Consider Your Ways - Haggai 1

2:32Rebuilding the temple. So that is our main event. Who are the leaders in this time? It's not Ezra yet. Zerubbabel, right? Who else? Anybody remember any others? Jeshua, right. Zerubbabel, Jeshua, and then there are two prophets. Anybody remember the names of the prophets? Haggai, which we're going to study today, and Zechariah. Okay, so that's the first movement. Ezra 1 through 6, they are rebuilding the temple after they get to the land. This is around 538 BC. Remember, that counts backwards. So this is 538 years, roughly, before Jesus comes. Okay, so 538 B.C. Then, 80 years later is the next chunk. Keep tracking with me, guys. Don't zone out. So you've got the first chunk, 538, where they come back, they build a temple. Next chunk, who comes back? This is 80 years later.

3:33Ezra. So that's the rest of the book of Ezra. Ezra comes back, and does anybody remember the main issue? Right. They have intermarried with the pagans surrounding them. So, and now, because of that, their children are learning these false gods and these other languages and things like that. And it's not going to stay as God's pure people. So this is a big issue. The whole nation repents there and they grieve greatly and they repent. And that is the big issue. And the leader there was Ezra. Okay, the next movement. So we've got temple we've rebuilt under Zerubbabel and Joshua. Next movement is 80 years later. That's when Ezra comes back and they deal with the issue of intermarriage. The next one is only 13 years later, and actually, Ezra is still around. He's older. But in the next part, Nehemiah 1 through 6, we Here of Nehemiah coming back. And what was the big issue at that time when Nehemiah gets back? Building the wall, right? So it's a temple and then intermarriage, and then the wall is the next issue. They deal with it in spite of opposition. And then there's the last movement, the rest of Nehemiah. Does anybody remember what? There's a lot of issues. Anybody remember some of the main issues?

4:57Right. The main issue is that there's no one there. That's how it starts. And that is going to be the topic of, I think, two or three of those chapters that's scattered kind of throughout, is they are going to need to bring the people back to the land, back to the land. And there are other issues as well. Once the people get back to the city of Jerusalem, they're going to start to do bad things again. And you remember Nehemiah whips them into shape. All right.

5:24So Haggai was all the way back up in this first chunk. So I just am going over all of this to help us remember, but also to make sure we're not confused. We had these four chunks where they're rebuilding the wall, dealing with intermarriage, sorry, rebuilding the temple, dealing with intermarriage, then rebuilding the wall, and then dealing with the population of the city. Haggai and Zechariah are way up at this first one, Ezra 1 through 6. So look at Ezra chapter 1. In the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia. So this is quick, right? Waste any time after they conquer Babylon in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and also put it in writing. Thus says Cyrus king of Persia, Yahweh, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever is among you, of all his people, may his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and rebuild the house of Yahweh, the God of Israel. He is the God who is in Jerusalem. So, Cyrus sends the people back. Cyrus sends the people back. Look at chapter 2. Now, these were the people of the province who came up out of the captivity of those exiles whom Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, had carried captive to Babylonia. They returned to Jerusalem and Judah, each to his own town. They came with Zerubbabel, Jeshua, and some other leaders. All right, so the first two listed there are Zerubbabel and Jeshua, or in other places it's written, Joshua. The text will kind of switch back and forth. So you remember that Zerubbabel was the governor kind of leader. It calls him the governor. And Joshua, or Jeshua, is the high priest. So you've got a governor and a high priest. They are the leaders of this community. Of kind of the civil affairs and the religious affairs. Okay? Look down at chapter 3.

7:40When the seventh month came, so this is within a year or maybe the next year, when the seventh month came and the children of Israel were in the towns, the people gathered as one man to Jerusalem. Then arose Jeshua, there's our high priest, the son of Josedek with his fellow priests, and Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, with his kinsmen, and they built the altar of the God of Israel to offer burnt offerings on it, as it is written in the law of Moses, the man of God. So after they get all the people back, maybe they rest for a little bit, and then they are going to get together, and the first thing they build is the what?

8:19Altar, right? They build the altar. Look down at verse 8. Now, in the second year after their coming to the house of God at Jerusalem, in the second month, Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, and Jeshua, the son of Josedek, made a beginning together with the rest of their kinsmen, the priests and the Levites, and all who had come to Jerusalem from the captivity. They appointed the Levites from 20 years old and upward to supervise the work of the house of the Lord. Okay, so they've already built this altar. So they come maybe 538 B.C. They finish the altar maybe 537 B.C. 536 BC. So then Year. Remember, we're counting down because we're in the BCs. So we're counting down. So in the next year, they make a beginning to start to work on the house of the Lord. Verse 10, chapter 3, verse 10. And when the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord, the priests and their vestments came forward with trumpets and the Levites, the sons of Asaph, with symbols to praise the Lord, according to the directions of David, king of Israel. And they sang responsively, praising and giving thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever toward Israel. Now, all the people shouted with a great shout when they praised the Lord, because a foundation of the house of the Lord was laid. So he says they make a beginning. They plan to build the house of the Lord. Well, what do you start with? The foundation, right? They get it done. They are singing and rejoicing. Verse 12. But many of the priests and Levites and the heads of fathers' houses, old men who had seen the first house, wept with a loud voice when they saw the foundation of this house being laid, though many shouted aloud for joy, so that the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shouts from the sound of the people's weeping. For they shouted with a great shout, and the sound was heard from far away. Okay, so you remember a lot of this history, right? They're coming back, and already within a couple years, they have already built the altar again so they can start sacrifices. Now they've already laid the foundation, everything's going well, and then they stop, right?

10:30In chapter 4, we hear about the adversaries. Chapter 4, verse 1. Now, when the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the returned exiles were building a temple to Yahweh, the Lord, the God of Israel, they approached Zerubbabel and the heads of the fathers' houses and said to them, Let us build with you, for we worship your God as you do, and we have been sacrificing to him ever since the days of Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, who brought us here. But Zerubbabel, Jeshua, and the rest of the heads of fathers' houses in Israel said to them, You have nothing to do with us in building a house to our God, but we alone will build to the Lord, the God of Israel, as King Cyrus, the king of Persia, had commanded us. So it sounds like a great start. They come and they say, the adversaries come and they're trying to trick them and saying, oh, we're going to help you build the temple. And they say, no, we're not going to have any of that. Well, then, verse 4, the people of the land discouraged the people of Judah and made them afraid to build and bragged counselors against them to frustrate their purpose all the days of Cyrus king of Persia, even until the reign of Darius king of Persia. So Cyrus reigns for a while. That's the problem. Then there's this ruler for a short time named Cambyses or Cambyses. And then there is Darius. And after this two years where they get back, they build the altar, they build the foundation, they're discouraged pretty early on from building anymore. Leaders seem to be doing okay, but then the people get scared by the other peoples of the land. And so they stop building the house. And it says that that lasts all the way until this king over here.

12:12Well, in chapter 4, you remember it compiles some of the other times they had opposition, even sometimes later on, 80 years later, when they had opposition, and it reads you a letter. But look down at verse 5. Chapter 5. Sorry, Ezra 5. So they have stopped building the house of the Lord. Now, chapter 5. Now the prophets, Haggai and Zechariah, the son of Edo, prophesied to the Jews who are in Judah and Jerusalem in the name of the God of Israel who is over them. Then Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, and Jeshua, the son of Josedech, arose and began to rebuild the house of God that is in Jerusalem. And the prophets of God were with them, supporting them. There are some more letters back and forth with Darius, but eventually the temple is finished and they celebrate the Passover there. And that's the end of that first chunk where we hear about the rebuilding of the temple. So the amount of time that they stopped was about 16 years. Is that right? Yeah, about 16 years. So they started building it. They stop a couple years later. Then they wait a long time. That's a long time to just sit around and not build the temple. And what is the reason that they weren't building the temple?

13:31What do you think? They're afraid, right? Is what it says in Ezra, that the peoples of the land have plotted against them. There's bribes that have gone on. They've made the people discouraged. And so the people stop building, and that lasts for 16 years. And then finally, in year 520, Haggai and Zechariah come. And what is the result of them coming? The temple got built, right? And it's finished within five years. Maybe, I think, four years later, four and a half years later. Okay, so now we know the history. And that's kind of why we are doing, all of a sudden, that's why we're studying Haggai and Zechariah. In your Bibles, Ezra and Nehemiah are right next to each other, and they're kind of toward the front of your Bible. Haggai and Zechariah are near each other, and they're kind of near the end of the Bible. But it's because Ezra and Nehemiah are histories, and so they're with kind of the history part of the Bible. And Haggai and Zechariah are prophets, and so they're with the prophet part of the Bible. So really, they're contemporaries. As you can see, we just read about Haggai and Zechariah. But now we actually are going to get to read the prophecies of Haggai and Zechariah. Isn't that cool? How often do you get to do that? So let's turn there. Haggai, Haggai and Zechariah.

15:01We have read about their impact. We've read about the history. Now we are going to actually read their words. It's kind of exciting, right? You know, you hear of other prophets in the Old Testament being mentioned, and we don't hear all of their prophecies and things like that. But we've just read in the history a prophet, and now we do get to read what he's saying. We do get to read the words that the Lord spoke through him. So I'm going to pray. I know we're already halfway through, but I'm going to pray. Pray with me. Father, we pray that you bless our time in Haggai.

15:38I pray, Lord, that some of the clouds and the fogginess would be gone from our brains so that we can understand how you worked in this time. We pray, Lord, for help as we study this prophecy. We pray that we could learn what you want us to learn and apply what you want us to apply. I pray, Lord, that we would be amazed at you and your character and that we could be people that please you and bring honor to your name. In Jesus' name, amen. Okay, Haggai chapter 1, verse 1. 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 Joshua, the son of Jehosadak, the high priest. Now we know who all those people are, right? That is a very full statement. Haggai actually is going to do this for us over and over and over. He's going to date everything he says so we can know exactly when he says it. And actually, the whole thing, the whole book of Haggai, not that it's very long, but the whole book is all within one year, 520 BC. So they've stopped for the 16 years. 520, Haggai comes, he gives three or four speeches, and then is done in 520. And the people listen, they start building right away, and then they build for four years, and then they finish the temple. What also is special about that first verse is we see Darius again. You remember they stopped in the reign of Cyrus, and it says they stopped all the way until the reign of Darius. Well, that's because Haggai comes in the reign of Darius. So he dates it, and then listen to this. It says, The word of the Lord came by the hand of Haggai, the prophet, to Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, and Joshua. So, how often do we get that full of a statement of kind of how prophecy works? Have you ever thought about that? Normally, it just starts out the word of the Lord. Or something like that. But Haggai is pretty specific, isn't he? He says, The word of the Lord came through the prophet Haggai to Zerubbabel and Joshua. Okay, and we have those names introduced again. Zerubbabel is the governor of Judah, like we already talked about, and Joshua is the high priest. Any thoughts or questions on the first verse? We're going to keep going.

18:24All right, look at verse 2. Thus says the Lord of hosts. Young adults, what does Lord of hosts mean? Right, armies, right? You've got the name Yahweh. That's when it's when the Lord is all capped. You remember that's his name, Yahweh. Yahweh of hosts, Yahweh of armies. So what do you think he's trying to emphasize as he keeps using this name in this letter? Power, right. His sovereignty, his power. Right, they should be afraid. They should listen.

19:00He says that they don't need to be afraid of these people. Oh, got it. I thought you meant like fear of the Lord, right? Yeah, they don't need to be afraid of these other people because they worship the Lord of hosts. Their God is the true God. Okay, so verse 2: Thus says the Lord of hosts. These people say, the time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the Lord. These people say, the time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the Lord.

19:30So, Yahweh is speaking through Haggai directly to Zerubbabel and Joshua, who we hear are good leaders, but also it's been this 16 years and they haven't gotten the people to build the temple yet. And so, the word comes directly to them. I think God is telling them to fix this. But the people that he addresses are the people of the land. He says, These people say, The time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the Lord. So, God hears what they're saying. He knows, of course, that it's been this 16 years, and these people are saying, maybe over and over and over, the time's not come, the time's not come, the time's not come. It's not yet time to build the house of the Lord.

20:17Well, when you hear that, when you hear that the people were saying that, it can almost give off this impression that they were saying this in kind of a pious way. Like, oh, we're just not building the temple yet because it's just not time yet. But what was the real reason why they haven't built the temple yet? They're scared, right? They've been discouraged by the other people of the lands. Maybe they've been bribed. And so, yeah, maybe some of their leaders or fake leaders or something like that has convinced them this is a good thing to say, oh, let's just wait. The time's not come to build the temple yet. But. The Lord is going to expose that their motives aren't actually good. Look at verse 3. Then the word of the Lord came by the hand of Haggai the prophet. So it comes again.

21:11Verse 4. Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses while this house lies in ruins? What's he saying? Yeah. You all have nice houses. You all have nice houses already, and yet you're still just saying over and over, no, it's not time to build the Lord's house yet. Those panels could be roof panels, or most people think they are wall panels, almost decorative, made out of cedar, maybe exactly like what's behind me. So these panels, you remember throughout the rest of the Old Testament, that cedar was always this good wood that they would import from Lebanon in Tyre. And so maybe they are decorating their houses with these panels. It's been 16 years since they stopped work on the house, and yet they're comfortably living in their own homes and still just repeating, oh, it's not time to build the house yet. It's not time to build the house yet.

22:19Is 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, he says that name again. 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 his wages does so to put them into a bag with holes.

22:57He's saying, think a little bit. Consider your ways. This is what God is telling the people. Consider what's been happening to you. You keep eating, but you're not fool. You keep putting on clothes and you're not warm. You keep earning money and it keeps falling out. Have you thought that something might be wrong? Have you considered why the Lord isn't blessing you? Have you considered why these things keep happening to you? Consider your ways. Look at verse 7. Thus says the Lord of hosts, consider your ways.

23:36Go 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 laborers.

24:18God is saying, I'm the one who has caused this in your life. I'm the one who caused the heavens to shut up, to cause the dew to stop. Why am I doing this? Because for all this time, you have been busy, busy, busy, busy, busy with your own homes while you have neglected to build the house. Think about what's going on here. What did Cyrus send them back to do? Do you remember? He sent them back to build the house of their God.

24:59And he has this grand statement that goes throughout all the world saying, Any of you who are part of this people, go and build this house. He is the God who made me king over all this empire. You go and build his house in Jerusalem. So the whole world knows that they're supposed to go do this. And now it's been 20 years, and they still haven't even gotten past the foundation. And it's just because they're discouraged. Well, God says, consider your ways. Go up to the hills. And bring wood and build the house. Get it done.

25:38You maybe remember from most of Israel's history that they always had to travel away to get the good wood. So he says, go to the hills, go and do it. Go do whatever you need to do. Go and travel. Get the wood and build the house. Do it now. That, what? Oh, no problem. Didn't Cyrus provide for the wood for the temple? He did. Yeah. Maybe that's quite what was on their head. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe they put it on their paneled houses. Or maybe it's been too long. It got termites. Cedar doesn't really get termites, does it? Well, who knows?

26:17But he says, get this done. Get this done. That I may take pleasure in it and that I may be glorified, says the Lord. That I may take pleasure in it and that I may be glorified. So he wants them to build this house because right now he's not taking pleasure in them. He's not taking pleasure in the house. He's not being glorified by what they've built. So he wants them to fix it. He even says in verse 2, you remember back in verse 2, he says, Thus says the Lord of hosts, these people say the time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the Lord. How does he? Normally, talk about them. My people, right? And so you can see that there is this barrier between them, that they kind of only have one thing to do, and they're not doing it. And so God has caused all these things to happen. Okay, so if we're thinking about this, is this directly parallel to things in our life? Do we have the same kind of the same kind of consequences in our life? I don't think we do, right? It's a little bit different for them. You remember in the Old Testament and Deuteronomy 28, they've got these curses for obeying or disobeying the covenant. A lot of those curses line up exactly with what's happening in our chapter here. But then even later, it seems like it's just that God has given them this one thing to do, and they won't do it. They're too scared to do it. And so as his people, as his nation, he has closed up the heavens and caused there to be famine.

28:05It's a little different for the church, right? We are his people. It is not like if we came here and we didn't build a building over there. Let's say we never built this building over here. It's not like the Lord is saying, okay, I'm going to make sure all of you lose your jobs, you know, and your funds get dried up and you can't feed yourself anymore, right? That's not how the Lord works with his church. This is how the Lord was working with his people. And this is how with the people of Israel, and this is how his pattern is throughout all their history. You worship me, and I will bless you. You disobey me, and you will experience these curses. Okay? So he's dealing with his people in this way.

28:50But what are the applications that we can take this? What from this? What are the similarities that we can have in our life from this? I'm not going to let you answer that. Whose business are we about? Whose business are we about? Right. We're going to talk more about that when we get to the end. I just want that question to hang in your heads a little bit. Verse 12. Then Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, who's that? Who's Zerubbabel?

29:22Governor. And Joshua, the high priest, with all the remnant of the people. Why does he call them a remnant? Right, they haven't all come back. Only some of them came back. A large amount was taken into captivity. This small group came back. But he says, all of them, all the remnant of the people, obeyed the voice of the Lord their God in the words of Haggai the prophet, as the Lord their God had sent him. And the people feared the Lord. Okay, so right away, we hear that they heard Haggai's message, and they must have been cut to the heart. And they must have feared that Lord of hosts because right away they obey the Lord and they obey the words of Haggai the prophet, who's delivering the words of the Lord.

30:11And the people feared the Lord. Verse 13. Then Haggai, the messenger of the Lord, spoke to the people with the Lord's message. I am with you, declares the Lord. That's the message. Isn't that encouraging? So he's just called them these people, right? And he said, you need to fix this. You're dwelling in your own houses. You need to start the work. And right after they obey and they fear and they start to build, Haggai gets another message from the Lord, and it's very short. And God just tells his people, I'm with you. I am with you, declares the Lord. Verse 14. And the Lord stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and the spirit of Joshua, the son of Jehosadak, the high priest, in the spirit of all the remnant of the people. And they came and worked on the house of the Lord of hosts with the Lord of hosts, their God, on the 24th day of the month, in the sixth month, in the second year of Darius the king. So this is a few weeks later. So maybe they had to plan or go get the wood or something like that. But about 20 to 25 days later, they start this building. Okay, so the Lord sees. Obedience, he says, I am with you, and he stirs up their hearts. So, is this just because the people are so awesome that they decided that they wanted to build it because they are such great people? No, this is because the Lord is acting again, just like the Lord stirred up the king, King Cyrus, to send the people back. Now the Lord is working again. He is stirring up the heart of Zerubbabel to be a good governor and lead his people to do this. He's stirring up the heart of Joshua, the high priest, to be a good high priest and lead his people to do this. And he is stirring up the hearts of all the remnant of the people in the land so that they will go and get this done.

32:14They came and worked on the house of the Lord of hosts, their God. And they'll finish it within five years. We're going to read about that later. So, back to the question earlier. If we were trying to apply this text, let's say you were at home reading your Bible at your breakfast table or your couch or wherever you read your Bible, and you read the book of Haggai, and you could tell right away, because you know all the history, right? You could tell right away that this was a special message to the people of Israel.

32:59And And that they obey that special message and they build the house of the Lord. And the Lord is pleased with them. It says, I am with you. And we know that God beforehand was not pleased with them, and therefore he had caused there to be a famine. And he told them, Think about it. Put two and two together. You worship a God who can control the weather. And you are not being blessed right now. Consider your ways. Don't you think you should go and build my house? So you read that in your own home, and you were thinking, okay, how can I apply this passage? It's not quite the same for us. If we don't have a temple to build, we don't have the place, we don't have a temple to build, how do we apply these things?

33:50John, can he give you your answer again? Do you remember? Whose business are we about? I think that's a great thing to say right off the bat, right? Are we constantly obsessed with being comfortable in our own lives? Or are we giving honor and preference to the Lord? And we made this caveat this morning that don't forget, the young adults study this all semester long, that the Lord has given us good things. Even our jobs, even our toil, he wants us to enjoy it. These are good gifts from the Lord. Yet, we can become so caught up in them, right, that we are not.

34:31Considering the Lord first. Can you think of any New Testament passages that talk about that? That's the one I was thinking. You can turn to Matthew 6, and we'll end with this. I think this is a great New Testament parallel that the Lord gives all of us. It's at least similar in topic. Matthew 6, verse 25, Therefore, I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?

35:32And which of you, by being anxious, can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They neither toil nor spin. Yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore, do not be anxious, saying, What shall I do? We eat, or what shall we drink, or what shall we wear? For the Gentiles seek after these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. Okay, so if you zoned out or something, this passage is about Jesus saying, stop being anxious about daily things. You don't need to be anxious. Your heavenly Father knows you need them all. He takes care of the birds. He takes care of the flowers. Surely he's going to take care of you. Aren't you of more value than a bird? Your heavenly Father knows you need these things. So therefore, verse 33, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. So the Lord's going to take care of you. You never need to be anxious about clothing or about food. Instead, you get the privilege as God's people to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. Verse 34, therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. So we get to trust in the Lord's provision. The Father knows the things that we need. We get to trust in his provision and occupy our minds with the things that pertain to him, to seek first the kingdom, to dwell on the Lord. This is the opposite of what the people in Israel were doing, right? The Lord hasn't been blessing them in the land because they are constantly consumed with their own houses. They're busy. Busy, busy, busy, busy with their own houses for 16 years, right? You'd think at some point somebody would say, you know, I could take a break from my own house or something and go build the house of the Lord. But they're busy with their houses, and instead, he tells them, don't forget, I put you here for a reason. You're my people. You need to obey what I say.

37:53I think that what we learn about the Lord, just real quick to wrap up, what we learn about the Lord is that the Lord is the Lord of hosts. He is the one who is in control over everything. He is the only one in all the universe who has the power to close the heavens and stop the dew and bring famine to a land. He is the only one who has the power to open it up again and bless his people.

38:18He is the only one that is worthy of our fear, worthy of that fearful respect. The people were anxious and fearful about the other lands, but instead they should have feared the Lord, the Lord of hosts. And so the prophet comes and says, Think about what you're doing. Consider your ways and fix it. Obey the Lord. Consider him first and finish the house. Let's pray. God, we thank you for this first chapter of Haggai. We thank you that you are so patient with your people. We thank you for your people. Thank you for how meticulously and powerfully you worked in these generations, that you changed the hearts of kings to send the people back, and that you, the powerful sovereign one, stirred up the hearts of your people and stirred up the hearts of their leaders to accomplish your will.

39:19And your will was accomplished. You sent your prophets to speak your word to these people, and they listened. And the temple was finished. And so, Father, even today, 2,500 years later, even today, we can look back and marvel at your power and your glory, at the way you change people's hearts, at the way you stir people up to accomplish your will, at the way you sent your word to accomplish your will. And I pray, Lord, that we would treasure your word and listen to the prophets and the apostles and obey it. We thank you, Lord, for our time tonight. I pray that you'd bless us this week. I pray that all of us could go throughout this week with scripture ringing in our ears as we study the New Testament and we studied the Old Testament. I pray, Lord, that you would cause us to be crazy about your word, to keep studying it, to keep wanting, even this week, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, over and over, wanting to know more from your word, wanting to apply the things that we've learned and obey you. And fear you. Thank you, Lord, for our brothers and sisters. I pray that we would love each other in our fellowship tonight. In Jesus' name, amen.