Listen from the church of Christ in Normal.
Introduction
1) Recap: God’s people started building the temple 15 years ago and then stopped. Haggai comes along and tells them to get busy, and they actually listened.
2) The people got busy, but their efforts were immediately discouraging.
A) Hag. 2:3 – “Is it not as nothing in your eyes?”
1) cf. Ezra 3:11b-13
2) Zech. 4:8-10a
B) My desktop: First make it. Then make it good. (The first make it part is embarrassing.)
God has 3 answers to the people’s discouragement. This lesson will his first:
Hag. 2:6-9 – God will shake the nations
1) Immediate fulfillment: Not only permission, BUT FUNDING, to rebuild God’s temple.
A) Ezra 1 (esp. vv. 9-11)
1) vv. 9-10 = 8.8 mil (all amounts from Gemini on 9/24/26)
2) v. 11 = 20-30 mil total (add extra smaller items)
3) Consider what God did to make this happen:
(a) He established and built up the Persian Empire.
(b) He caused the Persians to go to war against Babylon, and he gave the Persians the victory.
(c) He put it into the heart of the new most powerful man in the world to not only let the Jewish people go back to their land, but also to give them back their stuff that the Babylonians took in order to fund their new temple.
B) Tattenai’s opposition
1) Ezra 5:3-5
2) Tattenai’s letter (5:6ff.)
3) Darius’ response (6:6ff.)
(a) Ezra 6:6-12 (esp. vv. 8-9 – YOU pay for it)
C) Ezra 7-8 (about a 60 year gap between when the temple was finished and Ezra)
1) Ezra 7:12-23 (esp. vv. 15ff.)
2) Ezra 8:26-27 – What they took
3) Prompt on Gemini, Grok and ChatGPT: What is the value in today’s dollars of the items listed in Ezra 8:26-27? All said around $500 million dollars!
D) POINT: 7:27 – None of this was accidental!
E) Conclusion
1) Hag. 2:3 – The people are discouraged
2) Hag. 2:6-9 – God’s message is that he has things under control in ways that you can’t even imagine.
2) I don’t know what the thing is that you’re worried about, but if you’re worried about it because you don’t know if God has it under control then let’s go ahead and get that our of our system.
A) Gen. 18:10-14 – “Is anything too hard for the Lord?”
B) After God told Jeremiah to buy land in Jerusalem while it was under siege.
1) Jer. 32:14-17…but v. 25 (reasonable doubt)
2) vv. 26-27 – God: “Is anything too hard for me?”
C) Eph. 4:20 – (end of Paul’s prayer) – God is “able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think…”
3) Ultimate fulfillment
A) Hag. 2:7 – “I will shake all nations, so that the treasures of all nations shall come in…”
1) We can see God’s promise to Abraham here. Gen. 12:3 – “In you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”
2) Through Jesus anybody in this room can be a part of God’s family no matter what “nation” you are.
3) Is. 2:2-3 – Magnetic pull up the mountain.
4) Rev. 7:9-10
B) Heb. 12:18-29
1) Hebrews was written to Christian who were on the verge of falling away because they were being persecuted for their faith. The Hebrew author wrote to encourage them to stay faithful to Jesus because what they have in Jesus is better than anything else they can possibly imagine.
2) vv. 25-29
3) POINT
(a) God shook Mt. Sinai (Ex. 19:16-19)
(b) He shook the Babylonian and Persian Empires
(c) He is in control of the world today
(d) And he will, when he is ready, shake the entire created universe. And when he does the only things left standing will be the things that he wants to be left standing.
4) So what?
(a) Matt. 7:24-27
(b) 1 Cor. 3:10-16
(c) Remember Hag. 1:6. The things we put ahead of God will not amount to anything anyway.
(d) Let’s make sure we’re building up God’s house and doing his work in the ways that he wants us to be, (and that includes you and your life, family, church), so that on the day when God shakes the heavens and the earth we’ll still be standing.