From This Day On

Haggai 2:6-19

Last week, we were given to be strong in God and work, do not fear, because God is with us. As we continue in Haggai 2, Haggai brings the word of the Lord. As we read, notice how Haggai refers to God. Five times in four verses, he refers to the Lord Almighty. There are tons of names for God and descriptors of God throughout the Bible, so it’s not by accident that Haggai calls Him the Lord Almighty, especially that he uses the same phrase five times.

Haggai wants to reassure a discouraged people of God’s power. I think this is appropriate to remember now – that our God is all powerful. There are times when it’s easy to get discouraged – if you’re not already discouraged, then just check out the political and economic landscape of our nation. And it’s only getting worse. But God is still God!

Haggai needs to remind the people of who God is, because of what God is going to do. He prophesies: “This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘In a little while I will once more shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land. I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations will come, and I will fill this house with glory,’ says the Lord Almighty. ‘The silver is mine and the gold is mine,’ declares the Lord Almighty. ‘The glory of this 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.

God tells the people that He is going to shake the nations. The Bible uses “shaking” imagery to point to the day of the Lord. In the book of Amos, where the prophet prophesied two years before a literal earthquake, God says he will shake the nations as grain is shaken in a sieve (Amos 9:9).

In the New Testament, Jesus speaks of a shaking to occur – this time in predicting about the last days, repeating Isaiah’s prophecy. “The sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.” (Matthew 24:29)

God uses all sorts of means to point people toward Him, and God’s plan was to do this shaking to bring glory to himself. God is so brilliant – in Haggai, he chooses to shake the nations in such a way that the nations, people who neither know nor serve God, will bring their treasures to him. We all love our autonomy and our independence, but this is a good time to remind you that ultimately nobody has a choice in the matter. We will all ultimately bow in worship –Philippians 2:10-11 tells us that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Our sovereign God is Almighty, and although it can feel like we have all kinds of choices in this life, the one choice that really carries meaning and weight is the choice to serve God, because we will ultimately have no choice whether or not to bow in worship to God. God can even use his enemies to carry out his discipline – and when God shakes the nations, he will accomplish his will.

In Hebrews 12, the shaking is presented as a warning from heaven. Friends, when you see natural disasters, earthquakes, tornados, hurricanes, floods, whether or not you think God actively sends them, the truth is that they all present valid warnings. When God threatens to shake not only the earth, but also the heavens, he is saying that everything that can be shaken will be, and it will be removed, so only that which cannot be shaken will remain. What is it that cannot be shaken? In Psalm 125:1, we read that Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be shaken but endures forever.

Likewise, in Isaiah 54:10, we hear God speak: “Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken, nor my covenant of peace be removed,” says the Lord, who has compassion on you.

When God shakes, he will remove all created things – those things that stand in the way of our relationship with God. A couple of weeks ago at the Baccalaureate service, Zach Maughmer stood in front of us and said he was quitting playing video games, because they stood in the way of his relationship with Christ. He listed a bunch of other things that can potentially do the same, and many of us have allowed that to happen. So God shakes everything, and all we’re left with is that which cannot be shaken.

Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our “God is a consuming fire.” (Hebrews 12:28-29)

When God shakes us, all that is left is God. And when we’re left in a spot where all we have is God, we realize that we have everything we need and everything we ever desired as well.

This is why we can have peace in the midst of shaking.

Let’s continue in Haggai. There’s a lot of ground for us to cover in a little time. Haggai continues with another word from God, posing a question about consecration and defilement.

This is maybe the most disturbing part of God’s word to Haggai, and it comes right after a high point. To me, the clean/unclean/defilement/consecration rules seem pretty obscure, but suffice it to say, whatever came into contact with something that was considered unclean or defiled itself became unclean or defiled. This was passed on and on, so if you touched a dead body, not only were you unclean, but everything you touched became unclean as well.

You might think of it this way: your child is outside playing in the mud. You have just mopped the floor. If your child comes inside, the neatly mopped floor does not make your child clean… So God is saying, “My people, who are called to be consecrated (meaning set aside for my purpose) have disobeyed me and have defiled themselves with sin. Therefore, I will not bless anything that they do, because it is all unclean.”

This is the same thought process by which Jesus can later say, “Not everyone who says to me ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’” (Matthew 7:21-23)

There are church people who are not saved, and if that is you, it doesn’t matter how much you do, because none of that will make you clean. None of that will save you. And furthermore, apart from Jesus, the works we do are an insult to God. Isaiah 64:6 confirms that We are all infected and impure with sin. When we display our righteous deeds, they are nothing but filthy rags. Like autumn leaves, we wither and fall, and our sins sweep us away like the wind. 

So God commands his people to carefully examine and evaluate. He tells a discouraged people, “You haven’t had enough. You’ve never had enough. When you’ve gone to get food or grain, where you thought you had twenty, there were only ten. Everything you’ve done has seemed like a failure, and you’ve suffered through hardship. I struck everything you did, but you’ve failed to turn to me.”

Did you get that? I have a friend who is always the victim. All of this stuff happens to him, and he is always whining about how it’s everyone else’s fault. Could it be that God is trying to get his attention?

So God proclaims: ‘From this day on… give careful thought to the day when the foundation of the Lord’s temple was laid. Give careful thought: Is there yet any seed left in the barn? Until now, the vine and the fig tree, the pomegranate and the olive tree have not borne fruit. “‘From this day on I will bless you.’”

God is making promises here: he recognizes that his people have listened to his word and have begun the work on the Temple. And so he says, “Even though you don’t yet see the results, know that I am blessing you.”

This is the essence of faith, defined by Hebrews 11 as being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.

God’s message for his people is to recognize our own selfishness and self-centeredness and how far we’ve strayed from God, and to return to him, to prioritize Him. We’ve spent too much time giving ourselves the best and giving God left-overs and then wondering why won’t God bless me when the truth is we haven’t blessed God. We have worked toward our own glory and acted in our own self-interest and then we wonder why God has removed his blessing!

God gives the image of the vines, fig trees, pomegranate trees, and olive trees – saying, “You don’t yet see their fruit, but the fruit will come.” My promises never fail. It can be easy, as we discussed last week, to stand in our own strength and to operate out of that mindset. But what happens when our own strength is not enough? What happens when we try to the best of our abilities and still fail? This is the image of the vines and trees. What can any one of us do to cause a harvest? Sure, we work hard, but we are not the ones who bring about the harvest. That is God’s job, and God alone can do it.

This is the long way of saying: when you are at rock bottom, think of it as enduring a shaking from God, where God is shaking away all of the external things, things that can get in the way and can distract you from Him alone, and when all of that other stuff is shaken away, you can concentrate on Him alone – we can depend on the only One who can and will deliver.

And then we can receive the blessing that He has for us, from this day on.