that foundation
stone, what they were essentially doing, what they were picturing,
was the work of the Lord Jesus Christ in pouring out his soul
unto death, and by that act, buying us all
the blessings of God. They didn't make the stone. They just put it in its place. We have people that they're looking
at a stone all right. It's a stone tablet with 10 commands
on it. And they keep looking at that
stone and think by way of that stone that they will obtain the
blessing of God. And yet it says quite plainly,
cursed is everyone that does not continue in every point of
the law to do it. And there is a tenfold indictment
of some things we've never fulfilled. How are we ever going to get
blessings by that stone? We won't. But that foundation
stone, that person of the Lord Jesus Christ, as it is written,
blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who's
blessed us with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places
in Christ Jesus. Now, no Christ, no blessings. You have Christ, you got all
blessings. That's the only two conditions
there are. There's no such thing as only
some blessings in Christ and you got to work to get more.
There's no such thing as you working and getting some and
then Christ comes along and fills up what you weren't able to get
for yourself. Apart from Christ, there are no blessings, period. Everything a person receives
apart from Christ is a curse, no matter how pleasant the experience. Everything a person receives
in Christ, no matter how much it may hurt for the time being,
is a blessing in Christ Jesus. Because everything Everything in this world is being
used by God to bring about the salvation of His people. But
this could not be done till the foundation stone had been laid. Until Christ Jesus is laid. And the Lord put it this way.
It's quoted for us a couple of times in the New Testament. Behold, I lay in Zion a foundation
stone. precious, precious stone. And then he says, but the stone
that the builders rejected has become the head of the corner.
Our Lord came into this world, He is God's foundation stone
for His spiritual temple. And He came and the people, the
priests, The Pharisees, the Sadducees, the whole council, all the big
shots in Jewish religion rejected him. They were supposed to be
the builders, but the stone God sent for the foundation, they
rejected it. But it didn't matter. It didn't
matter to anybody but them. It condemned them. But that very
stone that they rejected, God had chosen. It said that the
foundation stone chosen and precious. Chosen and precious to God. And he laid that foundation stone. He caused him to be conceived
within the womb of Mary. He caused him to grow up and
to grow in wisdom and in grace with God. He caused him to do
all that teaching he did. God caused him to work all the
miracles he did. God caused him to be willing
to go to the cross and as the righteous one, bear our sins
in his body on the tree. God caused him to die. God killed
him. God caused him to be buried,
and God caused him to come back out from the grave. And when that happened, the foundation
stone had been laid. It had been laid by God. And God
says, from this day forward, I will bless you. Once the foundation stone is
in place, all that is required is the passage of time. As God,
through the grace of His Spirit, causes each one of us who are
His elect to come to Him. And it says that as we come to
Him, we are like living stones being built into a household,
a temple for the Lord. And how do we know if we're one
of those stones, those living stones built upon the true foundation? Peter says, unto you who believe
therefore, he is precious. made this cornerstone and it
said the stone was chosen by God and precious to him and that
means like precious jewels, precious to God. God saw everything
he wanted in that foundation stone and therefore he put it
in its place. How do we know that God has taken
us as living stones and built us on that foundation? We look
at that foundation stone and we think the same thing about
it that God does. That's a good foundation stone. I can rest upon that stone. This won't be sinking sand. This won't be undermined from
me and my soul be lost. I'm resting on the rock. And with that in place, Christ
crucified in place, God says to His people from all ages,
to all those to whom He had given grace, according to 2 Timothy
1.9, He gave them grace before the beginning of time, and once
Christ had died, that grace was poured out from this day on. I will bless you. Now, we aren't
aware of it until such time as pleases him to open our hearts
to the preaching of the gospel. And when he reveals to us that
foundation stone and causes it to be precious in our sight,
he says to us from this day on, I will bless you. Now he's already
been blessing us. He blessed us by choosing us.
He blessed us by laying the foundation stone for us. But we were unaware
of it. And he had not testified to us
of all these blessings. God doesn't open his mouth of
blessing until the foundation stone is in place. And as it
were, he lays that foundation stone in our hearts and he says,
from now on, I bless you. Now, is Christ precious to you? Is he a foundation on which your
soul finds rest? An old woman was coming very
near the end of her life and a preacher came to visit, you
know, I'll confess, it's very hard
to know what to say when you're in a situation like that. I'll
just tell you that from experience. You walk in someone that, you
know, probably before the day passes, they'll be gone. What
do you tell them? You know? And so this guy went
in there, and as is so typical of us preachers, he said something
stupid. He said to this woman, sister
so-and-so, do you feel yourself sinking? And this woman, she'd
just been laying there with her eyes closed. She opened her eyes,
and with what energy she had left, she glared at him. She
said, sinking? Who ever heard of sinking through
a rock? We're built upon the foundation
of Christ. We didn't put ourselves there,
God did. He knew the right foundation stone to pick. And he knew how
to set us on that foundation stone such that until the time
comes when you can sink through a rock, we're in good shape. From this day on, I will bless
you. From this day on, says God, you
are like that foundation stone, precious in my sight. And I will
protect you. I will guard you. I will preserve
you. I will bless you from now and
through eternity. May the Lord add His blessing.