Encouraged by God's Presence and Promise

[0:00] Please turn with me in your Bibles to the book of Haggai. Now, if you can't find Haggai, don't worry. I remember as a small child studying the books of the Bible! And still the minor prophets get kind of confusing. It's the third to last in the Old Testament. Use that index, that's what it's there for.

[0:21] Our text this morning comes from chapter 2 verses 1 through 9. Listen to the Word of God.

[0:34] It's not just what He said then. It's what He's saying to us today. In the seventh month, on the 21st day of the month, the Word of the Lord came by the hand of Haggai the prophet. Speak now to Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua, the son of Jehoshadah, the high priest, and to all the remnant of the people and say, Who is left among you who saw this house in its former glory?

[1:05] How do you see it now? Is it not as nothing in your eyes? Yet now be strong, O Zerubbabel, declares the Lord. Be strong, O Joshua, son of Jehoshadah, the high priest. Be strong, all you people of the land, declares the Lord.

[1:20] Work, for I am with you, declares the Lord of hosts. According to the covenant that I made with you when you came out of Egypt, my spirit remains in your midst.

[1:31] Fear not, for thus says the Lord of hosts. Yet once more, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land, and I will shake all nations, so that the treasures of all nations shall come in, and I will fill this house with glory, says the Lord of hosts.

[1:49] The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, declares the Lord of hosts. The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts. And in this place I will give peace, declares the Lord of hosts.

[2:05] How do you keep workers motivated? One internet company I read about has a rather unusual way of approaching this challenge.

[2:16] They set targets for their sales team, and if somebody in the sales team makes the target, they get the opportunity to step into the cash machine.

[2:27] Now, I kid you not, they have this machine, and money is blowing around, and they have about 15 seconds to grab as much as they can. Now, when I read that, my first thought was, that's just so bizarre.

[2:39] That sounds more like a carnival than a company. But it does highlight the problem, doesn't it? Work is hard, and workers need to be motivated.

[2:53] Haven't you experienced that personally? Now, the kids are gone, so almost everybody in here would have worked a real job. But even as a child, you know, you'd get responsibilities, and isn't it true that sometimes you just don't want to do what you have to do?

[3:12] Now, if that was only a childhood problem, that would be one thing, but don't you get up some mornings and you just don't want to do what you have to do? And isn't that also our experience as believers?

[3:25] You know, we're seeking to obey God. God has rescued us and gathered us, and he's given us commands. He's given us work we need to do. And we are called as believers to participate in a spectacular project.

[3:40] God has focused his attention and power on building a glorious temple, a place for his presence to dwell and his glory to be displayed. The church Jesus is building is the most important thing that God is doing on this planet and in the universe, period.

[3:56] And we're called to participate with God in this work. But this is a formidable project for many reasons, and the work is difficult also for many reasons, and we get tired.

[4:09] We get discouraged. It seems then that keeping people motivated continues to be a challenge. So how does God motivate us when we are disappointed and when we are discouraged?

[4:23] How does he give us strength to keep going? This passage in Haggai that we're looking at this morning tells us not only how God came alongside his people then, as they rebuilt the temple in Jerusalem, it also tells us how God comes alongside us today.

[4:40] As we pay close attention to this text, we're going to see three aspects of this prophecy, through which God comes alongside his people and motivates them. He meets them in their discouragement, he strengthens his people through his presence, and he inspires his people with his promises.

[4:58] Now, if we're going to understand this passage, and to understand how it speaks to us today, it will help us to understand who these people were, and why what they were doing mattered so much.

[5:08] Their story has both a glorious and a tragic history. You see, these people were the remnant that had returned to the land of Judah when Cyrus, the king of Persia's edict, ended their exile in Babylon.

[5:23] God had judged his people for their unfaithfulness to him. Through the Babylonians, who conquered Judah and absolutely destroyed Solomon's temple. The wonderful days of Solomon's reign had quickly declined, even during his lifetime, because he and his people had been disobedient and unfaithful to God.

[5:42] In God's judgment, the kingdom was divided, and over the years in both kingdoms, despite some times of revival, the spiral of sin continued. God judged them through war and various afflictions.

[5:55] He spoke to his people through the prophets, calling them back to faithfulness, and warning them that he would remove them from the land if they failed to repent. As the people's rebellion continued, the message of the prophets started to change.

[6:09] They now announced that God had decided to judge them and would send them into exile. But it was also an unexpected message. God promised that he would restore a remnant of the people to the land, and that he would keep the promise that he had made to their forefathers, despite their unfaithfulness.

[6:27] Judgment was coming for sure. But God was promising a bright future beyond exile. So when the time of their exile was done and Cyrus issued his decree, these people, stirred by God's spirit, had returned home with high hopes.

[6:43] As one commentator explains, the Jews who had returned from Babylon had been given to expect the very desert to burst into flow. Instead, they found the desert encroaching on their fields and orchards as one year of drought succeeded another.

[7:00] They got to work, however, and laid the foundations for the temple. But the work stopped as they started to experience trouble, opposition from enemies around them. Years had passed.

[7:12] In chapter 1 of the book we're looking at, in chapter 1 of Haggai, God rebuked them for failing to complete the rebuilding of the temple, instead focusing on their own homes and livelihoods. God explained to them that the drought and hardship that they were experiencing was the consequence of failing to prioritize their relationship with him.

[7:31] He instructed them to resume the work. The place of God's presence among them was the temple. By building the temple, they would honor him and be blessed by him.

[7:43] You know what? Something wonderful happened. In response to Haggai's rebuke, the leaders and all the people obeyed God and resumed the work on the temple. If you glance back in chapter 1, in verse 14, it says, And the Lord stirred the spirit of Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and the spirit of Joshua, the son of Jehoshadak, the high priest, and the spirit of all the remnants of the people.

[8:06] And they came and worked on the house of the Lord of hosts, their God. So, that sounds good. You'd be tempted to think that all was well now, wouldn't you? They were rebuilding the temple with the presence of God's pleasure and presence, sorry, with the promise of God's pleasure and presence and blessing.

[8:26] Surely this is going to be a great success. But the prophecy we are considering today right at the start of chapter 2 came less than a month after what we just read at the end of chapter 1.

[8:38] And this prophecy comes to discourage people. So let's look then at how God meets his people in their discouragement. And this is my first point. God meets his people in their discouragement.

[8:50] Look with me at verse 3. Who is left among you who saw this house in its former glory? How do you see it now? Is it not as nothing in your eyes?

[9:04] Isn't this disappointing? That's essentially the question that God asked Zerubbabel the governor and Joshua the high priest and all the people. This temple you're building, isn't it just so disappointing?

[9:16] When God spoke of this house in its former glory, those words would have cut through everyone who heard them. A few of them would have been old enough to have seen Solomon's temple before it was destroyed.

[9:31] It was still a magnificent structure. Even after it has lost most of its original splendor when its contents were plundered in the years before its destruction. Isn't this disappointing?

[9:43] Is it not as nothing in your eyes? You see, that temple was built by over 150,000 workers and celebrated by thousands upon thousands of their countrymen.

[9:56] And now here they were, a ragtag remnant trying to resurrect the ruins of a glorious past. Can you imagine how discouraged they must have been? And how could God say this to them?

[10:10] Wasn't he the one who gave them the task? Weren't they obeying him? Disappointment threatens us. We feel disappointment when our experiences fall short of our expectations or of our previous experiences.

[10:30] One way many people try to deal with disappointment is they ignore it. They bury it. We try to pretend, you know, like we don't actually feel how we feel. Or at least we try to tell ourselves that, you know, the way I'm feeling, that's not legitimate.

[10:43] That doesn't have to count for anything. And we just want to try to keep plugging away. But how can you possibly do that when God himself highlights your disappointment? You know, as churches who believe in the gifts of the Holy Spirit, we believe that God meets us through the gift of prophecy and he says things to us which help us in situations.

[11:05] And so, imagine you get a prophecy that says, my child, I know you're disappointed. All hiding is gone at that point in time, you know, because God himself has recognized where we are.

[11:19] Why would God begin a word to these people by highlighting their disappointment with the temple they were working so hard to build? Sometimes, God graciously highlights our disappointment.

[11:31] He brings it to light so that we know that he knows how we're feeling. Disappointment threatens our zeal. It's hard for us to give ourselves to the work when we're weighed down and disappointed, isn't it?

[11:48] Disappointment threatens our hope. It colors our view of God and his promises and leads us away from joyful, patient dependence on him. That's why our gracious God meets us in our disappointment.

[12:02] As we'll come to see, we are in the same position as the people in this text, called to give ourselves to God's project but faced with the reality of disappointment. But what we're involved in building is even more significant than what they were building.

[12:18] You see, for the people of Judah, the temple in Jerusalem was the centerpiece of their worship of God. But since the coming of Jesus, a massive shift has taken place. In a conversation with a woman from Samaria that many of you would be familiar with, Jesus said, Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.

[12:41] At another occasion in conversation with the Jews, Jesus said this, Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up. Now what he said didn't make any sense to the people who were hearing him because they knew that that temple at the time took 46 years to build?

[12:58] How could Jesus rebuild it in three days if it were destroyed? Thankfully, the Bible provides clarification. But he was speaking about the temple of his body.

[13:10] When Jesus died for our sins on the cross, he rose from the dead three days later fulfilling the prophecy he made to those Jews. Jesus has become the centerpiece of our worship of God.

[13:22] He is the new temple. He is the place of God's presence, a place of communion and of blessing. In fact, the temple in the Old Testament was a picture of what Jesus would become for us.

[13:36] And those of us who put our faith in him are joined to him and in a mysterious way become a part of that temple. The Apostle Paul in a letter to Christians in Ephesus describes us this way.

[13:48] So then you are no longer strangers and aliens but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone in whom the whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple in the Lord.

[14:08] In him, you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. What God is building through us is a temple of people.

[14:21] A living temple. And we are called to participate in making this temple a glorious place reflecting our glorious God. Now, that sounds good, doesn't it?

[14:31] I mean, that's a nice vision to have. And as wonderful as it is, it's also hard, isn't it? Our job isn't just to sit back and look pretty.

[14:43] I mean, you guys could do that. You guys could just, if that was all that was involved, you could come here, dress nicely, sit down, and look very presentable. No, we have an active role to play in what God is doing in his church.

[14:57] Isn't it amazing how you can start to obey God or begin to respond to God's commands as you grow to understand them and so now you're responding in some new way and you start out with joy and with enthusiasm and with energy looking to God's promises and within a matter of weeks you find yourself discouraged and disappointed?

[15:20] As we seek to obey God, disappointment comes at us in many ways as God's people. Maybe for you, you're battling disappointment because you've been praying about some situation and God just doesn't seem to be answering your prayers.

[15:33] Or maybe you've been investing in someone for years and years and it just doesn't seem to yield fruit. Maybe there's a brother or sister around you who has been struggling with sin and you are trying to come alongside them and to offer God the counsel but they're shunning your counsel and just continuing the pattern they're in.

[15:55] Maybe you're single and even after years of committing to community you still don't feel like you belong. Maybe you've reached out to others to build relationships and you don't feel like your efforts are being reciprocated or even appreciated.

[16:11] Maybe you're a young person and you're trying to own your faith and to own this thing we call church but you don't feel like you have a voice or that your questions are being welcomed.

[16:22] When God asks us isn't this disappointing? When he highlights our disappointment we can be assured that he knows exactly how we are feeling. We don't have to bury our disappointment and as we'll soon come to see it doesn't have to sap our commitment to each other or our energy for the work he's called us to.

[16:41] But what God asks these people in verse 3 isn't the only significant thing here. When he asks it is also of great significance.

[16:52] In verse 1 of chapter 2 we're told that the word of the Lord came to Haggai on the 21st day of the 7th month. This was the last day of what was called the Feast of Tabernacles. It was a festival celebrated by all the people so they would live in tents and would spend as one commentator puts it seven days in happy memory of God's sustenance and protection during the Exodus wanderings.

[17:15] It also came at the end of their agricultural year so it was a time of thanking God for the harvest but this celebration was bittersweet. You see God's hand had been against them so the harvest was meager.

[17:29] Things were hard and the work was hard and this temple wasn't going to be anything to write home about. What did all of that mean about their hopes for relationship with God?

[17:40] The prophets had spoken about their restoration and of a glorious future for them and this didn't seem to be anything like that. Just like the Jews of that day our lives and our celebrations are often bittersweet.

[17:55] God has delivered us from slavery to sin and brought us into a new relationship with himself and into a new family which is also his new temple. We sang of that this morning. He's supplying all our needs in Jesus.

[18:08] We gather each Sunday to celebrate our deliverance but I don't know about you but sometimes in church I look around and the people I see are actually reminders of my disappointment.

[18:21] Sometimes you make eye contact with somebody and you remember that last conversation we had just didn't go well. I really was trying to help but for whatever reason our communication went awry and there was offense and now you're trying to make it up and sometimes you don't even feel like it ever really goes back to the way it was.

[18:44] A couple weeks ago a friend of mine in Jamaica was in touch with a bunch of us and reported going to church and being confronted by an older woman in the church and she was so offended by the way this woman approached what she said that coming out of the exchange she really felt like you know what I'm just going to have to change the way I relate to this person I didn't expect this from them.

[19:06] Thankfully she wrote a few weeks later and said there was reconciliation the person apologized! and they were able to talk it out but just hearing about that situation reinforced to me how much of a threat disappointment is to the type of relationships God wants us to build as believers.

[19:26] That's why it's so important not just to know that God knows how we feel we also need to hear from him how he wants us to respond to our disappointment and to our discouragement and that's the second aspect of this prophecy that I want you to note and this is my second point after meeting his people in their discouragement God strengthens his people through his presence so look back in your Bibles at verses 4 and 5 look at how God commands and reassures his people be strong be strong be strong work for I am with you declares the Lord of hosts my spirit remains in your midst fear not three times he calls the people to be strong even in the face of their discouragement and fear he speaks to their leaders and he speaks to the people themselves he commands them to work to continue to exert themselves in the building of the temple but God doesn't just give them a command this command comes with the comfort of his presence with them even though the project looked to them as if it would be a disappointment

[20:37] God himself was with them by his spirit and in saying this God identifies himself as the commander of the heavenly armies the Lord of hosts this wasn't some private project of theirs it was an undertaking of cosmic importance backed by the cosmic super power in these verses God reminds them of his faithfulness to them despite their history of unfaithfulness and their recent exile work for I am with you declares the Lord of hosts according to the covenant that I made with you when you came out of Egypt my spirit remains in your midst fear not God had delivered them from Egypt and promised to bring them into the promised land and to make his home among them despite judgment and exile God was still determined to deliver on that promise he was standing ready with the full backing of an angelic army to act on their behalf you see just like these people were called by God to work but our building project is not identical to theirs when the New

[21:47] Testament starts to explain to us the nature of the work we've been called to it consistently makes it sound like good but challenging work we are called you are called Kingdom Life Church to build each other up serving each other with the gifts you've been given maintaining unity being patient with each other and speaking the truth of the gospel in love to each other but built right into many of those instructions is a sense of the difficulty involved isn't it listen to a few more walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called with all humility and gentleness with patience bearing with one another in love and let us not grow weary of doing good for in due season we will reap if we do not give up above all keep loving one another earnestly since love covers a multitude of sins love endures all things now I figure you're like me if something you're doing is thoroughly enjoyable there's no need for endurance you know when you're watching a movie that you've been longing to watch you know you don't invite a friend over and say hey come and endure this movie with me you know or I came in yesterday and Alexine had cooked I get to the house and food is ready I wasn't like oh

[23:07] I'm just gonna endure this meal you know with patience God give me patience to make my way through this no it was wonderful I didn't need patience and endurance the point is we need patience and endurance when things are hard so all of those commands we looked at just express the fact that this is good work but this is hard work that's how it is sometimes as we seek to love and serve each other isn't it you see when sinful suffering saints are called to love other sinful suffering saints it's hard work you see we like them have strong reasons to be encouraged and to work hard as we seek to be obedient to God's command to build his temple to build each other up and pour out our lives in service for each other God has already done the impossible his deliverance of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt pointed forward to the ultimate exodus that he accomplished in

[24:09] Jesus bringing a new people for himself out of slavery and even though we are surrounded by opposition living in a world that hates Jesus with a spiritual enemy bent on destroying us God has brought us into relationship with himself and promised us a glorious future so look around the room look at the faces of these brothers and sisters do you know that each one every one of us who has put our trust in Jesus will shine like stars in the kingdom of God when Jesus returns right now it's easy to look around and just see people's flaws isn't it I'm painfully aware of my own shortcomings my wife and children in particular suffer with me because of my remaining sinfulness one of my sins is that I'm judgmental it's much easier for me to look at people and see what's wrong than it is to see the grace of God operating in their lives and it happens so easily it happens automatically for me and I'm just praying that God will continue to work on my heart but you know my children will be doing well but I'll be seeing the thing that little thing that needs adjustment that needs to change you know and if I'm not careful

[25:20] I'll be harsh with them I will not give praise for the things that God is doing in their lives and the way he's changing them but I will make sure to give very detailed correction for the thing that needs to change so you can see the way that that stains the way I relate to people and speak to them but you know one day I will be glorious one day you will be glorious we will be glorious God has started a work in us and we'll be faithful to complete it God's spirit is in our midst so we have great encouragement don't we to work hard at building each other up the promise of God's presence alongside a command to work is echoed in the New Testament also work out your own salvation with fear and trembling for it is God who works in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure a lot of people personalize that command you know but Paul gives that command as he was teaching believers to live lives of humble service towards each other God knows the difficulties and discouragements we face he knows that we're prone to disappointment to become discouraged and for a zeal to wane so just like he did for the people in Haggai's day he reminds us that the promise he made to us when he saved us is that he'd be with us by his Holy Spirit just like he did for them he speaks to us today through his word to strengthen us for another week of serving each other God's presence is in our midst but what difference does it make if God's presence is in our midst this passage tells us God's presence means we can be strong it means we can work it means we can be unafraid God

[27:07] God knows that often we feel weak as we seek to serve each other we feel powerless and ineffective my children are still fairly young but even that that that role of trying to shape them trying to lead them to relationship with God trying to help them to see their need for a savior some of the time something happens and I just don't know what to say I don't know what to do and it's weird you have this moment as a parent where you know you need to say something the child is there you are there and you're I'm just like don't know what to say sometimes I feel my own weakness I feel my own inability sometimes in sharing with friends and trying to counsel people through difficult situations I'm at a loss for words I you know sometimes you feel like you're saying the same thing again and again and you just wonder God is this making any difference am I meeting this person in their need the challenges we face are real and we sometimes just feel the weakness of our humanity but the command comes to us be strong be strong parents don't check out or give up work for God is with you he's with us by his spirit in every conversation and in every moment don't be afraid his presence is with us and he makes us strong and courageous husbands and wives continue to patiently serve each other seeking gently to confront challenge and encourage Christ likeness in your spouse don't resign yourself and stop trying be strong work for God is with you don't be afraid as members of

[28:46] Kingdom Life Church continue to come alongside your leaders and humbly offer help encouragement and feedback be strong work for God is with you the presence of God is with us each day empowering us for obedience for obedience now the thing is if we seek to serve others from any other place from the place of our own wisdom from our own personality traits or from the latest and greatest approach to helping people it won't be sustainable we're not going to make it in this long race what this passage commends to us what it calls us to do is to remember the promise of his presence and to walk in that God is with you the Lord of God is with you the Lord of God of hosts my spirit remains in your midst fear not God strengthens us through his presence now we come to the third aspect of this prophecy through which God comes alongside his people and motivates them this is my third and final point God inspires his people with his promises and listen to these promises God is going to shake God is going to fill and he is going to give peace pay attention to verse 6 for thus says the Lord of hosts yet once more in a little while I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land this shaking was promised for the near future at that time God was promising to intervene decisively on behalf of his people he was promising to hold up the nations as it were and to shake out the resources that they needed to build the temple God is not some local deity the silver and gold are his he owns everything so the book of Ezra records that God intervened as he promised Darius the king of Persia ordered that the reconstruction work of the temple in

[30:41] Jerusalem be paid for out of the royal revenue and that they be furnished with everything they needed to sacrifice to the Lord the people were able to complete the rebuilding of the temple within a few years this new temple was bigger than the original temple that Solomon had built when they dedicated that house the whole community gathered and the celebration was not bittersweet it overflowed with joy years later Herod the Great lavished that temple with riches but is that all there was to this promise there's no record of anything similar to what was described before when God's presence filled the temple in Solomon's days and that temple was destroyed in 70 AD so did God keep his promise what happened to the promise to give peace in that place the fascinating thing about Old Testament property prophecy is sometimes the way God fulfilled prophecies like these that seem so obvious and straightforward is quite surprising the gospel writer Luke records that after Jesus was born he was taken by his parents to this same temple to be presented to the Lord this was required by the laws that God had given his people there was this old man named

[31:58] Simeon who had been waiting confidently to see God's promise to Israel fulfilled God had told him that he wouldn't die before he saw the Christ God's chosen Savior and Simeon exploded in peculiar praise to God when he blessed the infant Jesus Lord now you are letting your servant depart in peace according to your word for my eyes have seen your salvation that you are prepared in the presence of all peoples a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel you see God's glory did come to that temple God himself in human flesh came to that temple and Simeon held him in his land this Sunday as we've been commemorating Palm Sunday we've been remembering Jesus's triumphal entry into the city of Jerusalem in the week leading up to his crucifixion the glorious son of God came to that temple again during Holy Week a lot of what Jesus did during that week was centered on the temple he drove out the money changers and merchants out of the court of the Gentiles he taught in the temple courts and healed people he prophesied the destruction of that temple but he didn't go to

[33:12] Jerusalem mainly to do those things as we know he went there to die he willingly allowed the Jewish leaders and the people and the Romans to destroy the temple of his body he gave himself as an offering for the sins of all who would trust in him through Jesus God has given peace he has offered terms of peace to us rebels to any who would receive the gift of reconciliation to him offered through Jesus the temple in Jerusalem was only a shadow of the new temple with Jesus as the cornerstone and all of us his chosen people as living stones being built up as a spiritual house he is shaking the nation through the power of the gospel and gathering a people for himself as his treasured possession he is filling this temple with his glory even as we are being transformed to resemble him more and more as you heard a part of our plan the plan that Sean Sheldon and myself have is to go back to Jamaica to plant a church there are very few reformed churches in Jamaica there are very few therefore that are reformed and charismatic and for many churches in Jamaica the the gospel we celebrate really gets buried under a lot of rules a lot of regulations and forms of religion and maybe saying to people well get your life together and come to Jesus and then everything will be okay so we desire to join God in his mission in Jamaica and to serve a congregation but it's a daunting task you know we're looking at it and we feel unprepared I mean this year has been great for us but we look at just all of the unknowns and and sometimes you know we step back and we're like but for God's calling on our lives and the confidence in that we would wonder what we're doing and why we've uprooted our lives in this way to do this but it's this promise it's this promise that God is building something glorious and we are merely participating in it that's keeping us going it's this vision that God is gathering a people for himself through the gospel and he's making them forming them in the image of

[35:29] Christ and they will be a glorious temple for him joining with you and with all other believers through the ages to worship our God and and to give him the pleasure due to him that motivates us that's the hope we look to as we as broken people work in the trenches serving other broken people I suspect that sometimes we feel much like the people of Judah did in those days as they moved broken rocks trying to figure out what could be salvaged for the rebuilding but we as God's people are so much more than we appear to be aren't we if you've grown up in the West Indies but especially if you were raised in church church can seem so normal I came here with with Cedric this morning and we opened up and then he was unfolding a table here and doing this and doing that you know we gather every Sunday and you see most of the same people and this gathering can just seem like just another meeting that we attend and participate in and it's so easy over time to take each other for granted isn't it but this is God's church we are the people that he has gifted with his presence we are his treasured possession his sons and his daughters and this our relationships and our being joined together is the epicenter of the work of redemption that God is doing in the world i mean when we look around it doesn't seem like a spectacular place does it but this is right at the heart of what God is doing in the world so let's keep our eyes on his promise the latter glory of this house will exceed our every hope and dream as we love and serve each other

[37:14] God is making us more and more like Jesus and one day we will be perfected not just as individuals but together perfected in love and in unity so how then does God motivate us to overcome discouragement and to work hard in building his temple as God meets his people in their discouragement as he strengthens his people through his presence and as he inspires his people with his promises here is the ultimate truth that we come to see God's sure promises of a glorious future motivate us to labor faithfully in the present God's sure promises of a glorious future motivate us to labor faithfully in the present you see we have a hope that is far superior to 15 seconds inside a cash machine and we have God himself with us and working in us it's his presence and his promises that motivate us to persist in the work that he's given us so this week i want to encourage you continue to love and serve each other but remember that even though we will continue to face discouragement and sometimes succumb to it our hope is in God's faithfulness rather than our own he will be faithful to us despite our failings he will give us his word to strengthen us again and again jesus has triumphed that's what we're going to celebrate next sunday isn't it the triumph of jesus and he promised to build his church he will keep his promise and he will do so by his grace in us to help us as we set our hearts towards faithful obedience in revelation 21 verses 22 to 26 we're given another picture of the future which is linked to this prophecy that god gave to the people of judah through hagai the vision is of a heavenly jerusalem which will descend to earth in the age to come and i saw no temple in the city for its temple is the lord lord god the almighty and the lamb and the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it for the glory of god gives it gives it light and its lamp is the lamp by its light will the nations walk and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it and its gates will never be shut by day and there will be no night there they will bring into it the glory and honor of the nations god will do this he is going to fill the whole earth with his glory and we as people are going to be the centerpiece of that display so this week let's work knowing that he is with us and what we're called to do couldn't be more significant we are a part of the glorious temple that god himself is building