The Gannets are back at Muriwai...

There are only two places in the world where Gannets roost on the mainland and not simply on off shore Islands... Mind you some people think of New Zealand as those isolated Islands down in the South Pacific. Cape Kidnappers in Hawkes Bay is one and it is a long trip along the shoreline at low tide to see them and the other is at Muriwai a wild west coast beach just north of Auckland.

The Gannets come back to roost from August onwards and the Auckland Regional Council. Have constructed good walking tracks along the cliff tops and viewing platforms. It does not seem to disturb the birds as their numbers grow each year.

Here are a couple of photos from Muriwai. TH birds were just in the process of getting reacquainted and it was great to see them doing their synchronised grooming and greeting.

A white faced heron also popped in to see what was in the flax bushes.

Reflections on the Renewal of Relationship in Haggai 2:20-23

I was in Cornwell Park a couple of weeks ago and was surprised to see that there was one blossom out on the cherry trees. I’m not a gardener but it seemed very early and very cold for the cherry trees to be blooming. However it was sort of like God wanted to show case it for me... 

 I took a photo of it, as for me it was like the renewal of a promise of vibrancy and life after the long dormancy and barrenness of winter. The first budding of what will soon be a great burst of vivid colour, that will attract large numbers to the park to experience the beauty of it all. I hope I’m not being too flowery in my language but as I was reflecting on the passage we had read to us today from the end of Haggai, that blossom and the promise it conveys came to mind.

Jerusalem had been through a long barren time. The City and temple destroyed and the people taken into exile in Babylon. After seventy years they had started to come back to rebuild. They had focused on their own houses and priorities and wondered why they were not fining fulfilment in that. Haggai bought God’s word, challenging them to consider if it was right that they lived in panelled houses while the temple, God’s house lay in ruins. The people had then started to rebuild the temple, and God had responded by affirming his presence with them. They cleared away the rubble and re-established the altar, but had become despondent and discouraged, and again Haggai had bought God’s word to encourage them to continue, the promise was that God was for them, and able to provide what they needed. The people had continued and as they came to another major step along the way Haggai had again bought God’s word that while in the past God was not able to bless them because they didn’t have their priorities right, from this day forward God was going to bless them. AS we saw last week that had an immediate fulfilment in terms of a promised bumper harvest, but as we move to the passage today we see that it has a greater, meaning in terms of the renewal of relationship, for the returnees and for us.

Like all Haggai’s words it has a date, in this case it is the 24^th day of the month, we know from the rest of Haggai that it was the second year of king Darius of Persia. It is the same day as the previous word we looked at last week. But it is acknowledged as a separate word by being called “a second time”, and because it is a personal word for Zerubbabel. While it forms a separate unit, it is a continuation of the previous one. When a corner stone of a significant building was laid there would be words for and blessings for the priests, the people and the royal household. Also the previous word has focused on the past, where the people had not been obeying God, and then had moved to the hopeful present as they had responded and turned again to God, now Haggai looks to the future and a renewed covenant relationship.

We are going to look at this passage on three levels, as a personal word to Zerubbabel, as a promise in terms of the wider scope of God’s plans, and as part of the Purposes of God,  the coming of God’s kingdom and see how that all speaks to us today.

It is a personal word, to Zerubbabel, the governor of Judah, the civil leader of the remnant. The message to Zerubbabel is one that God will once again shake the heavens and the earth, the political and military forces of the world will be overturned and that God chooses Zerubbabel as his vice regent. It might be dangerous for such a word to be given to Zerubbabel as a low-level bureaucrat in the Persian empire that he is God’s chosen leader. Particularly in a time when Darius was consolidating his power and putting down rebellions. It’s why Haggai starts by addressing Zerubbabel in his official capacity as the governor, there is no sense here of revolt or to incite rebellion. Haggai is saying that it is God who will sovereignly act in a future time to turn the powers of this world on their head.

On a personal level for Zerubbabel, it is an acknowledgement of God’s presence and choosing of him. In the second half of the word starting verse 23 his status has changed he is now seen as the son of Shealtiel, acknowledged as God’s servant and being told that God would make him his signet ring.  Shealtiel was the son of king Jehoiachin, and here Zerubbabel is acknowledged in terms of his royal lineage, he is in the Davidic line as a king of Judea with all the promises that entails. In 2 Kings we are told Jehoiachin did what was evil in God’s eyes which had been like the last straw to break the camels back and So God had allowed Nebuchadnezzar to destroy Jerusalem and take the people into exile. In Jeremiah 22:24 the prophet had given a word from God that God was going to take Jehoiachin off like a signet ring. A signet ring was an important part of royal jewellery, with the royal seal on it. It was used to put the royal approval on laws, decrees and official correspondence. Who ever wore it had the authority of the king it represented. Now that relationship is restored with Zerubbabel. Now Zerubbabel is called my servant, he may have simply been considered as a minor official in the Persian empire, but in God’s eyes he was, his servant, his vice regent.  

 Zerubbabel’s status has been changed by the choosing of God.  It is the same with us at the heart of renewal in our lives and in our church is that change of identity in Christ. In Christ our identity is no longer constructed in the world terms but by Gods and it changes everything. We are God’s beloved, we are now as it says in John 1 sons and daughters of the Lord most high, no longer servants but friends, we are forgiven, we are called to reign with Christ, no longer citizens of this world but of God’s kingdom. We are now living stones being built in the dwelling place of God, a royal priest hood and holy nation. Called to declare the praises of him who has called us out of darkness into his glorious light.  That makes a difference. It over throws the powers of this world to define us, to restrict us and control us. Yes, like Zerubbabel we find ourselves in a particular context, where in the scheme of things we feel small and powerless but it does not define us, it is God’s choosing his presence, his being with us and for us his purpose that matters. Like that first blossom for the season it is like the possibility and promise of new life and new possibilities in every situation we find ourselves in, God can soon shake thing up.

This word is not just about the renewal of a personal relationship, its about  the renewal of a covenant relationship and a promise. God had made a covenant with King David, that a descendant of his would always be on the throne. With the exile that covenant seems to be broken and lying in tatters, but with this word Haggai acknowledges that it is alive in Zerubbabel. But there is a future element to this “on that day” declares the Lord Almighty, says that the ultimate fulfilment of what God is saying is in God’s timing. Zerubbabel is told that God chooses him, and the which ties in with the Hebrew word Messiah or chosen or anointed one, and it looks forward to the messianic king and the bringing in of the Kingdom of God into the realms of humanity.

The prophecy of a Davidic king points us to Jesus Christ. Zerubbabel’s title as My Servant invokes the words of Isaiah 53 about God’ servant suffering and dying for the forgiveness of the sins of many. In Matthew and Luke’s genealogies or whakapapa of Jesus Zerubbabel is named, God’s promise on that twenty fourth day of the ninth month draws us to Jesus.  From a very early stage the Church saw Jesus as fulfilling that covenant with David. In his sermon on Pentecost in Acts 2 Peter speaks of Jesus coming and his death and resurrection in terms of the promise of a descendant of David on the throne forever. With his death and resurrection, and ascension is of Jesus high and lifted up and at the right hand of the Father. This renewal of covenant promise with Zerubbabel, is part of God’s pan for the renewal of relationship with all people through Jesus Christ.

The remnant has an expectation that the messianic age would start with the completion of the temple. But as the Old Testament scriptures come to an end we find God’s people sitting and waiting for the messiah to come. It is the same for us we want God to act know and do something here. In the first onset of ecological concerns in the 1970’s one group of academics decided that the problems of caring for the environment were going to be hard for people to tackle because it needed a change of perspective. Most people could only focus on the immediate future and their immediate circumstances and surroundings, it was going to be hard to convince them to think long term and worldwide. How their energy consumption and lifestyle was going to impact on the world in twenty thirty forty fifty a hundred years. We are the same when it comes t wanting God to act and move… But as Peter Craige says “ the time table of God is more obscure than at first it appears, though it I no less certain”.

Well in actual fact from Haggai’s word to Zerubbabel we do know where the Purpose of God is heading. God’s plan and God’s purposes. “ God is going to shake the heavens and the earth, the powers of this earth, both political and militarily will be overthrown. God’ kingdom will be established. In the Old testament prophets there is the idea of the day of Lord a time when, God judgment and God’s reign will come. As we’ve looked at the Messianic promise in this passage we see it is inaugurated with the coming of the messianic king, but it’s the hope of peace (God had said through Haggai in this place I will give you pace) of things being put right. In the book of Daniel, Daniel has a vision of a statute with a head of Gold a torso of silver, legs of bronze and lower legs of iron and feet of clay. It represents the realms of man, the empires and world powers that would come and fall, and in his dream,  he seem a rock come and smash the feet of clay and topple the statue and a large mountain grow out of the rock. It is all very surreal, but a picture with the coming of Christ, that change will happen that God’s righteous reign would start to be established on the earth. It is the hope that we have in the face of poverty and oppression and injustice that God’s righteousness and God’s justice and mercy would come. That is what God is working towards seeing his Kingdom come. We live in what people call the tension between the already and the not yet. That Kingdom that turning of the powers of this world on its head inaugurated in Jesus Christ and their ultimate fulfilment in Christ’s return. God’s purpose is the restoration of right relationship for the whole of creation.

Haggai Speaks to God’s people at a crunch time along the story of God’s kingdom. With the return from the exile, God is about renewing and restoring his people and his promise with them in anticipation of the coming of the Messiah, of Jesus Christ and the hope of reconciliation of all people with God, and God’s kingdom being established. Zerubbabel and Haggai had expectations and hopes of God would do on a big scale. For them it would have revolved around an independent nation of Israel, and the nations coming to Jerusalem to worship God there. But for us as we look back  at them and the remnant in Jerusalem rebuilding the temple, I don’t think in their day to day slog and work and obedience to do what God had called them to do, they would  have realised in history what God was doing through them and its ultimate impact on people, through Christ. It is the same with us, as we go about living lives that are obedient to God’s call in Christ on our lives we may not be aware of the impact or echoes that what we do will have in God’s activity in the world… In the story of Christ bringing renewal and hope into peoples lives. It may seem like putting one stone on top of another, it may seem small steps in an impossibly large task, it may be as small as simply showing kindness and care to another person in Christ, sharing your faith with a friend, or a continued demanding of justice and change in a certain area, and we don’t know in the scheme and plans of God what God can do with that to bring change and renewal. People talk of the way of tackling issues in the world like the ecological crisis is to think globally, have the big picture but to act locally. It is the same with with following Christ, to have the big picture of the Kingdom of God and to work locally in what we do… You don’t know where that first bloom of something new will lead.

We’ve been looking at Haggai to see what it has to say to us about renewal in the Church. What Haggai says is that renewal happens as God’s people hear his word and respond positively to it. All the way through Haggai we see that happen God speaks the people respond and God acts… each message finishes with Gods action “I am with you”, “in this place I will grant you peace”, “from this day on I will Bless You” and today “ for I have chosen you”. Renewal for us happens  personally and as a church when we again renew our relationship with Christ, as Arch Bishop Justin Welby puts it “ when we are captivated afresh by the love of Christ”.

We often want God’s blessing without the turning to him. When that love of Christ becomes the priority and driving force in our lives, renewal comes change happens, God moves. I started talking about the single bloom at Cornwell park, but the direction and moving of God is that we will be like the blaze of colour when all the trees are in bloom, full of the goodness and the beauty of God.

powerpoint background: Norfolk pine and sunrise thrrough the clouds.

I took these photos the other morning out of our kitchen from our balcony. Simply for PowerPoint backgrounds and because it was pretty awesome. feel free to use them... or not.

Photos: Feel free to use or not...

I am slowly getting back into photography and using my images as backgrounds for many of the PowerPoint slide I use with my sermons... and in publications and as backgrounds for bible verses to promote our services here at St Peter's or bible passages and songs.

It's a constant challenge to find good images that are free and people are happy for you to use them. So thought I'd just share a few on my blog and say Folk you are welcome to use them... or not... I'm not an expert. if you are a regular to my blog you may recognise some of them.

Pentecost candles 

Mangroves in a silver incoming tide

Stripped shell on Takapuna beach 

sparrow on toitoi

Pohutukawa seed head 

flax seed heads with storm clouds

Kingfisher on a pole on Manukau harbour cut for standard PowerPoint slide 

Tumbleweed at Whatipu 

Daffodils at Cornwell park 

Gannet at Muriwai beach 

Flower in sand at Piha beach 

Pentecost candles

Foundations for the renewal of covenant blessing in Haggai 2:10-19

This is the spillway at the Lower Nihotapu  dam at Parau in the Waitakere rangers west of Auckland. It is one of the reservoirs that provides water for Auckland City... A real blessing.  

We are working our way through the book of Haggai. We are calling the series renewal in the ruins. Haggai has spoken to the people who had come back from exile to Jerusalem and inspired and encouraged them to rebuild the temple. He had called them to renew their focus as a community, their identity as God’s people was to be found in God’s presence with them symbolised by the temple.  As they started to rebuild and encountered discouragement and despondency he had spoken to them about the renewal of their Hope: Hope found in the presence, providence and purpose of God and now Haggai turns to speak of foundations for the renewal of God’s covenant blessing for them as his people. As I sat down to put this message together my devotions for the day were entitled “only Holiness leads to happiness” and that was a real God moment because it sums up in nut shell what Haggai’s message to the then and there and the here and now is… “Only Holiness leads to happiness”.

That is not a recipe that says if we are good god will be good to us… More that if we simply seek our own pleasure as the returnees had been doing, we meet the law of diminishing returns… we get less out of more we have… If our focus is on God and his Kingdom… then we become more and amore aware of God’s blessings.

Let’s set the scene.

Once again Haggai’s words have a specific date. In this case it is the twenty fourth day of the ninth month, in the second year of Darius (December 14^th if you want to tie it in to our calendar). Three month’s after the people had started to build the temple in response to Haggai’s first message. The previous two oracles had been tied to religious festivals. The new moon festival and the feast of tabernacles, but this one does not fit in with such a religious holiday or gathering. However, in verse 18 Haggai refers to the day that the foundation stone of the temple was laid and in Ezra 3 we have a record of the people gathering for a festival when that happened. In the Ancient near east when a foundation stone was laid there would be a religious gathering and a blessing for the endeavour. This day could also have been a significant other step in the building process, maybe even something being build on the foundation stone. We’ve laid the stone but know we are getting on with the job.

We do know that in the agricultural calendar this would have been at the end of the period of time when people would have been planting out seed for next years harvest. So at the end of that time there may have been a gathering to celebrate that and to pray for the coming harvest, Haggai says in verse 19 is there any seed yet left in the barn? Which fits in with that… and his message that from this day on God will bless you, does fit in with hope for the coming harvest. In his first oracle Haggai had said that because of the people were disobeying God’s call on them to rebuild the temple, that God could not bless them and the harvest were going to be small, now as they have started the work Haggai makes the bold prediction that God will change that.

 What we have in the passage we had read out to us is two oracles given on the same day, given together. In structure it is very much like the first of Haggai’s oracles, it starts with a series of questions that leads into the prophets teaching and calls the people to carefully consider their ways and finishes with a declaration of God’s actions on behalf of his people. In this Haggai sets the foundations for the renewal of God’s Blessing. It is a restoring, a turning round of the way things were because the people have turned round, they have repented and gone God’s way.

In these two coracles Haggai considers the consequences of past disobedience, looks at current obedience, and declares the certainty of blessing. So let’s explore those three things.

 The consequences of past disobedience.

When the people had come back to Jerusalem they had been very quick to re-establish the sacrificial system. The altar was re-established and sacrifices offered. This forms the basis for Haggai’s questions to the priests in verse 11-13. They have to do with ritual cleanliness or holiness. 

The first one asks if food that has been set aside for God is carried in the fold of a garment but then touches other food does it make that food Holy?  The answer to that from the priests is “no”, Holiness being set aside for God is not contagious. It can’t be passed on…

The second question is about dead bodies. If someone touches a dead body then touches food set aside for an offering does the food become defiled? And the answer is yes, uncleanliness is contagious. This being ritually unclean by touching a dead body is at the heart of Jesus parable of the good Samaritan, the priest and the Levi going up to the temple. If they touched the man who was set upon by robbers and he was dead they could not have served their turn in the temple, as they would have been unclean and what they touched would have been deemed ritually unclean.

Haggai uses these questions to show that God considered all the offering they had made as being  unclean and unacceptable because the people had not obeyed God, and rebuilt the temple. Even though they had gone through the motions how Could God bless them if they were being disobedient. Like God’s people down through the ages they had tried to separate the idea of ritual holiness from ethical holiness.

Sacrifices were given for the forgiveness of sins, but the call of God was that people would live a life that reflected the God they knew and served. It is like when my kids were smaller I used to like doing things like taking them out for icecream or another treat, but when they were not behaving I couldn't do it, I still loved them and cared for them and had to discipline them, but when change happened I would be quick to give them a treat...

For us it is the sacrifice of a totally righteous person, Jesus Christ that has put us right with God, that has atoned for our sins. That has put us right with God, the call we have is that we live that out by hearing Jesus words and obeying them, and we can do that because of the presence and guidance of the holy Spirit in our lives.  We are justified by faith in Jesus Christ and we are called to a life of sanctification as we grow in Christ and learn to live and love as Christ lived and loved.

 It is a challenge for all of us, as biblical scholar Mark Boda says “it’s easy for us to get caught up in the mechanics of our religious activities and not focus on the importance and impact of individual and corporate obedience”.

Then in Haggai’s second oracle on that day he turns from consequences of the past to look at the people current obedience. Here they are they have started to rebuild the temple. During the harvest time they had thought carefully about what they were doing and had started to rebuild the temple, they hadn’t just stopped at cleaning off the altar and having the sacrifices, but had begun building the temple. They were doing what God had called them to be doing. The temple was not just a place for sacrifice for the forgiveness of sin but was a place to focus on God’s presence with his people and that they were called to live as a witnessing community to the goodness and holiness of God by the way they lived. In 1 Chronicles 28 as David lay out his plans for the temple, he calls Solomon and all those who were to build the temple “to give careful thought to their ways” sound familiar “ to keep all the commandments of the Lord, that you may possess all the good things of the land.”

Amos was a prophet to the northern kingdom of Israel, he had come at a time of great prosperity and religious fervour in the city of Samaria. The people saw their prosperity as a sign of God’s blessing, and God’s word through Amos was that this was not the case, in fact they were laying the foundation of their own judgment, by treating God, like one of the other gods around them, thinking he would simply bless them because the observed the right religious rituals. While at the same time their prosperity was based on the exploitation of the poor and unjust trading practises.  Amos’s message is that “God hates your festivals and your songs and sacrifices make God sick to the stomach, what God wants is that justice flow like a river and righteousness like a never ending stream.’ 

The difference of the foundation in the two builder in the parable Jesus finishes his sermon on the mount in Matthew’s gospel is that on with the solid foundation is the one who listens to Jesus word and obeys it, the other hears the word and carries on their own way.  They both experience the storms and floods of life, but the one who obeyed Jesus words stands.

 Now Haggai also calls them to carefully consider their ways. The obedience wasn’t just in rebuilding the temple that was a symbol of that deeper call to live as God’s people. But the current obedience laid a foundation for the renewal of  God’s blessing.

Haggai finishes his oracle with a declaration of certainty that God would Bless his people. They had not had a good harvest, when they had come back to Jerusalem they had expected that it would be wonderful and prosperous and full of happiness, but it had not been. Now Haggai takes a bold step by telling them that as they had started to obey God’s purpose for them, that the deprivation of the past would change and God would bless them. 

For Haggai his focus is specifically that they would have a bumper crop. Maybe as he was speaking the autumn rain that was so necessary for the agriculture of the region to grow was starting and the Haggai is tying that in with what is happening in Jerusalem, or he is making a bold prediction. Up until know Haggai has told forth the word of God, bringing God’s word to the situation and context, but here is foretelling. But it is based on what he knows of God and God’s character.

The foundation for God’s people in Haggis’s day and in our own is the goodness of God, that God is with and for his people. That it is God’s desire to bless his people, that is a certainty. God’s desire is that his people, all the people of the earth, come to know God and his goodness. Haggai’s previous oracle had finished with and in that place I will give you peace… which means wholeness. In the book of Timothy, Paul tells us all to pray because it is God’s desire that all may come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. That we will be put right with God through his gracious sacrifice for us. In John’s gospel that saving knowledge is called abundant life, full life, it’s so abundant because of the presence and provision and purpose of God that it goes beyond the grace into eternity, lived with our eternal God.

And If the book of Haggai finished here we might be tempted to say that we can earn God’s blessing by our good deeds and equate God’s blessing with prosperity.  In the end the grace and hope of Haggai’s declaration is God’s sovereign promise to bless his people, it’s God’s grace, God’s grace, God’s grace…  

The challenge of Haggai is the same for us as it was for God’s people then and there. It is to consider carefully our ways, it is a call to see that fulfilment and fullness comes from knowing God through Jesus Christ, hearing God’s word and putting it into practise in our lives… “Only Holiness leads to happiness”. The promise is God’s blessing…

Also the book of Haggai does not finish here. There is one more word that Haggai brings on the same day as the two we looked at today. It is a word for Zerubbabel and it is a word that finishes the process of renewal by speaking of the renewal of covenant relationship, which is at the heart of covenant blessing… the heart of our hope… that points us forward to Jesus Christ, the fulfilment of all the promises and hopes of the remnant in their coming back, the fulfilment of Israel’s hope and ours. The fulfilment of God’s promise to bless his people. We are going to look at that in a fortnights time.

Those Were the Days... but the Best is Yet To Come: The Renewal of Hope in Haggai 2:1-9

“ Hope” Says Edwin McManus “lifts us out of the rubble of our failures, our pain and our fear to rise above what at one point seems impossible. Our ability to endure, to persevere, to overcome is fuelled by this one seemly innocuous ingredient called hope.”

And in the passage, we had read out to us today, Haggai, addresses a group of people who are disappointed and discouraged, who are literally in the rubble of their failure. Facing what seems like a hopeless situation.  Into that Haggai brings God’s message and that message is hope. He tells them to ‘be strong, build and not to fear” and his motivation for that is a renewal of hope in God: God’s presence, God’s providence and God’s purpose. It is the same hope that we can have today as we face  challenges in our life individually and corporately as the church. Hope because of the presence of God, hope because of the providence of God, hope because of the purpose of God.

Let’s set the scene.

As we looked at last week… The people had come back from exile in Babylon, they had come back to Jerusalem, to rebuild the temple and re-establishing themselves as God’s people. But it had never seemed like the right time to start the work. There were economic and political reasons for that. It hadn’t stopped them however from focusing on their own comfort and prosperity. They had finished their own houses and even started to develop a level of luxury. Eighteen years after they had come back the work still hadn’t started. So the prophet Haggai had challenged them about their priorities, he’d asked them to consider carefully their ways. To refocus on what was at the centre of their being a community, God’s presence with them symbolised by the temple. They listened and started to build and they were now the remnant that God had intended by his grace for them to be.

They started building in the sixth month, and now in the seventh month they had cleared off the site and re-established the altar and it was time to celebrate the feast of Tabernacles, when they remembered God’s provision for them in the wilderness. How God had been with them and lead them as they had built the tabernacle. It is at the end of this festival on the twenty fourth day of the seventh month that Haggai bring another word from God.

 In Ezra chapter three we have a record of such a festival which gives us insight into what is Haggai is facing. It says that at the end of the festival the people were to give a festive shout. “he is Good his Love endures forever” but as that happens we are told that those who remembered the old temple started crying as they saw what it was like now and the impossible amount of work that needed to be done and wept.

It probably didn’t help that most of those who would have seen the old temple would have seen it as a child. You know you go to a place when you are small and it seems so big and wonderful and grand, you go back later and well it seems a bit smaller and less wonderful. It didn’t help that the exiles would have been bought up on stories of the wonder of the temple and how great it was.

The people seemed to be caught up in the idea that those were the days… the best times were in the past… I went on a surf safari with a friend of mine way back in the day… and I discovered that the best time to surf was…yesterday… everywhere we went the locals said… “you should have been here yesterday, it was going off”. It got a bit discouraging. It is easy sometime to simply remember the good old days when we are faced with trouble and hardship in our lives and thing that the best days were in the past. It can sap us of hope for the future.

In churches it is easy to do that as well. We can look back to the hey day of the Presbyterian church in the 1950’s and 60’s when pews were full and the Sunday school was bursting at the seems, it was the baby boom remember. It is easy to remember that move of God that wave of the spirit, be it the charismatic movement in the 1980’s when the emphasis was on freedom in the spirit, or the spring bok tour when social justice and faith seemed to become so real, Youth group, or the camping movement and Hunua days. It is easy to think that the best days are behind us, the church has moved from the centre of community to the fringes.

Haggai starts his oracle by bring the feelings and words of the people out into the open. Is there anyone who remembers the temple. How does it look to you now? Does it look like nothing? Haggai however does not stop there he invites them to look and to see that with God the best is yet to come… the glory of this present house will be greater than the former.” The best is yet to come…

Haggai’s motivation comes from a renewal of Hope…

It comes from the presence of God. Haggai can tell the leaders Zerubbabel and Joshua and all the people to be strong and to carry on building and not to fear, because God is with them. This was at the festival of tabernacles and the same God who was with his people, who bought them out of Egypt and guided them to build the tabernacle in the desert is the same God who is with them now. They were lead and guided and provide for and defended and encouraged by the Presence of God, the craftsmen who built the tabernacle were filled with the Spirit of God as it tells us in Exodus 31. The same spirit is with them, God promised to be with his people and he is faithful and keeps his promise. God’s moving in the past is not to discourage us when we are faced with a reality that seems bleak and daunting it is to remind us that God does not change.

For us the hope is the same, the very presence of God.  Jesus last words to his disciples as he commissioned them to be his witnesses was and lo I am with you till the end of the age… In fulfilment of his promise in the book of Joel, and Jesus own promise God’s spirt has been poured out on all who believe in him, God’s spirit is not just with us but dwells within us. We can look with hope to the future because of God’s abiding presence…now. We can face mountains and insurmountable situations because God is present with us.

Haggai’s motivation for the leaders and the people to be strong to build and fear not only on God’s presence but also on God’s providence. God’s acting in history on behalf of his people. Not only is God present but God is moving. We looked last week at the unstable nature of the beginning of Darius’ reign in Persia. The Persian empire was at it height, but there were revolts, where places like Egypt were wanting to break free of Persian control.  New taxes were levied to pay for putting down these revolts. But God says through Haggai, That God will soon shake the heavens and the earth and all the nations will come to Jerusalem, and the desire of all the nations will come.” God is sovereignly moving in history on behalf of his people. He had raised the Babylonians up to discipline Israel, the book of Habakkuk wrestles with the fact that God could use such a violent nation, God had raised the Persians up to overthrow the Babylonians, and the Persians had changed the Babylonian policy of exiling people from their native country, so had allowed The remnant to return. Now God is saying that he is still sovereign and will again move in a new way. The language used here points us forward to the coming of Jesus Christ and the establishment of his kingdom. God is active in history and God is in control.

Not only that but the people would have been discouraged by the fact that to build the temple anything like it was that they would need massive amounts of money and resources. We can spiritualise the idea of glory, but in the eyes of the remnants glory meant Gold and silver. So God’s providence gives them hope because God tells them he is able to provide for them. When God calls us to do something he is able to provide us with what we need to do it. The gold and the silver are his. the picture here is of God shaking the earth and the sky and all the money and wealth coming out of their pockets and into the temple.

Ezra chapter 5 and 6 reads like the correspondence file of the government. It is like the first ever email thread. Tattani the governor of Trans-Euphrates province is opposed to the people building the temple. He writes to Darius asking him if the Persian emperor had given them permission to build. If it was todays world it would be asking if they had planning consent. He was trying to get the people in Jerusalem seen as revolting against Darius. Darius being a good bureaucrat looks back and sees what his ancestor Cyrus the first Persian emperor had said, and discovers not only had he given them permission but that the expense of building the temple would be paid for from the royal treasury. So in Ezra 6 you have a copy of his decree telling Tattani to pay all the expenses of the people while they build the temple. God’s providence and provision. We to can look to god to provide for us as we face difficulties and situations in our lives.

The third motivation Haggai gives the leaders and the people to be strong and build and not to fear is God’s purpose. “the glory of the present house will be greater than the glory of the former house, says the Lord Almighty and in this place,  I will grant peace,’ declares the Lord Almighty. The people may have simply been concentrating on a building, but it was the focus of what God was doing to bring peace to his people. The people can have renewed hope because not only is God with them and active in history God is for his people as well. His purpose and plan is for them to have peace.  Peace in the scriptures is the Hebrew word wholeness. It infers a matrix of right relationships, with God, with ach other, with creation and with our material possessions as well. It is God’s purpose that the people in Jerusalem will know God’s presence and Glory and will have peace. In Acts 2 with the early church after Pentecost we get a glimpse of that. The community were committed to God, and in their midst no one was said to have a need as they shared hospitality and shared their possessions, god’s providence for the whole community.

God’s purpose is still for us may not be that we build a temple but that work to build the kingdom of God in our world today. To see God’s peace in the places where we live and serve. Wilbert Shenk, says that the church has tried to find renewal in many different ways. They have tried to reaffirm the central distinctives of their denominational tradition, or moved to recapture a more primitive expression of church, go back to the way it was in acts. They’ve tried to relive the past. Others try restructuring their denomination, they rearrange the past( can I say that it is a bit like rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic), and others adjust their tradition to the current cultural trends, they repackage the past, But Shenk says it is only as they rediscover the purpose of God for the Church what God is doing in the world at the moment that they will find genuine renewal. It is as we see what the spirit is doing in the world today and go and align ourselves with it and work with the spirit that we will see hope for renewal and for the future, we will see God’s preferred future emerge in our personal lives and as a church.

It was easy for the people to be discouraged and weighed down thinking those were the days, the glory days are in the past… But Haggai encouraged them that The best is yet to come.  For those building the temple though they didn’t know it was the coming of God’s messiah.  The temple that the remnant built was the temple that Jesus was bought to as a child to be dedicated, it was the temple he came to as a boy and amazed the religious leaders with his genuine understanding of God, it was to this temple that Jesus drove the money lenders out of and dead he would destroy and rebuild again in three days. It was this temple where as Jesus died the veil was torn int two to signify God no longer dwelt in a building but in his people By the Holy Spirit.

It’s easy for us to have the view that those were the days… and when we are faced with the difficulties and struggles of today or seemingly insurmountable odds and the challenge of what lies ahead, it can discourage us and make us think that the best days, the glory days are in the past… But Haggai’s encouragement and motivation to be strong, build and not to fear, to have hope is that the best is yet to come, because God is with us, because God is active in history, and God is working his plans and purposes out. The presence, the provision and the purpose of God.