Be Strong, for I Will Be with You | Haggai
Brad O’Dell | August 17, 2025

If you would, go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Haggai. We’ll be in the book of Haggai this morning. I did not get a chance to look at the page number in the Bibles in the chairs, but it’s between the books of Zechariah and Zephaniah, so flip until you see a bunch of Zs, and then you’re right around that area. That’s where you’ll find Haggai.

It’s a small little book, one of the smaller prophets in Israel’s history, and we’re in a series looking at what are called the minor prophets in the Scriptures.

I think to get into Haggai here, before we start reading, I want to bring you up to date on where we are in Israel’s history and what’s going on, and it’s going to help us understand why Haggai is talking about the things he’s talking about and what’s going on, what the background is.

About 140 years after the northern kingdom of Israel was conquered by the Assyrians—we’ve covered that in previous weeks here—140 years after that, in 586 B.C. Jerusalem, the southern kingdom, would be overtaken, it would be ransacked and the temple would be destroyed. Over the course of many years—fifteen or so—there are going to be waves of exiles who are taken now to Babylon. Babylon is the world power who is taking over. This is all by God’s plan, because the people of Israel have not walked faithfully with him.

That’s what we’ve seen in history before these events, and it’s described like this in the prophet Jeremiah: God says to the king in Jerusalem, Jehoiachin, “You were as a signet ring on my finger.” A signet ring is the idea that “you had a special relationship to me, such that I am the king and you are an underlord, and you could even carry out my rule in my own name, and you have a special privilege and relationship to me.” He said, “You’re as a signet ring on my finger, but I’m removing you as my signet ring because you haven’t been faithful to me—not only you, but you and your sons.”

That would play out. Jehoiachin, before he was sent to Babylon, would have to sit and watch all the sons, all the heirs to the throne, be killed in front of his eyes, and then his eyes would be gouged out and he would go into Babylon in shame and in shackles.

About forty-five years after this, Babylon gets conquered by Persia, a new world power, and about a year after that the Persian king Cyrus would be moved by God to institute a policy that applied to the Jews and also all the other peoples they had conquered. That policy was this: “I will support you going back to your homeland and rebuilding your places of worship, and you can reinstitute your worship practices.” It was a political move for them. “Hey, people can go back, they can worship, and hopefully their gods will bless our nation as well and they’ll think kindly of us as their rulers and overlords.”

Cyrus does this, and this is by the hand of God that the Jews are able to go back to their land and rebuild the temple. They’re led by a man named Zerubbabel. He is a grandson of Jehoiachin, and Joshua (who is a priest) and about 50,000 Jews go with them.

Within a year, they have set up the altar on what are the ruins of the temple. They set up the altar, they reinstitute the sacrifices, and they start to hold some of the festivals—at least as much as they’re able to hold them—in a still broken-down city.

And then a year from then, they gather a lot of the materials—most of the materials—to build the temple, and then in 536 B.C., now a little over forty-five years after they went into exile, they begin rebuilding the temple. They lay the foundation, people celebrate in joy.

But soon after that, opposition comes. Some of the local officials and leaders and the governors of the area under Persian rule come and say, “Hey, you’re not allowed to rebuild this temple! You’re not allowed to rebuild this city! You are a treasonous and seditious people; you’ve caused all kinds of issues in this part of the world.” These were enemies of theirs.

So they write a letter to the now-sitting king of Persia, and they complain about this. They misrepresent what’s happening here. But that king of Persia is like, “Listen, I don’t know, I can’t check all the records, but it does seem like Israel has been an issue in the past, so let’s cease the work until I get a chance to look into this further.” He never gets a chance to look into it further, because he’s not on the throne very long.

So that’s where they are. They’ve laid the foundation of the temple, the altar is built, but they haven’t moved forward. That was in 536. It’s now 520 B.C., and this is where Haggai picks up. Sixteen years have passed. The temple remains in the same state. Zerubbabel and the people have focused on getting their crops in the ground, establishing their livestock, building their own houses, and it’s into this situation that God will prophesy through his prophets, Haggai and Zechariah, both prophesying at the same time.

Here’s going to be my brief outline. We’re going to just take Haggai in chunks this morning. It’s not my most creative outline, but it is one of my most efficient outlines, and I think it’s going to draw our attention to a key focus, something that we can learn from each section of Scripture.

1. Priorities

So, 520 B.C., here’s Haggai speaking to these people.

“In the second year of Darius the king, in the sixth month, on the first day of the month, the word of the Lord came by the hand of Haggai the prophet to Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest: ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts: These people say the time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the Lord.’ Then the word of the Lord came by the hand of Haggai the prophet, ‘Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, while this house lies in ruins? Now, therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider your ways. You have sown much, and harvested little. You eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm. And he who earns wages does so to put them into a bag with holes.

“‘Thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider your ways. Go up to the hills and bring wood and build the house, that I may take pleasure in it and that I may be glorified, says the Lord. You looked for much, and behold, it came to little. And when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why? declares the Lord of hosts. Because of my house that lies in ruins, while each of you busies himself with his own house. Therefore the heavens above you have withheld the dew, and the earth has withheld its produce. And I have called for a drought on the land and the hills, on the grain, the new wine, the oil, on what the ground brings forth, on man and beast, and on all their labors.’”

So we see here this message that God brings to them, and really the core contention we can see in verse 2. God says, “These people say the time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the Lord,” and the idea is, “You’ve been saying that for sixteen years! Is the time now?” Finally he has to go and be a little more direct in calling them again to what he had already called them to do.

It reminds me of a show that I’ve enjoyed on Apple TV called Silo. Silo is about a community that’s lived in an underground silo because all the surface land has been destroyed by some type of nuclear disaster, and they’ve lived there for hundreds and hundreds of years, such that they’ve lost memory of why the silos were created and what’s going on outside. But the one rule about the silo is you’re not allowed to go outside, because that could contaminate the whole silo. And they have this creed that they read, and it goes like this: “We do not know who built the silo, we do not know why everything outside the silo is as it is, we do not know when it will be safe to go outside. We only know that day is not today.” And they’ve been saying that for hundreds and hundreds of years.

The returned Jews were essentially saying the same thing. “We don’t know why we encountered hostility, we don’t know when it will be time to build again; we only know that day is not this day.” And they’ve been saying that for about sixteen years.

You see, the people had found time to plant their crops, they’re dialing in their vineyards, trying to maximize the produce there. It’s not quite working, they don’t know why. They’re trying to get their economic systems and the businesses and the neighborhoods established, and they have those up and running. But somehow they had found no time to go and argue this edict by a king who had said to shut down what they were building. They had good grounds to make an argument to the Persian king, based on Cyrus’s rule. Neither had they had any courage to actually obey God’s command and to go ahead and follow what he’d called them to do, even in the face of difficulty.

In 2 Samuel 7, David lamented that he lived in this house of cedar, or this paneled house, when the ark of the covenant sat in a tent still. Solomon, when he’s going to build the temple, he makes sure to build the house of the Lord before he starts any work on his palace. However, here, when it’s time to build the temple anew so that God might again dwell in the people’s midst, they just couldn’t find an opportune time to actually prioritize it.

So, what God tells them to do is, “Take a moment and think carefully.” He repeats that twice. “Think carefully.” What he’s drawing attention to is, “Listen, don’t you understand if you pay attention? You are under the covenant curses. In my covenant I laid out that if you’re disobedient to me it’s going to look like some droughts happening, some famines happening; you’re not going to have good produce coming in from your crops, you’re not going to have a good harvest, your wages are not going to do well. You’re not going to have good relationships with the nations around you.” These are part of the covenant curses.

What we see is that the people who have gone into exile from being disobedient are now back from exile, and they have an opportunity, and God has made a move. He has moved nations and kingdoms about to get them back into their homeland, and here they’re already walking in disobedience and are under the same covenant curses they were experiencing before they went into exile. God says, “Perk up! Pay attention! Start to consider your ways.”

Now, I think it’s worth asking, “What’s the deal? Why is God so upset here?” I think there are a couple things we can see.

(1) First, look at Haggai 1:7-8 again. It says,

“Thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider your ways. Go up to the hills and bring wood and build the house, that I may take pleasure in it and that I may be glorified, says the Lord.”

You know, through the prophet Ezekiel, the prophet who prophesied during the time of the exile, God talked about how his name had been dishonored and profaned among the nations because of exile. Now, God is the one who is in control of this. The people were disobedient, so he allowed a foreign enemy to come and conquer them. However, in that day and age, the way they understood it is that everything is a battle between God and the gods of the nations. Who’s the biggest god? Who’s the strongest god? Who’s the god who can defeat the other gods? The other nations around Israel had understood this to mean, “Hey, the God of Israel is impotent. He’s useless. Look how easily he can be conquered! Both the northern and southern tribes have been conquered. Maybe this God is not the God he always claimed to be.”

So now, God again has moved whole nations about, and rulers, to give the people a chance to restore the honor and the name of Yahweh among the nations, but they failed to do so by being so easily shut down by some hostility that arises.

So God’s not happy that his name and his character are being defamed like this. The whole idea was that God’s name and character and ways would be so manifest as glorious that the nations would actually recognize and see and know the one true God and would stream to know him and worship him and actually to be blessed by him. This was the vision given to Israel. But they haven’t even started in this way.

I think this is lesson number one for us. It comes out so clearly in this passage, so clearly in the Bible, but it’s something that’s in the back of our minds or not in our minds at all. That’s this: God cares passionately about his glory. God is a God who cares passionately about his glory. He is all-glorious in his character and in his nature, and therefore he is worthy of all praise. In fact, one of the chief ways that God shows his love for people and for his creation is that he reveals to us his infinite splendor and his infinite loveliness, and in that he is inviting us to share in all of his infinite wonder. That’s a way he blesses creation. That’s why he cares about his glory: because this is a way that he actually shares his love for others, by revealing that to them and bringing them in to share all of its goodness.

The question here for us is this: in recognition of the fact that the glorification of his name is central to his consideration, I would just ask, in your spiritual walk, is it in yours? Is it a central consideration in your spiritual walk at all?

I can maybe phrase it this way: When was the last time you made a decision, and in that decision-making process there was a strong desire for God to be honored and magnified in the choice that you made, and that’s what led you to one choice as opposed to another? When was the last time you made a decision in your budget, in your family schedule, in your leisure time—your leisure activities—even how you serve and don’t serve in the church, and the one of the primary things you were thinking of is that you had a distinct desire for the names and ways of Jesus to be displayed as glorious in your life and in your decisions and in how you use your time, your money, et cetera?

I would say, to the degree that that’s not happening, I would ask you this: What is central in your considerations and desires instead? What are those things? Sometimes this can help us see what the true priorities of our lives are, above God, and maybe some of the idols of our lives.

So, that’s one thing. God knows that his name and honor are being negatively impacted.

(2) But I think there’s another offensiveness here. What the people of Israel seem to be doing in not building the temple is what we might call presuming upon God’s grace and blessing, even while they are walking in willful disobedience. So they know that God had called them to build the temple. They know that he had sent them. They know that he had called certain leaders to them in this. And they are willfully disobeying because they have ceased to actually do what he had called them to. What they’re doing is they’re presuming upon God’s grace and blessing.

You see, God’s institution was this: that the temple would be built, and then after the temple was built, his glory and his presence would fill the temple, and then as the people walked faithfully with God in their midst the blessing of him in their midst would actually go out and bless them, and not only them, but also bless the nations around them as they recognized the glory of God.

However, what they’re trying to do is say, “Without the temple—let’s skip over that part—maybe God will just give us all the grace and blessings and goodnesses anyway, even though he’s not here in our midst and even though we haven’t actually made sure that there’s a place for him to dwell.” This was all in the Old Testament mindset that we’re talking about, right?

In the words of one commentator, it amounted to this: “Seeking grace but refusing the means of grace.” That’s what they were doing. They were seeking grace while refusing the means of grace.

Boy, doesn’t that phrase actually land right home in our spiritual walks today? I would just ask us, how many of us here want and even presume upon the blessings and the grace of God in our lives—these are things we want; we pray for it, we’re expecting it—while in our lives we prioritize just about everything over God’s means of grace?

God’s means of grace—what am I talking about? I mean concentrated and consistent time in prayer. I’m talking about a study of and a meditation on God’s word, even a memorization of God’s word, that we would meditate on that. I’m talking about faithful service and participation in church community. These are the means of grace. These are the avenues that God has set up, the institutions that God has set up. He says, “This is how I’m going to pour my saving grace into your life to help make you into what I’ve called you to be.”

For a lot of us, those are the things we want. We want to see that happen; we’re kind of disappointed it’s not happening to the degree that we want. But if we really look at our lives, we wonder if we’ve prioritized just about everything over those means of grace.

It could be that we say to ourselves something like, “Well, there will be a time when I get to those spiritual things and I prioritize them, but I don’t know when that day will come. I just know that today is not that day.”

I wonder how long you’ve been saying something like that. Is time with the Lord via his means of grace prioritized in the same way you prioritize all the other things of your life, or does it always seem to get squeezed out? I think that’s a good consideration for us as we see how God is speaking to these believers at this time.

2. Obedience

On to the next point—we see that the people have returned to the land, but they haven’t really fully returned to God in heart and soul the way that the prophets anticipated, but we’re about to see that change here. Haggai 1:12:

“Then Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, with 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. And the people feared the Lord. Then Haggai, the messenger of the Lord, spoke to the people with the Lord's message, ‘I am with you, declares the Lord.’ And the Lord stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and 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, on the twenty-fourth day of the month, in the sixth month, in the second year of Darius the king.”

Here we see that the people respond excellently. I mean, it’s one of the best examples of a response to the prophets that we see in Scripture, an excellent response to Haggai’s message. We see that they obey, they fear the Lord, and then they start doing the work. They begin the work afresh, with zeal.

We see a language shift here, that I think is really illustrative, from this section and the previous section. In that first section, Haggai 1:1-11, the titles of God are Yahweh of hosts and just Yahweh plain; but after this word “obeyed” in verse 12, the language shifts to something a little more personal, and it talks about “Yahweh their God” and the “Yahweh of hosts, their God,” right? There’s that personal identification that becomes a little stronger.

Also, in Haggai 1:2, the Israelites are essentially just addressed with this curt, “These people.” “These people” say that it’s not the time for building the temple. But in this section it becomes a much more theologically rich and significant phrase that’s more connected to God’s heart and his saving plans. That is, they are called “the remnant of the people.” What we see is that, in this obedience, the people who have returned to the land have finally truly become the returned community in the fullest sense of what they were called to.

Now, we see this obedience; however, there’s something a little more here. We can get this from Ezra, more of the background. There’s a lot more stuff happening than we see in the reduced form of Haggai’s oracles that we see here. What we see when we really look at the full context is this isn’t just obedience, but it’s obedience in the face of fear, some very real fears that they had that would try to keep them from obeying.

We knew that it wasn’t just a simple thing for them to restart the temple. As soon as they do, all these governors of the provinces, all these peoples around them, these people with authority, they come and try to make them stop. Here they have some boldness, they have some courage, and they say, “No, our God told us to do this, Cyrus decreed we can do it, and we are the people who are going to do this,” and they stand firm. So those people are like, “Alright, they seem pretty serious,” but they’re going to try to then go around another way. They write another letter to the now-sitting king of Persia; this is now Darius. They write a letter to him with accusations, and what they’re trying to do essentially is to say, “These people have disobeyed the edict that was previously passed,” and they’re trying to present them as treasonous and a seditious people, such that these powers would come and just annihilate them and conquer them and do away with them altogether. That was a very real threat and a very real thing that happened at that time.

However, the way it turns out, Darius, also moved by God, actually says, “Let’s look at the records and see what’s actually going on here.” He finds the edict of Cyrus, the law of the Persians was always understood to be set in stone, and so he says, “Well, Cyrus said that they’re supposed to rebuild the temple,” so he actually writes back to the governors and says, “Hey, don’t harass them; in fact, if anyone does harass them, they’ll receive a death penalty. In fact, give them a bunch of money and a bunch of help to rebuild the temple.” You see how the Lord’s mighty hand is still at work.

However, the people did not know that’s how this would turn out. It could have turned out very otherwise. So the people needed to obey in the face of some very real fears.

I think that’s a situation we can all relate to, needing to obey God, do what God has called us to, in the face of some very real fears in our lives about how that might play out. I think these situations we talked about in the last point, the situations where we prioritize things over God somewhat easily and focus on God, the things of God, the callings of God get squeezed out…I think with all those things we prioritize above God, there’s probably some type of fear involved.

I think it’s just a good question to ask ourselves—this is maybe a way to phrase it—“In what areas am I afraid to prioritize God’s calling on my life because I think he won’t protect and care for me?” I think that’s really what it comes down to. Why do we prioritize those things over God? Because we think, “If I put those in the primary place, I can figure it out and make it happen; but if I put God in the primary place and I don’t know how it’s going to sort out, there’s some fear in me, and underneath that fear is this distrust in God. I’m not sure if he’ll actually take care of me. I’m not sure if he’ll protect me. I’m not sure if he’ll care for me well.”

I think for us in those situations who understand that, there’s an encouraging paradigm that we see right here in these verses.

We see that it’s kind of a three-step process. The people first respond to God’s word in faith. They fear and they honor him, and they put the fear of God above those other fears. They start where they need to start. “We know we’re supposed to fear the Lord; we know what he’s called us to. I guess we have to sort out the rest of this stuff down the road.” That’s the right move to make. They put the fear of the Lord over those other fears. That’s the first thing.

Then, God gives them an assurance by his word that he is with them, and so he encourages them. That’s what he says in Haggai 1:13: “I am with you, declares the Lord.” That’s his immediate response to their obedience and their fear of God.

Then, what we see is that he equips them by his Spirit to actually carry out what they had set out to do or carry out their obedience.

So there’s their response to the word of God in faith, and then God comes and he gives an assurance of his character and his ways and his presence and his strength, and then he gives his Spirit to actually enable us to walk out what he’s called us to. That’s the three-step process.

I think that’s an encouraging paradigm for us to keep in mind. It might look like this: in those moments where we might need to take a step of faith—we don’t know the future; it seems like if we follow what we feel God’s calling us to or something clear from his word that things are not going to work out or things will get compromised or he will let me down; I don’t know how to sort all that out—in these moments, I think there’s a process we can do.

First, identify your fears and confess them. Don’t ignore them. Don’t minimize them. Those are real. God has a heart; he knows and wants to hear all those things. We have so much Scripture about people bringing this before the Lord. Confess it to God, talk about it with others. But, decisively have a conviction in your heart that “I will try to fear God above those other fears.” That’s step one

Then, act. Act in the confidence that God is with you. As Romans 8 says, “If God is for you, who can be against you?” Do you believe that? If God is for you, what else can stand against you? That’s the promise of Romans 8, so we act in that confidence.

Then, we trust that God will be faithful to give us his Spirit to, in the words of Hebrews 13, “equip you with everything good, that you may do his will and that he will work in you that which is pleasing in his sight.” That’s what it is. We move in faith, and then we trust that God will give us the Spirit to actually enable us to carry out the difficult thing that he’s called us to do. I think that’s what the people of this day experienced, and they received God’s blessings for it.

3. Promises

Haggai 2—I’m going to break Haggai 2 into three sections, but before I introduce those I want to give a little bit of background.

A little has happened here. This is three weeks later that we’re about to start reading these oracles of Haggai. A few weeks have passed, and the people have begun to rebuild the temple, and work is happening. It’s about that long of time that it’s taken for another thing to get added onto the fear they already had, and that’s this: there’s a heavy weight of discouragement and disillusionment that has set in. They started getting after it and realized, “This is a big task, and it takes a lot. We’re not sure we have all the resources. We’re not sure we have the skills and the wherewithal and all these things.” So the task is getting overwhelming, and they’re pretty discouraged by that.

But here’s another thing that I think is big. We see this in Ezra and Haggai a little bit here. It’s becoming clear to them that there’s no way that this new temple is going to even hold a candle to the previous splendor and majesty of Solomon’s temple. “It’s too small, we don’t have all the materials, we don’t have all the riches, we don’t have all the time that Solomon had. Is this even worth it?”

In the words of Alec Motyer, a commentator, he says, “There are two persistent roots of despondency that were viciously growing among Haggai’s people. The past seemed incomparably better than the present, and the present seemed much less than worthwhile.”

I wonder if you’ve had those experiences in your Christian walk, where the past seemed incomparably better than the present. You remember those days when you were just on fire for the Lord; your heart was full, you loved him, you could read Scripture forever, you had a passion to share about what God was doing in your life, and you just felt like, “Man, God was right here, and I had such a close relationship with him! And it hasn’t been like that for a long time. The past was incomparably better than the present.”

Then also, the present just seems much less than worthwhile. The present’s hard! “I feel stuck. I feel like the barriers are too big. I feel like the mountains I have to climb are too high. I feel like the work is too much for me. Not to mention, it’s never going to be what it was back then,” right? I think that’s a really, really common experience in people’s spiritual walks, and it’s something that the people are experiencing here. It’s into this that Haggai will speak as the wind has been taken out of their sails a little bit.

I’m going to break down the passage into what I’m going to say are three sources of discouragement, and then God’s answer to each of them is going to be promises that he has that speak to those discouragements. We have the issue of the temple, the issue of their holiness, and the issue of the Davidic covenant. We’ll take them in order.

(1) Read with me Haggai 2:1-9 (the issue of the temple).

“In the seventh month, on the twenty-first day of the month, the word of the Lord came by the hand of Haggai the prophet: ‘Speak now to Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, and to all the remnant of the people, and say, “Who is left among you who saw this house in its former glory? How do you see it now? Is it not as nothing in your eyes?”’”

So God recognizes that yes, it’s not that comparable. The purpose is not how good it’s going to be, it’s the fact that it is there, right? Then he says,

“‘“Yet now be strong, O Zerubbabel, declares the Lord. Be strong, O Joshua, son of Jehozadak, the high priest. Be strong, all you people of the land, declares the Lord. Work, for I am with you, declares the Lord of hosts, according to the covenant that I made with you when you came out of Egypt. My Spirit remains in your midst. Fear not. For thus says the Lord of hosts: Yet once more, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land. And I will shake all nations, so that the treasures of all nations shall come in, and I will fill this house with glory, says the Lord of hosts. The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, declares the Lord of hosts. The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts. And in this place I will give peace, declares the Lord of hosts.”’”

God answers first with some encouragement for the here and now. “Be strong.” He says it three times: “Be strong, be strong, be strong, and get to work,” because “I am with you. Do not be afraid; I will remain with you.” Again, we’ve already said, if God is there, then what else do we have to fear? Don’t we know that he will see us through. That’s their strength in the moment.

But God then answers the discouragement with a promise, and it’s a promise couched in what we’re going to call eschatological language. Some of you are very familiar with that type of language, and some of you are like, “I don’t know what you just said.” Eschatological language is what we see there: nations will be overthrown, the sea and the dry land, heavens and earth…it’s this idea that in the coming day of the Lord, which we’ve spoken a lot about in this series, and I’m not going to go into it today (you can look at the previous messages), the idea is that God is going to come in divine glory, and there will be a day where he comes and he does a cosmic move that brings in, in a dynamic way, all of the promises that he’s made to his people over the years. He looks forward to a day when there will be a Messiah who is the one who is connected to all these things, and it’s couched in this Old Testament language of things that happen when God does mighty acts, right? When they came out of Egypt, waters were split and people were thrown into the water. When they were at Sinai, mountains smoked and there were earthquakes. It’s this language of creation becoming undone when the Creator comes near. He’s saying, “It’s going to be like that.” That’s the language there.

What do we see the promise is for the temple? You see it in verse 9: that there will be a greater glory than the previous temple and there will be peace.

Of course, we know that the second temple was never the full end. That temple is destroyed today; it still remains destroyed. You can go see the foundation stones if you go to Israel. You see just a few of them. This was never the end-all of God’s promises and plans, but he was communicating a hope to the people in that day, in language they would understand.

But we do know something better than the temple would come. God himself would come to earth and he would come incarnate in Jesus. While on this earth, Jesus would bless people and heal them, and his gathered people he would call a holy temple in the Lord, even as he called his own body a temple, and he would be setting people free from oppression to demons, from illnesses, et cetera. The idea is that the presence of God is here with us and all his blessings are going forward. His kingdom is here, and we see that the glory of the latter temple does far indeed surpass that of the former temple, in Jesus and the church, where all the nations are being gathered in.

(2) We also see a second section. I’m not going to read some of this, because it gets a little confusing and it might take longer for me to explain from it. But here’s what’s happening. Essentially, they are taking some rules from the levitical priesthood and God’s giving them a question-and-answer format to try to draw their attention to something. What he’s talking about is the cleanliness rituals of the people of Israel and how essentially uncleanliness or uncleanness or defilement is much more contagious than holiness was. In that day and age, if something was cleansed and it was considered holy, it could make the first thing it touched holy as well by its holiness, but it couldn’t pass on from that. However, if something was unclean—like a dead body—and someone touched that, then they become unclean and they can actually pass that uncleanness to everything else and everything that person touches. So uncleanness, unholiness was a much bigger deal at that time. I’m not going to get into a lot of that.

There’s a point to it all. The thing is, what God was trying to draw their attention to could be deeply discouraging for them, because they were now a defiled or an unclean people. They’d been walking in willful disobedience to God, and though now they are building the temple, the fear is, “We are unclean, so everything we touch and do will be unclean, and therefore the holiness of God will never come to this place; and if he doesn’t, then all the promises of God are null and void, because they’re all wrapped up in him being with us.”

What he does is he speaks into this and he says, “I know all these things, but you just sit and watch—consider—sit and watch.” And he says at the end, “I will bless you.”

There’s a question there. How is it that God is going to bless them even in the midst of their defilement? We see that God does. He receives their repentance and their turning back to him, and he’s faithful, and their crops improve and all the covenant curses go away for a season.

But we know that this doesn’t really solve the issue, because what do they do about the fact that they are people who can continually fall into being unclean, into being sinful, and not being able to walk with the presence of God? This is actually the big issue in Israel all along. “We can’t figure out how to walk with the Lord faithfully, and that’s not a good thing, because the holiness of God will not abide with unholiness in his midst.” There needs to be a solution to the problem of people falling so easily into unholiness.

This is why Jesus is amazing, because in Jesus we see that he comes and he displays his holiness, and we see that his holiness is more contagious than our unholiness.

We see this played out in examples. While Jesus is going around, he touches lepers who are considered to be unclean and very contagious; but instead of him catching their contagion, in fact he is the one who’s contagious, and they catch his purity, and they are cleansed and purified from their illness all at once. We see him going and he touches dead bodies. Dead bodies were considered unclean, and he should have been ceremonially unclean. He should have been infected with that condition of death in some ways. But instead, his life flows into the dead person, who comes alive. The contagion works backwards because Jesus is pure holiness, and everything he touches then becomes holy.

This is the wonder of the gospel, that for those of us who put our trust in Jesus, just as he was raised to new life over death, we are given new life over the death of our sins, this condition of unholiness. And Christ’s holiness actually becomes our holiness, to the extent that one of the most common ways the New Testament will speak about the people of Jesus is it will call them the holy ones or saints. That’s what that word means.

(3) Last issue; we’ll read Haggai 2:20-23, the issue of the Davidic covenant.

“The word of the Lord came a second time to Haggai on the twenty-fourth day of the month, ‘Speak to Zerubbabel, governor of Judah, saying, I am about to shake the heavens and the earth, and to overthrow the throne of kingdoms [again, more eschatological language]. I am about to destroy the strength of the kingdoms of the nations, and overthrow the chariots and their riders. And the horses and their riders shall go down, every one by the sword of his brother. On that day, declares the Lord of hosts, I will take you, O Zerubbabel my servant, the son of Shealtiel, declares the Lord, and make you like a signet ring, for I have chosen you, declares the Lord of hosts.’”

Here’s the issue. The Davidic covenant seemed to be lost. God had taken off the Davidic line as his signet ring, and all the heirs were killed. Here’s Zerubbabel; he’s a grandson, but he has a lame governorship that doesn’t even have any authority because all the other governors can tell him what to do. We’re not even sure if it was anything but just a title and name only, right? But they are trying to say, “Are the promises of God that were given to David active?”

What are those promises? It’s the promise that God will come and he will bring final salvation, and a king will come and establish a perfect reign of priests, and he will reign in righteousness and justice, and that peace will pervade through all the earth, and God’s kingdom will finally come in its fullness. That’s how it was always understood to be, and they thought, “Where’s that going to happen? I don’t think Zerubbabel’s the one.” God answers and says, “Zerubbabel, I will make you like a signet ring.”

Here’s how Alec Motyer says it.

“The final verses of Haggai reveal Haggai as a literary equivalent of an impressionist painter. He gives general tone and effect without elaborate detail. His colors are the thunderstorm and the earthquake, revolution and clashing armies and civil conflict [all that eschatological language]. As in a carefully composed picture where every stroke is designed to lead the eye to what is central, so here too the focus is like a shaft of sunlight illuminating one item: a ring shining on a finger.”

Here’s the thing about Zerubbabel: he only comes up two other times in Scripture after these events, Haggai and Zechariah. They are two important passages of Scripture, and these are the genealogies of Jesus. He’s listed in both Luke and Matthew, and in the line that the Messiah would come from—the true chosen Davidic king who does bring in salvation fully and finally forever, and who does bring the kingdom of God, and who does call all the nations to join in that kingdom work and gives the promise of a new heaven and a new earth that will be established by him—Zerubbabel is mentioned, and we see that all of this was a promise to the coming Davidic king, Jesus. God’s promises never fail.

Here’s where I want to end today. I would wager, kind of like the people in Haggai’s day, that most of you have some type of spiritual discouragement or fear in your life right now. It might be that you’re discouraged by the difficulty of building God’s temple, but as it exists now. What do I mean by that? You’re discouraged by the overwhelming task of actually growing up into the fullness of who you are in Christ. It just seems so slow! It seems like you’re still the same person you always were. It just seems like it would have been going a lot better by now.

Or maybe it’s this: you’re discouraged by the state of the church, the gathered people, the new temple, all the people of Jesus gathered together. You’re discouraged by the state of the church and all of its issues and all of its inconsistencies and all of its turmoil. You’re a little discouraged.

Maybe some of you are discouraged by your sins, your unholiness, kind of like they were, and you’re starting to think, “Maybe my defilement is just a little bit stronger than God’s ability to make me clean and to heal me and to set me free. I’m just looking at my experience, pastor! That just seems what it’s like.”

Some of you might be discouraged by your life prospects. The promises of God just seem for you out of reach right now, and if you’re honest, you’re unsure if God really does care and really will move and help you and secure you, because it just seems like he’s not here. “It seems like he’s not doing what I would expect him to.”

Here’s the hope this morning. Based on the reality of the gospel and who Jesus is and what he’s done, we have a strong hope. Listen to what Jesus says to you in these situations. Jesus has secured our salvation. He says to us, “I give you eternal life, and you will never perish. No one will snatch you out of my hand.” That’s the promise of Jesus to you if you’re a child of God (John 10).

God is growing us up into the image of Christ. He says it himself. He says, “I myself will sanctify you completely, so that your whole spirit and soul and body will be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.” That’s the promise of 1 Thessalonians 5.

Here’s this promise: he is setting you free from sin. He says, “Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, for the law of the spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.” That’s the promise of Romans 8.

God will be your strength as you seek to give yourself to him, as you seek to prioritize him, even in the midst of fear. He says, “All things that pertain to life and godliness have been granted to you by his divine power.” That’s his promise from 2 Peter 1.

Here’s the lesson we learn from Haggai, as we take it into the promises we have in Christ. In the face of difficulty, we are called to dwell on the promises and the character and the capabilities of God much more than we listen to the tale of our discouragement.

I’ll say that again, because I think it’s important. In the face of difficulty and discouragement, we are called to dwell on the promises, the character, and the capabilities of God much more than we listen to the tale of our discouragement.

What can happen is we can see our lives, maybe accurately to a degree, right? We understand that things are difficult, we understand that we’ve failed and fallen so many times, we understand that the hill is very high to climb. We understand that we’re pretty overwhelmed and we’re pretty beat down and we’re out of energy, and we’re just not sure we can drum up the energy again. We can just listen and listen and listen to the testament of our hearts and souls, and maybe even the deception of the enemy fueling that stuff, and we never actually make a shift and say, “What is true about God?” That’s our responsibility.

Yes, come and talk to God about your difficulties, your trials, your hurts. Talk to others about that. God wants to hear about those things, he wants to minister to you in those. But at a certain point you need to do something: you need to turn your mind from thinking about what you perceive to be true about yourself to what is true about God as he has said in his word.

You have to take your mind and say, “Okay, I see all that and I’ve confessed it, but I need to turn my mind and stop thinking about what I, in my own fallen wisdom, understand to be true about myself. I need to start thinking about what is true about God, and I need to start speaking those things to my heart, I need to start meditating on those things, I need to start worshiping those things, because that is what is sure and true.”

This is what it is to exercise faith. This is what it is to have a battle of faith. This is what it is to be a people of faith. What is faith? I like this from Alec Motyer—last quote; it’s not on the screen, but it’s simple. It says this: “Faith believes that the Lord’s assessment of the situation is truer than the human assessment.”

Humans see an unattainable past and a hopeless present. The Lord sees his own presence, his covenanted word of blessing, his Spirit; faith affirms God’s view. That’s what we’re called to do. I see what I see, I know what I know, I’ve experienced what I’ve experienced, I can talk about those things; but now I’m going to say, “What is God’s view? What does he say?” That’s what I’m going to build my life on and that’s what I’m going to act on, and I’ll see my God carry me through.

Here’s the thing: our Savior, Jesus, has blessed us with “every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,” so therefore as a people of faith let us rejoice and trust in faith this morning as we make commitments to follow God in what he’s called us to and see him carry us through. Let’s pray.

Lord, we thank you for your word, we thank you for your grace, we thank you for truths that we need in our lives, bringing to our remembrance these things so often. We thank you that you are faithful even when we are faithless. We thank you that you’re a God of grace and mercy and compassion and kindness, longsuffering, full of steadfast love, because we’re a people who need that. We’re a people who need you to be steadfast, because we’re kind of fickle. We’re a people who need you to be faithful, because we struggle to be faithful ourselves. We know that your grace and your kindness is sure. We know that you have secured it for us in Christ. We know that you have promised your Spirit to be with us and to strengthen us and to grow us ever more into the image of Christ. Lord, our heart is to walk faithfully with you, to know the fullness of your blessings that are available to us by our salvation. We ask for courage, we ask for strength, we ask for conviction, we ask for help to walk in accordance to what you’ve called us to, even in those places where we’re most discouraged and maybe deeply afraid. Lord, you are worthy, you are powerful over it all, you are faithful, and we’re staking our claim on what you’ve said about yourself in your word this morning. It’s in the name of Jesus we pray these things, amen.