Haggai 1:12-15 ‘The Haggai Awakening’

 

Something amazing happened in Asbury University in Kentucky recently.

During a chapel service at this Christian university an unassuming young preacher got up and spoke from Romans 12.  It was 8^th February.  He invited people to consider what had been said and sung.

The students and staff stayed on.  There was singing, prayer and the sharing of testimonies.  This continued until the 24^th February (for 16 days) when it was decided that it was time to go back to class.

I listened to a really good preacher talk about this.  He pointed out that this event was not focused on a celebrity preacher or manufactured atmosphere.  There was lots of Bible, lots of prayer and lots of focus on Jesus.  It was marked by radical humility, a thirst for purity and a spiritual hunger.

The expert pointed out that the real test of this awakening will be changed lives.  He pointed out that American Christianity is addicted to excitement.  It is not, after all, mountain top experiences that build a church, but the living out of the gospel in our everyday lives.  The apostle Peter wanted to stay on the mountain after the transfiguration, but Jesus brought them down from the mountain onto a road that led to the cross.

Those who were involved in Asbury didn’t call what happened there a revival.  They referred to it as an awakening.  In our reading from Haggai we see a similar awakening.  50,000 people had returned from exile to Jerusalem.  They had been instructed by God to rebuild the temple.  But they were a selfish and materialistic people.  They neglected the temple for eighteen years.  Not that they weren’t capable of undertaking building projects.  They spent their time constructing fine panelled homes for themselves.  God was simply not their priority.  But then on 21^st September 520 BC they start to get to work on the temple.

So, what happened to awaken them to God’s priorities? 

We’ll see three things.  God spoke to them, He reminded them of His promises and the Holy Spirit stirred them.

1.        God spoke to them:

Awakening is to follow on from the speaking of God’s word.  In verse 12 God sends Haggai with His word and the whole remnant obey the voice of the Lord.

I am struck by the words of 1 Peter 4:11: ‘if anyone speaks, do so as one who speaks the words of God.’  He is talking about those who speak the Word through the teaching ministry of the church.  Peter’s words are so important to remember.  Those who teach in the church are not to do so in order to vent their personal opinions.  We are hear simply to explain, clarify and apply God’s Word, the Bible.  Where the preacher’s words correctly and faithfully reflect the Bible, then God is speaking to you.  It is not a matter of how entertaining the preacher is.  What matters is how truth-filled their words are.

Sometimes a sermon will leave you with a feeling of lightness.  You leave church with a spring in your step.  You have come to the gathering feeling guilty or worried, and you are reminded of God’s promise of forgiveness and protection.  God’s words have offered you comfort.

But, at other times, you will actually leave with a sense of burden.  The scripture applied will be revealing how we must change.  We go home with serius thoughts in our hearts.

A young woman, who was studying at London Bible School a few decades ago, used to attend Westminster Chapel.  She explained the effect of Martyn Lloyd-Jones’s preaching on her.  ‘Time and again, coming home from church, I went straight to my room and locked the door and went straight to my knees to pray.’

We aim to take God’s words seriously.  ‘These are the ones I look on with favour, those who are humble and contrite in spirit, and who tremble at my word’ (Isaiah 66:2).  Don’t just read the word, let the word read you!

2.       God’s promises

Haggai’s message from God to the people, in verse 13, is beautiful: ‘I am with you’.  The task that lies before them is hard.  There are enemies who will make life difficult for them.  But God reminds them, ‘I am with you!’

This is a promise that stretches right throughout the pages of the Bible.

Jacob was a deceitful man, yet God chose not to treat Jacob as his sins deserved but according to His loving-kindness.  God promised Jacob, ‘I am with you and will keep you wherever you go’ (Genesis 28:15).

Joshua had an unenviable task.  He had to follow a great leader like Moses and lead a difficult people into the promised land, which was inhibited by a wicked and violent people.  God assures Joshua, ‘be strong and courageous.  Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged; for the LORD will be with you wherever you go’ (Joshua 1:8).

Of course, the promise, ‘I will be with you’ points us to Jesus.  ‘They shall call his name Emmanuel’ (which means God with us).  When the risen Jesus sent the disciples out to gather followers and to teach them, he promised, ‘I will be with you always, even to the end of the age’ (Matthew 28:20).

One of the first people to die of the AIDS virus in the UK was a young Christian doctor who had come into contact with infected blood through missionary work in Zimbabwe.  As the illness progressed he lost the ability to communicate.  He used to write on a little board for his wife to read.  One day all he could write was the letter ‘J’.  His wife wondered what he was trying to say until she realised that he was trying to say ‘Jesus’.  Jesus was who he needed to know in his suffering.  That is what he held on to.  Jesus was with him!

3.       God stirs through the Holy Spirit

God woke this selfish, materialistic apathetic people through speaking to them, reminding them of His promises and, in verse fourteen, stirring them through the Holy Spirit.  Then they came and began to work of the house of the Lord Almighty their God.

One of my favourite verses is Philippians 2:13. There we read that God works in our hearts to stir us to action.  ‘God works within you to both will and to act according to his purposes.’

Ask the Holy Spirit to work in your heart.  Ask Him to give you His desires.  Ask Him to so move you that you have to act. 

Conclusion

The Asbury Awakening was marked by radical humility, a desire for purity and a spiritual hunger.  May God so awaken us!  Let’s hope for mountain top experiences – but once stirred let Jesus lead us down to the road of the cross.

In the Haggai awakening a selfish materialistic and apathetic people were moved to action through the preaching of the Word, which focused on the promise of our God that was brought home by the stirring of their spirits. 

As we ask God to shake our priorities, we ask: ‘How Jesus focused are you?  Are your non-Christian friends convinced that you are more enthusiastic about Jesus than you are about your renovation project or the university grades of your children?  Are they amazed by how much Jesus sets the tone of everything you do? (Stephen MacAlpine).  We surely need the Word, promise and Holy Spirit!

Haggai 2:10-23 'Only One Life'

On 20^th May, 2000, over 40,000 students listened to John Piper at the Passion Conference in Memphis, Tennessee.  Piper called them to put God first.  That has been the challenge that we have had from Haggai!

Piper began by telling them about Laura Edwards and Ruby Ellison.  Ruby was over 80, a single woman, and a nurse.  Laura was pushing on towards 80, and was a retired doctor.  They were in Cameroon with the single purpose of making Jesus known among the sick and poor.  But, three weeks earlier, as they travelled from village to village, the brakes of their jeep failed and they plunged over a cliff to their death.

Piper asked those students, ‘was that a tragedy?’  Two women who were serving Jesus years after many people their own age had settled into a comfortable and purposeless retirement. 

They all agreed that is was not a tragedy!

Then Piper pulled out a copy of Reader’s Digest and read an advert:

‘Bob and Penny … took early retirement from their jobs in the Northeast five years ago when he was 59 and she was 51.  Now they live in Punta Gorda, Florida, where they cruise on their 30-foot trawler, play softball, and collect shells.’

‘That’s a tragedy,’ Piper exclaimed.  ‘And there are people in this country that are spending billions of dollars to get you to buy it … With all of my heart I plead with you—don’t buy that dream … As the last chapter before you stand before the Creator of the universe to give an account with what you did: “Here it is Lord—my shell collection.  And I’ve got a good swing.  And look at my boat.”

‘Don’t waste your life!’

The he quoted a hymn, written by C. T. Studd, called ‘Only One life’.  ‘T’will soon be over, only what’s done for Christ will last’.

This morning we meet as Easter people.  The resurrection must set our agenda!

Easter is for rotten people (2:11-14)

Haggai was given God’s word for the people on December 18^th, 520 B.C.  For three months the people have been rebuilding the temple.  Now God gives a series of questions for the Levitical priests.  Part of their job was to clarify and apply Old Testament law.

These questions, in verses eleven to thirteen, centre on ritual cleanliness.  The last question has to do with touching a corpse.  Under the Old Testament law touching the dead made your ceremonially unclean.

God explains that eighteen years, from the time that they had returned to Jerusalem from exile until the time they started to rebuild the temple, they had a corpse in their midst.  It was the ruined temple that they had completely neglected.  This pile of rubble exposed the fact that their hearts were rotten.  It showed that they did not love God, that His reputation among the nations did not matter to them, and that they had no intention of obeying Him.

But God had not given up on them.  God had sent Haggai to these rotten people.  Just as one day He would send His own Son into this world for rotten people like you and me.  Jesus declared, ‘I have not come for the self-righteous, but those who know that they are sinners’ (Luke 5:32).

Easter tells us how God has dealt with our rottenness (2:14-19)

Twice, in chapter one, God had called the people to ‘consider’ (1:5 and 1:7).  The Hebrew term refers to the heart.  We might translate it, ‘consider the path your heart is on.’ 

Now we get this call to consider again (2:15 and 2:18).  God is asking them to consider the difference that putting God first has made in their lives.  They are to compare life before and after they laid the foundation of the Lord’s temple (2:18). 

The simple difference is that when they lived only for themselves God was not with them, but when they put Him first He blessed them.

Now I need to be careful here.  That could sound like a commercial transaction.  Like God was saying, ‘work for me and these will be your wages.’  But that is not what is going on.  This is God pursuing a rotten people in love because He wants nothing more than to be good to them. 

You see the reason He withdrew His blessing was to wake them up.  To call them home.  ‘I struck you and all the products of your toils with blight and mildew and with hail, yet you did not return to me,’ declares the Lord (2:17).  In ‘The Problem of Pain’, C. S. Lewis wrote, ‘God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain.  It is a megaphone to rouse a deaf world.’

It was not until the prodigal son found himself starving in the pigsty that he came to his senses and realised how much better life was at home with his father.  When we pray for our prodigal friends and children we may want to ask that God brings them to a place where they are reminded again that they need him.  Many of us only began our journey back to God when life dealt us a few hard blows.

But they had not come back.  So, what did God do?  He pursued them.  He didn’t give up on them, He sent His Word through Haggai to them.  Through Haggai God told them that their hearts were rotten.  God’s Word exposes our wickedness.  This caused them to fear God (1:12).  The remembered that God is holy.  Then God comforted them.  ‘I am with you’ (1:13).  It is like John Newton wrote in the hymn, Amazing Grace, ‘T’was grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved’.  Then God stirred their spirits so that they would do the only thing that can truly satisfy—which is to live for a purpose infinitely bigger than ourselves.

How can a holy God come among us with our self-centred, proud and rotten hearts and not compromise His holiness by touching us?  How can He take a wicked people like us and declare ‘I am with you’ without compromising His righteousness and justice?  This is where it is helpful to remember that Haggai focuses on the temple of Jerusalem.  That temple was the place where sacrifices were made for sin.  That temple provided an object lesson that said our wickedness deserves death and our only hope is for a substitute to die in our place.  That temple pointed to Good Friday!  There Jesus offers the final and only perfect sacrifice as He dies in our place to take the punishment for our guilt so that we can be forgiven and free from condemnation.

Easter points to Jesus’ return (2:20-23)

Look at the last verse of this book.  I want you to see God’s kindness.  Sixty-six years earlier God had taken the signet ring of royal authority from Zerubbabel’s grandfather because he and his people simply refused to follow Him (Jeremiah 22:24-27).  That had led to the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple.  But now the Lord says to Zerubbabel, ‘On that day, I will take you my servant, and I will make you like a signet ring’ (2:23). 

God did not give up on those people.  I can see nothing in Zerubbabel that deserves such kindness.  The timing is also beautiful—they are three months into a project that will last another five years.  These were words for Him to recall when the going got tough.  We hold on to His promises to be with us when serving Him is not easy.

Notice the reference to the shaking of the nations (2:22).  Earlier God had talked about shaking the nations that they might come to Him for peace (2:9).  Now the shaking of the nations speaks of a day of judgement.  God stands before the nations and says, ‘will you come to me and know my peace, or will you continue to rebel against my goodness and experience my holy anger?’  It’s a question He is still asking people today.

I am not sure how that day of judgement worked out at the time of Zerubbabel.  But it is clear that these promises to Zerubbabel point ahead to Jesus.  Zerubbabel is listed, in Matthew’s Gospel, among the descendants of Jesus (Matthew 1:13).  That judgement points to the judgement, and Resurrection Sunday, is a wake up call that Jesus is going to return to judge the world.  As the apostle Paul God has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed.  He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead (Acts 17:31).   

Conclusion

Easter people remember that they are rotten.  ‘Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the worst’ (1 Timothy 1:15).  We see it here.

Easter people remember the sacrifice.  Haggai focuses on the temple, but it was not the blood of animals that cleanses us from our sin, but the blood that Jesus shed as He dies as our substitute on the cross.

Easter people know that Jesus is coming again.  The resurrection proves it.  So we plead with people that they would come to Him and experience His peace, and so have nothing to fear on that day.

The whole of Haggai is a call to live in the light of these Easter truths.  My friend Brenda, a lecturer in psychology in Maynooth University, was speaking to young people on RTE and explained that if you want true happiness in life you need to live for something bigger than yourself.  She actually told them that for her that bigger thing is Jesus, but the editors cut that out.  Haggai went to a people whose happiness had been sought in their fine panelled home, and it had not worked out well for them.  He called them to get involved in God’s building project and to remember the joys of His presence and blessing.  Don’t waste your life on the wrong building project!

C. T. Studd, who wrote that hymn, ‘Only One Life’, went as a missionary to China and Africa in the late 1800s.  He was wealthy, educated at Cambridge University and played cricket for England.  He actually played in that match with Australia that was the beginning of the famous ashes’ series.  Those who saw him go off to the mission field may have thought he was giving up everything.  But he was seeking a greater purpose and joy.  He wrote, ‘If Jesus be God, and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too good for me to make for him.’  Not that it was easy, his two sons died oversees.  He had a sense of humour.  He talked about living so much for God that the devil would hold a service of thanksgiving when he died.  He knew it was infinity worthwhile’.  For ‘T’will soon be over, only what’s done for Christ will last’.

Haggai 1:1-11 'Don't prioritise the wrong house.'

Chad Bird’s life fell apart, in part because his priorities were messed up.  He writes, ‘I went astray for two decades in the pursuit of my ambitions.  I drove myself to be an accomplished person.  My life had to be awesome.  I chased down the career I wanted, and clawed my way up to the position I coveted.  I pursued a degree, then another degree, the still another, until I knew more about my PhD studies than the details of my children’s everyday lives.  I could tell you Rabbi Oshya’s exegesis of the Hebrew of Genesis 1:1 … but I had no clue what my daughter’s favourite stuffed animal was.  When my dreams came true, when I reached the fabled end of the rainbow, I found a pot of gold – fool’s gold.’

Are you putting yourself first?

Previous generations thought that it was wrong to put yourself first.  This one thinks it’s a virtue.  The following is a meme I read: ‘You’ll learn to put yourself first after you notice that other people are constantly putting you last.’  I remember a children’s story from when I was a child.  It suggested J.O.Y. was found by putting Jesus first, others second, and yourself last.  That doesn’t come naturally to me, but it is both counter-cultural and satisfying.

Haggai opens, verse 1, on 29^th August 520 B.C.  About 66 years earlier the Babylonians had overrun Jerusalem, destroyed the temple and taken people into exile.  Yet 18 years earlier, the new superpower, the Persians had permitted the people to return and rebuild the temple.  But, despite the fact that they have now been back eighteen years, the temple still lies in ruins. 

This is not because the people weren’t capable of building things.  They say, ‘the time has not come to rebuild the house’ (2), but they have been building houses.  Their houses!  Fine-panelled home (4).  What does that say about their priorities?  It says that comfort and impressing their neighbours mattered more to them than fulfilling their calling to the glory of God!

What are our priorities?  What comes first for us?  What building projects occupy our minds most?  Are we primarily into protecting our comfort, establishing of career, or earning a reputation?  Even our relationships will be unbalanced if we don’t put God first.  Put Jesus before people and you will actually love people better than if you put them before Jesus.  For Jesus is the source of Christian love.

We are no longer being called to build a temple in Jerusalem.  In the gospels Jesus says that he is now our temple—where we go to meet with God—and so temple building involves showing the world how great he is.  Is that our first priority in life!

Does selfishness satisfy?

So, do you prioritise the glory of Jesus over your own?  Are we more concerned what people think of him than what they think of us?  Are we wanting to share the good news about him so that they might honour him?

In verses five and seven, God calls them to ‘consider your ways.’  The Hebrew focuses on the heart.  We might translate it, ‘consider the path your heart is on.’  What did it say about the state of their hearts that they were more concerned by their fine panelled homes than the temple of God?  It said that they built their priorities around self, status and comfort. 

And how did that work out for them?  They had sown and yet harvested little; that drank and were never filled; that ate but never had enough; they were clothed but never warm; and, they earned wages but had holes in their bags (6).

God loves you too much to allow you find satisfaction in god-substitutes.  He brought them dissatisfaction with stuff and status in order that they might find true satisfaction in him.  In Isaiah God asks, ‘why spend money on what is not bread, and your labour on what does not satisfy?’ (Is. 55:2).  As someone pointed out, ‘every time a rich, beautiful celebrity dies by suicide, we are being reminded that everything is never enough.’

The status and comfort offered by a panelled house can’t satisfy!

So where do we find satisfaction?

We find our satisfaction by being involved in the right building project!  ‘God is inviting you into a bigger and more satisfying building project than our panelled houses can offer is.  Let’s not spend our energy renovating the wrong house’ (Stephen MacAlpine).

The people were commanded to get on with building the temple in order that God might take pleasure in it (7).  But how do we please God today?  ‘And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and rewards those who earnestly seek him’ (Hebrews 11:6).

We please him buy putting our faith into practice.  ‘But,’ you reply, ‘my faith is so small.’  Jesus commends the faith the size of a mustard seed (Matthew 17:20).  ‘But I have blown it so many times.’  Don’t you know that there is rejoicing in heaven when a sinner repents? (Luke 15:7).  ‘But I struggle to put God first.’  I do too!  But God does not treat us as our sins deserve (Ps. 103:10).  He smiles at our imperfect efforts to please him.

His greatest pleasure is found when he sees us taking pleasure in him.  Like the parents delighting when their baby looks at them and smiles.  ‘God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him’ (John Piper).

‘… and rewards those who seek him’ (Heb.  11:6).  I don’t understand everything about God’s rewards on earth or in heaven.  I know that it is something to do with sharing in the joy of his glory.  I know that everything that we do for him on earth will have a significance that lasts all eternity.  The applause of this world lasts a brief time, but the approval of heaven goes on forever.  I like the motto of the person who suggested that we should aim to, ‘love God, die and be forgotten.’

Conclusion

‘Consider the path your heart is on’ (verses 5 and 7).

Think of your priorities.  Do you live for career, comfort or reputation?  Stephen MacAlpine asks, ‘how Jesus focused are you?  Are your non-Christian friends convinced that you are more enthusiastic about Jesus than you are about your renovation project or the university grades of your children?  Are they amazed by how much Jesus sets the tone of everything that you do?’

Jesus is our temple.  May his glory be our first priority.  May his pleasure bring us joy.

Benediction

‘May all your hopes come to nothing, may you plans be frustrated, may your desires remain unfulfilled, until you learn to seek your joy in Jesus and learn to enjoy his good gifts in the light of his love.’

Haggai 2:1-9 ‘God brings glory from the ordinary’

Inner-city Chicago, the 1920s, the YMCA, which was established to provide food, accommodation and help for young men who were in need.  They were doing it in the name of Christ.  The man who greeted them at the door was Horace Peach.  He was the great grandfather of Seth Lewis, who is a Baptist missionary in Cork.

Horace Peach didn’t have to do the door.  He had been offered more prestigious positions in the YMCA.  He could have been in an office making important decisions.  He could have earned more money.  But he wanted to be on that door, the first to welcome those who were seeking help.  After he died, someone explained, ‘the way he talked to you, you felt important.’

In the 1970s, Horace’s son, Robert, worked in the Sears Tower.  At the time that was the tallest building in the world.  Robert was had a prestigious job.  He was top of his profession.  But God remained top of his priorities.  The Inland Revenue audited him, because they couldn’t believe the amount of his income he gave away.  He lived in an ordinary house.  He served faithfully in his church.  He had a welcoming home.

Horace Peach didn’t want to look impressive.  Robert Peach didn’t need to look impressive.  You see both knew that before God we are nothing, and yet we are everything.  We are weak, broken, failing and sinful people.  Yet God delights to accept us as his beloved children, cleansed and made perfect in the blood of Jesus.  He uses weak people like us to bring His message of peace to the world and build His church.

Dream small – from the ordinary God brings His glory!

1.      Don’t worry if we are living in small days (1-3)

It is now 17^th October 520 B.C.  The people have been working on the temple for four weeks.  Again, God speaks to the people through Haggai.  He asks them three questions.  ‘Who is left who saw the former glory?’ ‘How does the temple look now?’ ‘Does it seem like nothing?’

Remember that sixty-six years earlier the Babylonians destroyed the temple.  There were people the still living who could remember that old temple, Solomon’s temple.  What they now saw being built in front was nothing compared to it.  But they are not to be discouraged!  Around this time, another prophet, Zechariah, was told to tell the people not to despise the day of small things (Zech. 4:10).

I want to live in a time when we see loads of people coming to experience peace in Jesus.  Some of you can remember when, in this city, God seemed to be bringing more people to faith than He is now.  But don’t resent the fact that less may be happening today.  Who knows all that God is doing now?  Who knows how what is being done today will impact later generations?  There is not one moment when Jesus is not building His church. 

Don’t worry if we are living in small days, God is still at work.

2.        Don’t worry if you feel weak (4-5)

God calls the people to be strong, and again He promises that He is with them (4).  That is what He promised them when He rescued them from slavery in Egypt (5).  ‘My Spirit remains in your midst.  Fear not!’  They faced the hostility and threat from surrounding nations.  They would face the grumbling and complaining from within their own community.  But they are not to let these discouragements get the better of them. 

I think that God has to tell them to be strong, because they feel weak.  He promises that He is with them, because they doubt His presence.  We don’t need to depend on our own strength.  God is faithful and strong.  In fact, in Haggai, God is referred to as the LORD of hosts (ESV), the LORD Almighty (NIV), or more literally, Yahweh of Armies.  With Him on our side we have nothing to fear!   It was to these people that Zechariah declared, ‘no, not by might, nor even power, but by my Spirit,’ says the LORD Almighty (Zech. 4:6).

‘When we are weak, then we are strong’ (2 Cor. 12:10).  When we realise that we can’t do God’s work in our strength that we begin to pray.  It is then that we listen for God to say, ‘I am with you’.  When we face the fact that our hearts are not by nature loving and forgiving then we depend on the Holy Spirit for the fruit of love, gentleness and self-control.  In one of my favourite scenes from the book of Acts, it was when the church heard of the threats that were being made against them, that they cried out to God and were filled with the Holy Spirit, and they speak about Jesus publicly, and with great courage (Acts 4:31).

Don’t worry if you feel weak, for it is only then that we depend on the Spirit the promises of God!

3.       Don’t worry if you are ordinary (6-9)

This new temple looked pretty ordinary.  The people in their seventies could tell you that it was nothing compared to Solomon’s temple.  But they were not to be discouraged.  In fact, ‘the later glory of this house shall be greater than the former …’ (9).  From this seemingly unimpressive building comes something marvellous.  From the ordinary, God brings about glory.

Five hundred years later, an unimpressive couple would come to the temple to dedicate their baby—but they could only afford the offering of the poor (Luke 2:24).  That child grew up to be a man who had no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him (Is. 53:2).  He was not educated by the finest teachers of the day.  He owned no home (Luke 9:58).  He associated with the wrong people (Matthew 11:19).  He had no wife or children.  So many things that are at the centre of our ambitions just didn’t matter to Him!  As a thirty-year old he was condemned, mocked, spat at and hung naked on a cross.  Nothing could be more shameful in that culture.  Nothing could be weaker.  Yet Jesus’ death brought us life, we are called to boast in His death (Gal. 6:14).

Paul asks us to, ‘think of what you were when you were called.  Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many of you were influential … But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong … so that no one may boast before him (1 Corinthians 1:26-29).  We are stones in the temple God is building (1 Peter 2:5).  God brings beauty from the ashes (Is. 61:3).

I am not sure how this prophecy came about in the day of Haggai.  But follow the direction in which it points.  The temple was finished five years later.  That temple pointed to Jesus, in whom God dwells among us (John 1:14).  Jesus is taking ordinary people and dwelling among us.  Then one day there will be a glory we can not even imagine.  ‘And I saw no temple in the city, for the temple is the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb … by its light the nations will walk and the kings of the earth will bring their glory in’ (Rev. 21:22-24).

‘And in this place I will give peace,’ declares the LORD Almighty (9).

People are not by nature at peace with God.  That is why there were all those sacrifices in the temple.  At the temple an animal died in the place of the people, to teach them that our guilt deserves death, and that God would provide a substitute to die in our place.  But, as the author of the book of Hebrews points out, ‘it is not possible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sin’ (Heb.12:4).  Those sacrifices pointed to the prince of peace, whose death on a cross is the Bible’s very definition of love, so that we the guilty ones would never be condemned.  Is that peace something you know?

Conclusion

The temple looked unimpressive.  But from this would come greater glory, than they had seen before.

Sometimes God uses celebrity pastors and mega-churches to build His church.  They get all the attention.  But don’t be followed.  Jesus is building His church every day, and He almost always uses, ordinary people, who humble themselves in prayer, who depend on the Holy Spirit to change them and are not ashamed to talk about a condemned man hanging on a cross.  Fear not, God is with us!

In the 1970s, in the Soviet Union, an old Russian woman aged ninety became seriously ill.  But she didn’t feel her work on earth was complete.  So, she asked her grandson – a Baptist pastor – to pray for her healing.  He prayed and anointed her with oil, and she was healed quite suddenly and miraculously.  The doctor had actually left the house the night before saying that the old lady would not last two more days.

Some years later, she became seriously ill again.  She called her grandson.  But this time she said, ‘today, I go home.  Do not pray.’  She died a few hours later, leaving behind a prayer list of five hundred people, she prayed for every day by name.

Who knows what God did in response to that ordinary, humble woman’s prayers.  That is what I mean dreaming small, and embracing being ordinary.  That is how God brings greater glory out of something that does not look splendid!