And that's found on page 668 in the Bibles that are in your pews. Hey guys chapter 2, beginning in verse 10. This is God's Word, eternally true. On the 24th day of the night month, in the second year of Darius, the Word of the Lord came to the Prophet, hey guys. This is what the Lord Almighty says. Ask the priest what the law says. If a person carries consecrated need in the fold of his garment, and that fold touches some bread or stew, some wine, oil or other food, does it become consecrated? The priest answered, no. Then hey guys said, if a person defiled by contact with a dead body, touches one of these things, does it become defiled? Yes, the priest replied, it becomes defiled. Then hey guys said, so it is, with this people and this nation in my sight, it declares the Lord. Whatever they do and whatever they offer there is defiled. Now give careful thought to this, give careful thought to this, from this day on. Consider how things were before one stone was laid on another in the Lord's temple. When anyone came to a heap of twenty measures, there were only ten. When anyone went to a wine vat to draw fifty measures, there were only twenty. I struck all the work of your hands with blight, mildew, and hail, yet you did not turn to me, declares the Lord. From this day on, from twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, 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 in the fig tree, the pomegranate and the olive tree, have not borne fruit from this day on, I will bloom. Let's now respond in thankfulness to the Lord using the responsive thankfulness, you have printed for you in your bulletin. The word of the Lord, let's pray together, our God and Father, we are grateful to you for your word, how it instructs us, how it tells us of you, and how we are to be. We ask Spirit that you would illumine this word for us, you would preach to our hearts and minds, transform us as you renew our minds. We ask in Christ's name. Amen. You have an outline in your bulletin. Hey guy, this morning speaks to us as he spoke to his own people, and he speaks of blessings of defiled people, our sermon has entitled this morning blessings to defiled. Now we can think about how we describe or consider blessedness in our culture, not so much religiously, but just how our culture describes it, so other person is blessed, they are doing well, and we may think of a movie actor or actress like Tervolta or Julia Roberts or somebody like that who is really native, a Tom Hanks, who takes a special, takes a take-hat on the forest gump in order that he can have a share of the profits, and then the movie makes Mucho Mucho money, and he gets much more than he would have ever gotten, had he just taken the salary that he deserved. It could mean for us that the local level being successful in our career, or if you're in school being successful in something you're doing in music, or in sports, or in drama, what have you? It could mean being blessed, having your political candidate elected to office. It could mean being able to retire early, like that commercial Charles Schwab does with all the retirees that are athletes, very standards, and Vander Holyfield, and all these people that are in their 30s are retired from sports, and so they're in an old folks home, and they're playing shuffleboard, and Vingo, Charles Barkley, and Tara Lepensky. It's something your culture defines as being blessed, being able to retire early. Perhaps this means your team winning the Super Bowl, or the World Series, or the game last night against Florida. It could mean having a good job, or a big enough house, or financial freedom. All things in our culture that we define as being blessed, in the non-religious sense of the word. Blessing in Haggai's culture was a little bit different, and Haggai's day, it consisted of living in a country where your borders were large, where you were conquering, rather than being conquered. It meant having a magnificent temple at the center of your country, as a tribute to your God, and as a storehouse of his riches. It meant you as a country were wealthy countries, that the wealth of the nations had come to you. It meant having a king who was glorious, an admirable, one who conquered, and it meant having good, and abundant harvest. All these things were considered blessings, and Old Testament signs, and defines as such by the Old Testament. Generally, the presence of these things in Old Testament times with an indicator of how faithful God's people were being to God. When they were being faithful to Him, they had these things. And when they weren't, they didn't. And the people in Haggai's day, this is around 520 BC, didn't have these things. They had been changed nationally. They had been defeated by a foreign power, and returned to a deathless capital city of Jerusalem. They didn't have a magnificent temple as a storehouse, and a place to show off the magnificence of their God, rather they had rubble where a temple had once stood. This also reflected on their spiritual condition. And so that was an embarrassing thing as well. They had this temple as a reminder to them of how they had been unfaithful to people. They experienced year after year, prior to Haggai speaking here, about 16 years of bad harvest. They went to gather 50 and they gathered 20. We saw that in our passage today, and Haggai addressed that, and the first sermon we heard from God in Haggai chapter 1. God's people had experienced the curses that Moses had told them about in Deuteronomy 28. It told them if you are faithful, you will experience these curses, and these were the curses that they were experiencing. This being the case, we see that it had some reasonableness to it when the people at this time were a little bit hopeless for experiencing the blessings of God. They were out of hope. They were discouraged. God says to you and to me a couple of things this morning through Haggai, giving you cause for hope for the blessings of God. First of all, God says to you, turn to me. Turn to me for you are defiled. Turn to me for you are defiled. For following along your outline, you see that that's an outline point where our introduction was having hope for the blessings of God. And now God says to you, turn to me for you are defiled. If you have ever taken a psychology class or learned anything about psychology or maybe you've watched a cable channel on TV where they talk about behavioralism. Behavioralism was founded by BS Skinner. Earlier in the century, the psychological theory that people are shaped by outside influences. They learn behavior based on rewards or rewards and punishments. And so if I remember once in a psychology class, I had a rat that I had to take care of and he was in a little mental box and there was a little lever that I'd push that brought up some water. And the idea was that you would train the rat based on rewards and punishments to come to this place to get his water each day. And the rat was to associate the clicking sound that it made when you pressed down the lever with water being available. So when the rat heard the clicking sound, he'd go over to the maze parts that had the water and he'd lick the water off the little handle that would come up with water and it's trough. But there's also something that is taught and shown in the behavioral psychology that is of learned helplessness. Learned helplessness. Learned helplessness was what they discovered when they took a dog and they wouldn't be able to do this today but they were able to put that in. They took a dog and they shocked the dog regardless of what he did. So if he went over here, they shocked him. If he went over there, they shocked him. If he stayed in the same place, they shocked him. Didn't matter what he did, no laughing Bob. Didn't matter what he did, they shocked him. This was in contrast to shocking him when he did bad and rewarding him when he did good. And what they found out was with this dog that they shocked regardless of what he did if he just learned to lay around. Didn't matter what he did, but I didn't do anything. He had learned to be helpless. That if he learned there was nothing he could do to help himself from being shocked. In our passage, we see this here, somewhat. We see in verses 11 and 12, look there. He says, this is what the Lord Almighty says. Ask the priest what the law says. Here's the question, verse 12. If a person carries consecrated meat in the fold of his garment and the fold touches some bread or stew, some wine, oil or other food, then get that is the stew or the wine or the bread. Does any of those things become consecrated? Because they've touched the fold of this garment that the priest is carrying consecrated meat in. Do any of those things become holy because they've had some kind of indirect contact with something that is holy? And the priest, knowing the law, answered, no. Holiness is not transferred in this way. God says, this is the way it is with my people, verse 14. This is how my nation is. In my sight, they were defiled. They had ignored rebuilding the temple for 16 years now. God released them from their captivity so they could come back. And that was right in their instructions in the edict that had been declared by Cyrus in Persia in 538 BC. That these people were to go back to rebuild the temple and they hadn't done it. 18 years later, they hadn't done it and the people were defiled. They had prioritized, as we saw in Haggai I, they had prioritized their own financial security and personal comfort. Instead, they were paneling, they were making their houses luxurious and the temple still lay in ruins. And because of this, they could only thus offered defiled and therefore unacceptable offerings. They couldn't get rid of their defilements. The temple, which was holy, couldn't rub off holiness on them even after the temple would be built. Look at verse 13 and 14. Then Haggai said, second question, if a person defiled by contact with a dead body, such as one of these things, does it become defiled? Yes, the priest replied, it becomes defiled. Can defilement be transferred? An Old Testament law said, if you touched someone who was leprous or dead, that you became defiled. Then you had to go through a cleansing process in order to be able to worship God again in this temple. And the Haggai asked the question, if you touched something that's defiled, do you become defiled? Is something touching something that's defiled? Does it become defiled? And the priest know the answer? And the law says yes. So in the one hand, holiness can't be transferred to the unholy. On the other hand, the unholy can't be made holy by being around something that is holy, specifically the temple. I catch 22. You and I, apart from Christ, stand before God defiled. We stand before Him in shame of our spiritual condition, in the shame of our failings, apart from Christ. Why is this so? It's so because, like the people during the Haggai's day, we prioritize other things. We put other things above the worship of God and the building up of this church. We put other things above God, receiving glory through these two things. These two things are worship of God and our building up of the church often have low priority in our hearts and minds. We don't have in our hearts worshiping God and building up this church is the most significant things we do in any given week. And this isn't talking about time commitments, it's not talking about you need a person needs to spend more time worshiping or building up the church. That could be but not necessarily, that's not what Haggai is getting at here. This passage is not saying that you need to spend more time necessarily building up the church, then you do working at your jobs or sleeping or going to school. Okay, God knows if you're in school, that you've got to be in school, a certain number of hours. He's created you and he knows that you need to be asleep, a certain number of hours. He's created you and given you a mandate to exercise dominion over the earth and that's what you do in your jobs. And if you're a student that's what you do at school, you're exercising or training to exercise dominion over the earth. That's why our vocations have significance eternally because God has to take care of this earth, exercise dominion over it, do things for the good of all those people that have been created in my image. So when you're developing different things or working in different ways, you're helping fulfill that mandate that God gives to you and God knows this. And what you do during the week in terms of the hours and where you spend them that's left up to you, God knows this. He's created you. He knows you need to spend time with your kids and your family, all that kind of thing. But what this passage is saying, here's what it's saying. It's saying that regardless of where you put your time throughout the week, that all these things you do and out of all these things you do in your week, worship. A corporate worship of God, that means worship of God with other people, corporate. The corporate worship of God in the midst of His people and your efforts toward building up the church, which is the body of Christ, are to be considered by you in your hearts, in your mind. The most important, significant thing you do in all your week.
Okay, we got some blanks here. The most important thing to my week, worshiping God, number one, to building up Christ's church. And so with this priority in your hearts and minds, when the time comes, the opportunity comes each week for you to be a part of the corporate worship of God or part of something that will work to the building up of Christ's church. Your inward prioritizing of these things will bleed out, will spill out, and evidence themselves, and you're taking advantage of these things, the highest two priorities of the believer in Jesus. Now it's an aside and speaking of such things, it's natural for us to take these things, the worship of God, and being a part of the building up of the church, and to use these things as standards by which we judge other people. Oh, I worship more than so and so, oh, I do more in the church than so and so. And we naturally use those standards to judge other people and make ourselves feel good and look down upon others, and this is absolutely not the application where to get from this passage. Jesus said, don't worry about the spec, and the other person's eye, if they have a spec, worry about the log in your own. We call the judge ourselves in this, and so when we talk about prioritizing in our hearts and minds the worship of God and the building up of his church, the two most significant things a person can do, or a human being can do, we judge ourselves on this. Which person judges, how am I doing on this? What this passage lets us know is that all mankind, which we are included, fails 99.9% of the time in prioritizing these two things. What Haggai says here is that when this is true, we ourselves stand defiled or unclean, dirty before God. Scripture that uses this term defiled a lot, especially in the Old Testament, speaks of being unclean before God. I was recently in a couple of weeks, weeks ago washing the sentence, a rerun on during the week, and Lisa, for reasons I won't go into, had fooled Homer, her father, and her brother Bart, into thinking that they had leprosy. She had painted on some leprosy sores all around them using a poster paint and oatmeal. And they woke up from sleeping in front of the TV all night with potato chip bags all around and they figured out that they are fooled into thinking they have leprosy. And so what do they say? Unclean, unclean, Bart and Homer say to each other, just like Scripture declares a leprosy person was supposed to declare in front of non leprosy. And so what they decide is they know no one holier than their next door neighbor, Flanders. And so they go over to Ned Flanders house and Flanders sees that they have leprosy and he shuts the door quickly on them. And he goes and gets a snow suit on and boots and a hat and he's got some chemistry goggles on and oven mitts and then he opens the door again. Because he doesn't want to touch or get infected by Homer and Bart who are unclean with an infectious disease. And that's what hey guy is saying here about you and I, apart from Christ as we do not prioritize these things, the worship of God and the building up of this church, we are unclean, we are infectious and God cannot be around us. So what do we do to get rid of our defilement? One solution is to associate with the church. This is the solution of the people on hey guy's day apparently by the questions that hey guy poses to the priest. God's people may have been treating the temple with great hope. They thought well if we build the temple we can ever defilement remove from us because we'll have this holy thing here. And through that temple because that temple is there our unholiness will be removed and God will again begin to bless us no more bad harvest. But hey guy says if you've got something holy and something unholy touches it what happens? The unholy thing doesn't become holy. This was the cause God's people a great sense of hope, lessness. The temple couldn't save them. The temple today the church needs the New Testament calls the church a holy temple in the Lord cannot save us or make us holy before God. Going to church cannot make you holy before God. It can't read you of your defilement before him. None of your efforts can earn for you eternal life, even efforts done in the church. It is only through God God himself as an act of his mercy that you can be rid of your defilement and made holy before God. This is why hey guy says each person verse 17 at the end must turn, must turn to God. Not to the temple apart from God, not to the church as if the institution had power to make someone holy but rather to God himself as the only one who has the ability to remove our defilement of sin from us. Let's talk about human defilement and sin for a moment. We're defiled or dirty because of sin. We're defiled because we do all kinds of things to other people and we ignore God. We're defiled because we don't prioritize the building up of this church and worship of him which all leads to his being glorified on this earth. And because of this we're unrighteous in our unfaithfulness in this way. We don't follow God as we should. We're unrighteous in defiled. The question then is how therefore can we overcome this defilement, this unrighteousness before God? If walking into a church and even being involved in a church doesn't do it like the people in hey guy says not the temple would do for them. What can? How can this defilement and shame be removed from us? Well we haven't removed from us by looking to God. By looking to God in faith. How can God do this? How can God remove our defilements and shame? This is God just wave a magic wand and say it's disappeared. All your sins are just poof into the air since they didn't happen. No God doesn't do that. We're told in scripture that God is just and that God punishes each stand according to what it deserves. Hitler will be punished or is being punished for all the wrong that he has done to every other person that he's been wrong to. He's been punished for ignoring of God all sin is punished according to what it deserves because God is just. He hasn't shovel things or sweet things under the rug to how does God remove our defilement? Well we say well through Jesus. Well yes, but again Jesus doesn't wave a magic wand and just make it poof disappear. How does God remove the defilement of any person if he is just and must punish sin according to what it deserves? God removes our defilements. He removes the defilement of each person who returns to him by placing that person sin upon Christ. God placed upon Christ the sin of every person who had turned to him on that cross. First Peter 2.24 he himself Jesus bore our sins in his body on the cross. So I want to ask you as God going to punish you for your sin being a believer in Christ you say he already has but he hasn't punished me he punished Christ. Every sin I've ever committed and am committing and will commit God has placed that sin God placed it upon Christ at the cross and punished it. He removed it from us placed it upon Christ so that Christ was defiled for our sake and punished where we deserved to be punished. We saw this in our Romans 4 passage. Abraham was not righteous on his own. He was like the rest of us defiled and unrighteous. But through his faith in God is the only one who can remove defilement. Not a temple, not good works, not works in the church, not anything. Only God can remove our defilement and Abraham had that faith. He looked to God. He turned to God and God removed his defilement, his unrighteousness and gave him the gift of righteousness. In Ephesians 2 and Ephesians 1, 3 and following we hear from God that though we were unrighteous God by his grace removed our sins through faith and that now God blesses all who believe with every spiritual blessing in Christ. The people in Haggai say had a concern. They were hopeless. It's that receiving God's blessing again because of defilement. And we too rightly, apart from Christ, are like that as well. There's no hope apart from Christ of having our defilement removed and receiving the blessings of God in our life and in our life hereafter. But Paul tells us in Ephesians 1 that we receive every spiritual blessing in Christ having turned to him. What others blessings Ephesians 1, blamelessness before God, the streaks of the removal of our defilements, where blameless our sins have been removed. It speaks of being adopted and to God is definitely God's child as opposed to being an enemy of God. What other spiritual blessing does Paul mention Ephesians 1 being redeemed to an eternal life and to which we enter the heavenly temple, the holy temple. And fourthly, Paul mentions this one of every spiritual blessings that one in terms to God receives the blessing of the forgiveness of his for her sins. This is the removal of defilement. God in Christ was not just saying your sins are gone, they're poofed, vanished. He was placing all your sins on Jesus and punishing him. So God says to you, turn to me for your defiled. I'm the only solution. Not anything you can do or any place you can touch. The secondly God says to you and me that are prioritizing of worshipping him and building his church has a consequence in our daily lives. God says to you, prioritize worshipping me. Prioritize worshipping me and building up my church that your life might be blessed. Prioritize worshipping me and building up my church that your life might be blessed. We've been hearing and seen from Hangai that these two areas are areas of failing for us. But that's returning to Christ who God punished for your sin or defilements is removed. But now from Hangai we hear that there's a consequence in our lives upon this earth. A good consequence from our proper prioritization of things. That is God promises to bless the people that prioritized his worship and the building up of his church just as he promised to bless his people as they prioritize worshipping him as a temple built so that proper worship could go on. We see in this passage as God's people pursued other things, God frustrated their efforts in the very things they were striving to attain. Verse 15-17. Look there. 15. He says, now give careful thought to this from this day on. Consider how things were before one stone was laid upon another in the Lord's temple. When anyone came to a heap of twenty measures there were only ten. When anyone went to a wine vets to draw fifty measures there were only twenty. I struck all the work of your hands with blight and they'll do inhale yet you did not turn to me to clear the Lord. This is speaking of the time after God's people had returned from exile but they were sitting there and not building the temple. 16 years, no work was done on the temple and God does consider this. Think about what it's been like up to this point. You went to get fifteen and got twenty. You went to get twenty and got ten or whatever the numbers are there. The very things you pursued instead of pursuing me I frustrated so you would turn to me. When I played soccer in college I hadn't been an injury prone person up to that point but three of the four years I was injured within the first three games and was been out for most of the rest of the season. I had done well in soccer. I had grown up in a good community and lots of people had said lots of nice things about me and I had been doing well as a freshman and had lots of hope. My coach had lots of hope for me too but boom, knock down season after season. One season where I wasn't knocked out and I didn't play that well so I won't tell you about that season. But I'm convinced to this day that there was a reason for that. There's always a reason for things. God and His sovereignty was keeping my focus upon Him. He was keeping my priorities upon worshipping Him, devoting myself to Him and building up and working for the expansion of His church. God does that. It is snowing outside. Everybody can look. God's bringing the snow. But that's what God had done with the people during the hang-eye day. They had spent all this effort to have crops and the crops were very little. God frustrated their efforts like Navy and injured, all this work, all my life, so that they would put first things first. What did Jesus say? Speak first, God's kingdom and righteousness. Speak first, God. And all those other things that you worry about, clothing, food and shelter, which He's just talked about at that point in the sermon over the night, all those things will be added to you. Don't strive for those things. Don't worry about those things. Work hard. Be a good worker. Be a good representative of Christ. I still your mandate to serve mankind in whatever you're doing. But don't worry about having food and clothing and shelter. God taking care of your needs. I will take care of those things, but it's not the way I think that you think you're going to get taken care of. I'll take care of those things as you prioritize first, seeking me and my kingdom. That's the message of God through a guy. God's people hadn't sought first, God's kingdom, God's glory. It sought first the paneling of their own houses, the making of their own houses, luxurious. And so God comes with them with condemnation for this. And fortunately, they respond well. God's people gathered together under the priest, Joshua, and under the rubble grandson of the last king in Israel, and to begin to build the temple. Notice what hey guy does. He points people to the very date. This is Joel's birthday, point first. Okay, this is the 18th. 18th of December, three days before Joel's birthday, 520. December 18th. Hey, hey guys, first spoke to people August 29th. And then they began building the temple September 1st. That's the first thing. And then they need a boost and an encouragement after about a month of getting started October 17th. Three days after Santa's birthday, right? And then December 18th, they've officially established the rebuilding. The project is underway. December 18th, 520. And hey guy says, remember this day when you're setting your hearts in your mind to rebuild the temple and to prioritize first the worshiping of God and the rebuilding of this structure so God can be worshiped. Remember this day, mark it on your calendars. Keep it up on your wall for years to come because this is the day where everything changes. December 18th, all the farmers had planted all their seed. And Israel did the sewing time was early December. And so hey guy says, hey do you have any seed left in your barns? No, it's all planted. Remember the past 16 years? What that resulted in? Almost nothing. But mark this day. This day that you set yourselves to rebuild the temple and you're really going to do it. They had it done within within four and a half years. You're shorter than it took Solomon to build the temple richly. Remember this day because from now on last phrase of our passage from this day on, I will bless you. You want to get things straight? You want to be blessed? You want to experience the blessings that I have for you? The good things that I want to give to you? Prioritize the worship of me and God commends his people at this point in which they've done it. And they've established things and the rebuilding is on its way. And he says, remember this day for this is why you're going to be blessed. When the harvest comes, look back to this day. For in this day I will begin to bless you. You and I don't have a stone temple in Jerusalem that's in ruins that we're supposed to rebuild so the worship of God can go on. The New Testament is called the church, a holy temple in the Lord. It's called us. God's temple. We have the same responsibilities today. To prioritize first in our hearts and in our minds the worship of God. Someone asked us what is the most important thing you do? Our answer from our heart is to be worship God. What is the most important part of your week, regardless of how many thousands of millions of dollars you're working with throughout the week or spare change, or whatever it be, or being a father or a mother to your kids? What is the most significant thing you do during your week from our hearts, from our minds, we say, I worship God. The one who's created me, the one who causes the snow, the one who's made the clouds, I worship him. He's forgiven me. And I come into his assembly among his people and I worship him. What is the most significant thing you do? Not what do you do mostly because we all work and are doing other things. And that's okay, that's in God's plan. But what's the most significant work we do? Significant, most significant work we do. It's the work we do for the building up of Christ's church because it's that work that crosses Christ to be built up. It causes Christ to be glorified as his church is built up. When you do things here in the church, you're showing up. It's an act of building up the church, you know that? Because when you are here, it encourages those that are around you. You know how it is when you come, you're worshiping. And if nobody showed up, wouldn't that be discouraging? If you're the only one here, I didn't show up. No one else showed up. It's just you. It's encouraging for us and other people around to reaffirm us in our belief that God matters and worshiping Him matters and living our lives for His glory matters. Just showing up is an act of building up the church. But as you set up church, why do people in this church set up chairs and work on Sunday school lessons and open their houses and take down chairs and do all kinds of things during the week? Answer to build up the church for the glorification of God. That's our reason behind having nursery duty. Why is somebody, why are Arthur and Mary in the nursery right now? So that the church can be built up. Why do folks that got people that come to my office and help me get things together? Did you do detail work? Why did they do that? So the Christ church is built up so Christ is glorified. Why do we come here to worship? So the Christ is glorified. We do this in lots of ways. Being encouraged in the work that you're doing here in the church, even things to you that may seem insignificant. These things are all to the purpose of bringing glory to Christ and building up the church. Why do you come to worship each week? Of course for the glory of Christ. It's to be the top priority of your week. But remember, your presence here is an encouragement to others and an act of building up the church. The question is to you, has December 18 come in your heart and mind? Have you had a date? I'm not, you don't have to name a specific date. But if you had a time, a point in your life, where the worship of God and the building up of His church and your mind being convinced of it and in your heart knowing it to be true, that the building up of Christ church and the worship of God is the most significant thing that you do. Maybe that day has happened. Maybe that day is today. Maybe that day is coming soon. The message is clear here from Scripture. God blesses His people with good things for you. It won't be good harvest. I don't think we have any farmers here. But it'll be other things. It'll bless you with good things in your life as you put worshiping Him in the building up of His church at the top of your priorities. God says to you, test me in this. Speak first my kingdom and see if all these other things that you need and strive for and concern yourself with won't be added to you. God says to you this morning, prioritize worshiping me and building up my church so that your life might be blessed. From this day on, I will bless you, says the Lord. Let's pray. I got a father we're grateful to you that the church isn't about us and that life isn't about us. For when it is, we just worry and have anxiety. And things get out of whack. We're thankful that you are God and that you alone deserve worship. We pray that you would cause that within our hearts to develop by your spirit. Help us to realize the fundamental quality, the fundamental priority of us worshipping you. So it's good and proper to do this for you created us. It's good and proper to do this because you have brought us back from captivity to sin. Help us to work out in each of our lives how we can more effectively and more faithfully prioritize in our hearts and minds worshipping you and building up your church. Let's now exhort each other in this. We're going to sing together and please stand at you saying number six in your song books, city of God speaking of the church, the city of God and speaking of our rejoicing and our savior who has brought us into this city and speaking of how he's given us a role for the building up of this city, the church.