Preface: How are you spending your time today? Do you not see this nation of ours as it is....and at times....if you let your guard down....do you not weep.....maybe even profusely. Take forty minutes and listen to a J. C. Ryle sermon....that great London preacher....who along with Charles Spurgeon and a few others....warned England in the latter half of the 19th century. Those who rejected Ryle and Spurgeon in their day....today wish they would not have....and it will be the same for those today who have no time for Christ.....maybe the contrived Christ of our weak churches....but not the living Christ who does not gently ask of them some of their precious time....but commands them to listen and to heed. The sermon I have in mind I listened to this morning....just Google....J. C. Ryle....sermon....Eternity.
I have increasingly over the years posted thoughts such as the above. If these are not judgments that we have been receiving....and you ignore or ridicule or take offense at how many of these warnings are addressed directly to the modern church....then maybe you are right....but on the other hand....if the Lord is near....and if we have indeed ignored fifty years of increasing warnings....and judgments....then you are in a very precarious position right now....church member or not.
Haggai.....his job.....should he accept it....and he did....(his words did not self-destruct after five seconds....but still speak to us today.....should we accept it)....was to reprimand the Jews who Cyrus had cleared the way for....to rebuild their temple....but they had not....instead they set about remodeling their own homes.
You see we thought it necessary to make America great again.....but the church was in a state of great disrepair....false prophets were everywhere.....and the shepherds did not watch over the sheep. God told the people through Haggai....twice in short order....and twice again later...."consider your ways." That appears to be what He is saying to us as He let us play around with Donald Trump for a while....showed Trump to be the mockery that he was and is....and yet we apparently want to do it again! It is not that we might individually work on or repair our own homes....or our government....but that here we are remodeling...and adding to....and even rebuilding our churches today....towards a seemingly greater outward glory.....whereas inside those doors....the glory has long departed....Ichabod....we may thus celebrate a structure....but not the God who is to dwell in that structure!
"Now, therefore, thus saith 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." (1:5,6,7)
If God is telling us the same thing that He told told the Jews through Haggai....then we also are to begin rebuilding on the foundation that has already been laid. Well....the leaders in both the church and the state.....and also the remnant that was there....obeyed this Word of the LORD! John MacArthur wrote a book a few years ago.....and I highlighted it in these posts a few times.....and in it he very forcefully said that we were to.....rebuild this church. That book is Christ's Call To Reform The Church...Timeless Demands From The Lord To His People. Michael Horton was even more precise in his book....Christless Christianity. You can visit the websites of both of these men at....gty.org....and/or...whitehorseinn.org. The first chapter of Haggai ended with this....
"And the LORD stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel....and Joshua....and the spirit of all the remnant of the people....and they came and worked on the house of the LORD of hosts, their God." (1:14)
So we go on to the second chapter of Haggai. Here is where the people are told to look at the temple being built.....and seeing how it is nothing like the former....to take heart.....and be strong....and continue.....for He the LORD is with us! We are not to fear....not the Democrats....nor our enemies....nor in my case this horrid man Trump. We are not to despise the day of small things....(Zechariah 4:10)....but that day must begin sometime!
"For thus says the LORD of hosts: Yet once more, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land....and I will fill this house with glory. says the LORD of hosts." (1;6,7) and...
"Consider from this day onward....Since the day that the foundation of the LORD's temple was laid-consider carefully." (2:18)
The glory of the LORD was present in the tabernacle of Moses....and in the first temple.....but it departed because of the rebelliousness of the people....just as the glory that was once in the church of today in America....had also departed....Ichabod....because of what we had become and the directions that we chose to go. Haggai then gives a few short sermons....beginning with chapter 2 verse 11....describing how to the Jews of that day....and us today....we have fashioned a church in ways that do not please or honor the Lord. Haggai informed them of what had happened....and why it happened....and pointed to the coming of the Messiah....where the glory of the LORD will once again fill His house! That....'pointing'.....is to us today....the same message.....the Messiah is coming again.....take heart.....for He has chosen us!
Folks....this is how I read the book of Haggai. I'm not a shepherd....I'm just an old man shouting to the shepherds that their flocks are scattered all over the surrounding hills.....eating that which they should not....and unconcerned about wolves roaming those same hills. Read for yourself....pray for our pastors....for mercy extended upon them....is mercy extended upon us....and all this would be to the glory of the the LORD of hosts!
