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Good morning. My name is Lindsay Ng and I am a youth at Christchurch.
Today's reading is a reading from the prophet Haggai.
It came by the hand of Haggai the prophet.
Is 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,
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 wages does so to put them into a bag with holes.
Thus says the Lord of hosts, consider your ways.
Go 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 look 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 in all their labors.
The grass withers and the flowers fade,
but the word of our God stands forever.
Good morning.
My name is Andrew and I'm one of the pastors here
and I'm looking forward to sharing God's word with you this morning.
Will you join me in prayer?
Father, we want to hear from you today.
And I just pray as your mouthpiece
that you would make much of my little,
that the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart
would be pleasing to you and be good for your people.
You are our Lord, our rock, and our redeemer.
We want to hear from you.
Fill our hearts with love toward you
and awe at who you are
and a desire to follow you
even when it's hard.
Give us your spirit to do that, we pray.
We pray all these things in the name of Jesus.
Amen.
So like Jonathan had mentioned,
like Eric had mentioned,
today is the first Sunday of Advent.
We're beginning the Christian liturgical year.
And Advent, it means coming, right?
So this is a season where we anticipate
and we prepare for the coming of the Messiah King.
Just as the people of God in ancient Israel
waited for the coming Messiah,
so the people of God today,
we await the return,
the second coming of the Messiah.
This is a season of longing and hope.
And can I just say that it's so important,
it's so important to hold these two things together,
longing and hope.
Longing and hope.
Because longing without hope is just despair.
And hope without longing,
it's really devalued.
Hope without longing is devalued.
Now as we enter into Advent today
with the words of the prophet Haggai
to these returning citizens in Israel,
that's what's going on here,
they're returning from exile,
I think we get a picture in this story
of what happens when we long,
yet without hope.
And I think we're going to see that
when we long without hope,
we'll always end up attaching ourselves
to lesser hopes
that will eventually let us down.
And the constant letdowns
only lead us into a downward spiral
that increases our longing
and our disappointment
and our despair even more.
And not only that,
but the downward spiral
will also just only turn our attention inward,
make us inward focus on ourselves
in an individualistic, defensive,
and self-preserving posture.
That's what it does
when we long without hope.
That's what it does.
It's no good for anyone.
It's no good for ourselves.
Longing without hope
preoccupies us with our own houses
and our own fields
and our own lands
and our own security.
But the good news of Advent,
the good news of the gospel
is that there is hope.
There is a king.
He has come and he's coming again.
And he's building for us
an imperishable house,
an imperishable kingdom
because he wants to dwell with us forever.
The good news of Advent
is that when we sing,
O come, O come, Emmanuel,
which means,
O come, O come,
God with us,
he answers us and says,
I am.
The God and king of the universe,
when we say,
O come, O come, Emmanuel,
he says,
I am coming.
I am coming to be with you.
And in fact,
I'm building a house.
I'm building a house
to be with you forever.
And that's the point
of our text this morning
as we enter into the Advent season
through the prophet Haggai.
God was saying to his
groaning people,
Israel, back then,
and he's saying to us
groaning new covenant people,
today,
I hear your groaning.
I know your longings,
but your greatest need
isn't your own house.
Your greatest need
is my house.
And you're invited.
What you need most,
what is of the utmost importance
is not your own house,
but my house.
Or as Haggai calls it
in verse two,
the house of the Lord.
The house of the Lord.
Now, before we dive
into the context
of Haggai chapter two,
I want us to understand
the significance
of the house of the Lord.
We need a wide-angle view
from Scripture
of what the house
of the Lord is.
And to put it simply,
it's so much more
than a building, right?
To put it simply,
the house of the Lord
is another way
of talking about
the temple in Jerusalem.
And man,
there's so much I'd like to say
about the temple,
but let me just say this.
The key point of the temple,
the house of the Lord,
is the presence of God.
The presence of God.
The meeting place
between heaven and earth,
between God and humanity.
And this has always been
God's heart
from the very beginning.
From the very beginning
of creation.
In the book of Genesis,
we see that God
has always sought
to build a house,
a dwelling place,
to be with His people.
Like while every other
ancient Near Eastern religion
placed images of their gods
in their temples,
God, He created Adam and Eve
in His own image.
And He placed them
in the garden.
And He made them priests
in that garden.
He gave them the same job
that He gave the priests
of Israel.
He said, guard it,
cultivate it,
protect it,
nurture it.
That's exactly what He said
to the priests
of the tabernacle
and the temple as well.
And most importantly,
there in the garden,
God walked with us.
God walked with His people.
He met with them.
He walked with them
and they enjoyed
each other's presence.
And this is how it begins
and this is also how it ends.
At the end of the Bible,
in Revelation chapter 21,
Revelation chapter 21,
it talks about the city
and the temple
and the final dwelling place
of God and His people.
And it says this,
I saw the holy city,
the new Jerusalem,
coming down out of heaven
from God.
And I heard a loud voice
from the throne saying,
look,
God's dwelling place
is now among the people
and He will dwell with them.
They will be His people
and God Himself
will be with them
and be their God.
He will wipe away
every tear from their eyes.
There will be no more death
or mourning
or crying or pain
for the old order of things
has passed away.
And then He says,
I did not see a temple
in the city
because the Lord God Almighty
and the Lamb
are its temple.
So see,
this has always been
God's intention.
Even in spite of Adam and Eve's
sinful rebellion,
their failure as priests
to guard that garden
and their open rebellion
against God
in His original dwelling place,
God chose mercy.
God chose grace
time and time again
and He never abandoned
His plan
to dwell with His people,
to be with His people.
That is the heart of God,
to be present with us,
God with us.
And He made covenants
to ensure that this would happen,
covenants with sinful people,
sinful Abraham,
sinful Israel,
dwelling among them
in their mobile tabernacle,
right?
After delivering them
from Egypt
even while they complained
and whined
and groaned
and grumbled,
He still dwelt with them
in that moving tabernacle.
And then,
dwelling with them
for an even longer time,
He dwelt with them
in Jerusalem,
in Solomon's temple,
even while the nation
of Israel
continued
with their injustice
and their infidelity.
I'm glad it's done.
God's a God
who wants to dwell with us.
He wanted to dwell
with the people
with Adam and Eve
in the garden.
He wanted to dwell
with His rescued Israelites
out of Egypt
in the tabernacle.
He wanted to dwell
with His sinful,
unjust,
wayward,
idolatrous people
in Solomon's temple.
And even though
He would eventually
send the Babylonians
and come
and they would destroy Jerusalem,
they would destroy
the temple,
and He would allow
that first temple
to be destroyed,
even then,
He never gave up
on His covenant
with them.
He never gave up
on His promise
that He would be with them.
And He brings them back,
right?
He brings them back
after 70 years
from Babylonian exile
just as He promised.
And then you have
a small remnant
of about 50,000 Israelites
who've chosen to return
and rebuild
and resettle
in their homeland.
And they begin to farm.
And they begin to rebuild
the walls of Jerusalem again.
And most importantly,
they begin working
on the second temple.
And they laid down
its foundation
as one of the first things
they did
after they got back
from exile,
all because God's plan
has always been
to dwell with His people.
And this brings us
to where we are here today
in the book of Haggai,
to our text today,
these words from the prophet.
Here at the time
of Haggai's prophetic words,
about 16 years, okay?
16 years have gone by
since those original 50,000
have returned from Babylon
to Jerusalem.
But after these 16 years,
it's still just the foundation.
No one has built
on top of it yet.
And so this is the context
that the prophet Haggai
is speaking into.
This is what he wants to,
this is the reason
why he's giving God's word
to them, okay?
There's nothing done yet.
And he says in verse 2
to the leaders of Israel,
to the priest Joshua,
to the governors of Rebubal,
he says this,
Thus says the Lord of hosts,
These people say
the time has not yet come
to rebuild the house
of the Lord.
Is it a time for you,
yourselves,
to dwell in your paneled houses
while this house
lies in ruins?
Saying,
you built your houses,
how come you haven't built mine?
And, you know,
I think we might read this
and there might be
a tendency to
treat these Israelites harshly.
Why don't you just obey God?
Why don't you put
first things first?
But let's be sympathetic,
all right?
Let's be sympathetic
and kind of think
of some reasons
why they might have
left the temple
in ruins.
For starters,
they were returning
from exile.
Did they have tons of money?
Probably not.
Did they have tons
of resources?
Probably not.
Were they expert,
you know,
civil engineers
and architects?
Probably not.
And we also have to
imagine how daunting
a task this would have been
for them to return
to a nation still
bearing the scars
of that complete destruction
of their beloved city.
Huge piles of rubble
to get out of the way
before you can even
start building, right?
Probably not a lot
of building materials,
easily accessible.
And then the land itself
and their ancestral homes
in disarray
and disrepair.
The land had probably
lain fallow
for a very long time.
There were people
who were left in Israel too,
people usually
from the lower classes,
and now these people
had moved into
a lot of these lands
so there were legal disputes
about who belonged to
or what land belonged to whom,
not knowing if,
you know,
this land is mine
or this land is yours.
How are we going to
settle this?
The king of Persia,
is he going to
settle this for us?
And if you read back
in the biblical accounts
of Ezra and Nehemiah,
you'd also know
that there was
foreign opposition
to the rebuilding
of the city
and to the rebuilding
of the temple.
And all the builders
actually at one point
had to hold both
a shovel and a sword
at the same time
because they were
always under threat
as they were trying
to work on
the city of God.
Verse 8,
God tells them,
go up that hill
and get that wood,
bring it down.
Who wants to go up a hill
and carry wood down,
right?
It's a lot of work.
It's going out of my way.
And then there's also
the demotivation factor,
right?
Imagine how hard
it would have been
to believe that God
actually still wanted
to dwell with them at all
after 70 years of exile.
Imagine how hard
it would have been
to believe that the
second temple,
whose foundation,
it really paled
in comparison
to the first,
was going to actually
be significant
in the plan of God.
This temple that still
was under foreign occupation,
it was much smaller,
much less spectacular
than the previous one.
How could this second temple
that we've just scrounged up,
how can this have
any significance
like the prophets
had foretold?
In Ezra chapter 3,
there's this really vivid
and awkward
and uninspiring description
of the temple's foundation.
It says this,
And all the people
gave a great shout
of praise to the Lord
because the foundation
of the house
of the Lord was laid.
But many of the older priests
and Levites
and family heads
who had seen
the former temple
wept aloud
when they saw
the foundation
of this temple
being laid.
While many others
shouted for joy,
no one could distinguish
the sound
of the shouts of joy
from the sound
of weeping.
Not exactly
an inspiring time
to build the temple, right?
And then lastly,
you just have the scarcity
and the drought
and the famine
that they're dealing with
in the land.
I think it's in verse 8,
which they don't even realize,
but it was God himself
who was preventing them
from prospering
because they let his house
stay in ruins.
Verse 9, it says,
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 labors.
They were occupied
with their own houses
instead of God's
and unwittingly
they were digging
even deeper holes
for themselves.
So I ask you again,
can you imagine
being very motivated
to build this second temple?
Can you imagine
going through a drought
and famine
and such scarcity
and having the faith
to stop working
on your own household
and start working
on God's?
Can you imagine
why they might have said,
it's just not the time
right now in verse 2.
It's just not the time
to build
the house
of the Lord.
And maybe that's how
a lot of us feel
with regard to
how much we are
wanting to invest
in the house
of the Lord.
It's just not
the right time for me.
It's not the right season.
But I think the question
for us this morning
from God's word
is when is the right time?
When is the right time?
I was really convicted
the other week.
I'll tell you two stories.
There was a time
in seminary,
I remember,
and I was trying
super hard
to get good grades.
I really wanted
to get into a Ph.D. program,
but my school
in Philadelphia,
Westminster Seminary,
has a reputation
for being quite
academically rigorous.
Like, I think
if you got a 95%,
it was an A-.
It was crazy.
I was trying so hard
to get a good GPA,
get my Ph.D.
so I could serve God
and fulfill all the plans
that I had
to serve Him.
And, you know,
I worked hard.
I worked my tail off
and I remember
there was one point
in the semester,
oh, probably several points,
but there was one time
I remember,
not only did Westminster
encourage us
to study hard,
but also encourage us
to develop spiritually
and they had chapel regularly,
they had times of meeting
with our prayer groups
and I remember
one time
I was hanging out
with my friend
in one of these public areas
and he said,
yo, are you going to
go to prayer group now?
And I said,
no, man,
I don't got time to pray.
And of course,
the vice,
or the associate dean
was there
in the same room
overhearing my conversation
and she said,
hey, man,
you don't have time
not to pray.
And she got me.
She got me.
I didn't value
the presence of God
and I didn't
see my time
as worthy of giving
to just be with him
in prayer.
Another story
I wanted to tell you
is I was taking a walk
in Alameda
the other week
with Peter Claussen,
one of our deacons,
and I was just sharing
with him
some of the things
I'm working on
in my life.
Right now,
me and our family,
we're really trying
to work on
observing the Sabbath
in a more faithful
and structured
and intentional way.
And I said,
here's my plan,
but I'm going to
start ramping up
after this milestone
in our life.
And Peter looked at me
and he's like,
oh, you're my pastor,
but can I give you
some advice?
And he said,
don't wait, man.
Waiting for that right time
to do what's right
is not the way
of the people of God.
It's not the way
of the people of God.
God's word to us today
is that it's always
the right time.
It's always the right time
to build the Lord's house
above and beyond
our own houses.
It's always the right time
to build God's house
above and beyond
our own houses.
And you might be asking,
okay, what does that even mean?
What does it even mean
to build the house
of the Lord?
Does it mean like,
you know,
yesterday when everyone came
and they put up
these nice decorations,
thank you everyone
for doing that?
Well, yeah, sort of,
but it's also a lot
more than that as well.
And I'm not saying
we all need to,
you know,
become contractors
and go build churches,
but Paul says
in 1 Corinthians 6
that the people of God,
the body of Christ,
we are the temple of God
and the Holy Spirit
dwells within us.
So when I ask,
in what ways
are we building
the house of the Lord?
I'm asking,
in what ways
are we building up
the body of Christ
with our time
and with our talent
and with our treasure?
And I'm not just saying
a simple volunteer more,
give money more,
you know,
here at Christ Church
we like to say
it's awesome
if you could worship
plus two, right?
Come to worship,
maybe get involved
in a community group
and maybe serve
on some kind of team here,
but it's so much more
than that.
What I really want
to challenge us today
is to consider
our priorities.
I want to challenge
our very priorities,
like what if the church,
what if the body
of Christ
came before our jobs?
And I'm not saying
quit all your jobs
and join me and Jonathan
to be pastors,
but like what if
we thought about
and weighed
the impacts
of our actions
on the church?
Like when we decide
to move away,
move homes,
take a more demanding job
or take that promotion
with maybe better pay
but hours less conducive
to leading people
into deeper relationships
with Christ
and His church
through community
and for the city?
And I say this
with hesitation
because the last thing
I want is for us
to be some kind of cult
and the church is big
and we are so glad
that so many people
have come through
these doors
and left
and are now serving
at other churches
in other contexts.
But what I'm trying
to press upon us,
what I'm trying
to press upon
is where does the church,
both local
and global,
the temple of God,
where's the people
of God,
the dwelling place
of the Holy Spirit
land on each
of our priority lists?
And I know this
is a big ask
because I know
I'm not asking
most of you
to stop dealing drugs,
stop murdering people,
stop robbing banks, right?
Usually when we neglect
to do the most important thing
it's not because
we're doing something
evil, bad,
or wrong,
but it's almost always
because we're so busy
doing good things, right?
And necessary things.
But God is calling us
to put first things first
here in Haggai chapter 1.
To trust Him
with the good
and necessary things
that we often
wrongly put before
the ultimate things.
We've got to trust Him.
He's the one
who closed the heavens
and withheld the grain
and the oil
and the dew
from these people of Israel
because they did not
put first things first.
Will He not also
provide all those things
richly for us
when we follow Him?
And I hope I've got
some of us thinking now,
okay, well how can I be
building up the house
of the Lord,
the temple of God, right?
The church.
Hmm.
Let me think about it.
Let me pray about it.
See what doors God
opens up.
And I'm thankful
if you're even taking
a step like that
in your minds right now.
But let me also say,
are there not some
trivial things
that we can be giving up
right now?
We often say,
oh, it's not time
for me to serve God
in this or that way.
I need to wait on God
and hear from Him
so I know exactly
how I'm going
to serve Him.
Did we put that much thought
into our decision
to watch Netflix
last night?
And again,
I have to be careful.
God is not anti-Netflix
or fun
or recreation
or rest.
But His Word
is always challenging us
to constantly examine
our priorities
and not to grow
in complacency
in our paneled houses.
And can I just
start wrapping up
by saying this?
This is not just
a matter of obey.
Give more.
Obey harder.
Try harder.
Like we like to say here,
I don't want
your generosity.
I don't want
the generosity
of your time,
talent,
and treasures
from you.
I want generosity
for you.
I want you to know
the liberating
way of being
so influenced
by the gospel
of grace,
the abundant grace
of God.
God doesn't want
more, more, more
from us.
Like He's got this
checklist of all
that we have
and He's grading us
on how much
we're going to give.
He just wants us.
People who want
to build the house
of the Lord,
people who want
to invest
in the temple,
they don't do so
primarily out of duty
but out of conviction.
The house of the Lord,
the temple of God,
the new covenant
people of God
is where the very
presence of God
resides.
Like what if we came
to church believing
that?
That this is where
the very presence
of God dwells.
The point of the temple
is not to have
an institution
to give to
or serve
or support.
Like I said
in the beginning,
the point of the temple
has always been
the presence of God
with His people.
You can ask,
does it do anything
to us to hear that?
That God,
the most high creator
of the universe,
desired not just
to be God
but to be God
with us.
God with us.
Emmanuel.
Something that
my three-year-old daughter
has been saying
a lot to me lately,
one of the nice things,
there are tons of other
not very nice things,
but one of the things
that melts my heart
every single time
is she says,
Daddy,
can you be with me?
Daddy,
can you get me more milk?
Well,
she says that every morning.
Daddy,
can you get me more goldfish?
She doesn't say that anymore.
But she says quite frequently,
Daddy,
can you be with me?
She doesn't want me
to do something
with her
or for her.
She just wants me to be.
She wants all of me
just with her.
She wants my presence
and it just melts my heart
every single time
because I feel loved,
I feel adored,
I feel honored.
What if we said that to God?
And can we hear him
saying that to us?
Can I be with you?
That's what I want,
he says.
That's what the temple
is about.
That's his heart.
God with us.
He wants to be with us.
John chapter 1,
in the beginning
was the Word
and the Word
was with God
and the Word
was God.
Verse 14,
and the Word
became flesh
and dwelt among us,
literally tabernacled
amongst us.
Do we realize
what great lengths
he's gone to
to be with us
in Christ?
God has emptied himself,
taking on humanity
to be with us
and not just to be God
with us
but to be God
crucified
by and for us.
God with us,
crucified
in Jesus Christ,
God with us.
He's the one
who went up that hill.
He went up that hill
and carried that wood
because he wanted
to be with us.
Tear this temple down,
he said in John chapter 2,
and I will raise it up
in three days.
And he did.
And he wants to raise us up too.
He wants us to know
union with him,
presence of God
with him.
Christ Church,
the temple has come
in Christ.
And the church
is his body
whom he purchased
with his blood
and united himself with
and filled
with his spirit.
that's what this is.
In the book of Haggai
and in the person of Christ,
God is inviting us
today.
He's saying,
I want to be with you.
I want to dwell with you.
I am building a house
for us
to dwell together
forever in.
Will you join me?
Will you pray with me?
Lord,
if it
does not affect us,
God,
that you,
the God of the universe,
the I am,
desire to be
God with us.
That your son says,
surely I am
with you
always,
even to the end
of the age.
If that does not
affect us,
Lord,
would you
wreck our stony hearts?
Show us
that our deepest,
our only need
is the presence
of God.
That's what we need.
Help us to prioritize
the presence of God,
the house of God
over our own
households,
no matter what the cost.
And help us to know
what great lengths
you went to,
what costs you paid
to build your house
amongst us,
to be with us,
to be our God.
Lord,
we pray these things
in the name of Jesus.
Amen.