Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / February 7, 2016 | Route 66 - Haggai

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February 7, 2016 | Route 66 - Haggai · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: How are you guys doing?
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Little stuffy in here.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: So you guys want a greeting time.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: We give you a greeting time.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: And you say hello and sit down for the last five minutes.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: You could have led three people to Christ during that time.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you're sitting down there while they're playing.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Come on.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Get your tracks out and do something.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: No, I'm kidding.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: So the best way to start this message, if you're visiting today, I'm doing this thing called Route 66, going through the Bible and 66 Sundays.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: Which is this incredible coincidence.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: There just happened to be 66 books in the Bible.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah?
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Good.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: So, and we've reached uh one of the second shortest ones in the Old Testament today.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: And the best way for me to start is to ask you this how was your week, which I already did.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: So, were you especially busy this week?
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Is what I want to ask you.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: No, that's the kids.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Were you?
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: One nod.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: All the rest of you are too tired to nod your head.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody I know that I talked to on the phone or whatever else was like me and like Melody, we were like crazy, insanely busy this week.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there there was a women's deal this weekend.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: There's two, three hundred, I don't know, loads of women over there Friday, Saturday.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: How many of you were at the women's deal?
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Women's?
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: Really?
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Four of you.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's really good.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know where all the other women came from, but I was pretty impressed with it.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then we got Big Week.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'm representing, we got the kid, Big Weekend.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: So we had Big Weekend with the, although I'm gonna kill whoever it was, put my name on the scavenger list.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to study and do something holy for God and everything, like on my sermon yesterday, and the cars are coming in my driveway.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: We need to take a picture with you.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: We need to take a picture.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: I got out of there finally, and then I'm getting text messages while I'm watching over Pervell watching this musical going from Blaine, you know, who's the only guy I'm afraid of in the whole group, going, I need you now, you know.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: So, but anyway, and plus other big stuff happening, it just so happens this is purple, and then there were some big college games yesterday, including including the K-State Wildcats upsetting the number one team in the nation.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: So every time, you know, those of us who are lucky enough to get one of these shirts, okay, under the condition from Derek that I had to wear it this morning, but you know, we're gonna always remember this was a great weekend for K-State.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: And there were a lot of local ball games too, and there were musicals.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: There was the first uh election primary, and don't come up afterwards and tell me it was a caucus.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: Iowa was a caucus.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: I know it was a caucus, it's like a primary, okay?
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: So, and there were debates and there were all kinds of stuff.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: So uh everybody know is just really busy, and I heard something this last week.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: This is still all introduction to the message.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: Are you with me?
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so but it's important.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Someone, in answer to the question, what can I pray for you?
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: He said something I really admired.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: He said, I wish you'd pray that I might to quote him, God would help me say no more often.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh really?
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he said, it's like I want to do everything.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: Someone says, Will you do this?
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I say, Yeah, yeah, I I'd love to.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I keep forgetting there's only so much time in a day, and every time I say yes to say to something, I'm saying no to something else because I'm crowding it out.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: And at the end of the day, he said, I'm look back and I realize that sometimes I'm doing a lot of good things, and yet I'm neglecting the best things, the most important things.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, yeah, I do that too, especially on busy weeks like this one.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: And probably so do some of you.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: We do so many good things that we end up crowding out the priorities in our lives, and sometimes the very top priorities, and the first one that generally gets crowded out of our life is God.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because God's not down here in our face, text messaging us or Skyping us or emailing us or whatever, always saying, I need your time, can you give me five minutes?
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: Can we go out to lunch?
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: Can we do something?
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I've really got this urgent need down in Haiti, can you give me a little money for that?
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: Or I've got a bunch of first graders across the street who would benefit with your presence.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: Would you serve me today in their Sunday school class?
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: And because God's not down here in our face like everyone else, asking for our time or our energy or our money, we fill our time and our energy and our money and our service with all of the urgent things that are in our face because we can't say no.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so as a result, that crowds God out.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: We do it with our time, we do it with our energy.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: I said we do it with our money, and I'm thinking of our inability to say no, frankly, when we go to Walmart or Sam's Club, you know, right?
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: To pick up one or two things and then you end up out of the store pushing a cart full of stuff because we said, Oh, I I probably need that.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: Or wow, that's way too good a discount for me to pass up, even though I have no idea what it's for.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: Or the kids are coming in six months.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: I bet I bet we could use that.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so we say yes, yes, yes, yes to everything, and that's how we end up in debt.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I think if you and I could transport ourselves to heaven for a day and look down with sort of a God perspective on ourselves and watch what we are doing, we would see that suddenly we would see that what we are doing with our time and with our energy and with our money and with our services, that we are living for ourselves and we are giving God the leftovers.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: Once a week on the way home, about 7:30 from work, I'll stop by a Chinese place, a takeout place on 29th Street, and I'll pick up a cashew chicken dinner for me and Melody.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: She gets home late too, and so just one dinner for the both of us.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's partly because we don't want to overeat.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, the real reason is because I'm cheap.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, all right.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm so I bring it home and I sit down, Melody and I sit down in in the bedroom, on the floor, backs against the bed in front of the television, and uh put on the Downton Abbey episode that we've uh that we've taped, and uh we record, and then we we have ourselves just like a humdinger of a party.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, really.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: But now listen to me.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: Because we just have one meal, so what we do is we grab two plates, and one of us, she or I, cuts it in half, put half on one plate and half on the other plate.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: What I don't do is this.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: I don't say, hey, honey, I'll tell you what.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um why don't I just eat until I'm happy and then uh I'll give you whatever's left over.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now, one reason I don't say that is she'd say, say, what?
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: But the real reason I don't do that is that I'm know myself well, and I know that I really like Chinese food, and I know that I can consume a lot of Chinese food before I'm full, and I know that I would probably just keep eating and scarf almost everything there while I was watching the show, and then finally, when I suddenly realized that it was almost done, I would go, oh, okay, and then there was a lump of white rice there and a few chunks of green pepper and those limp little onion things that always push over to the side and I'd go, here you go, hon.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: The rest is for you.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now I know what she'd say at that point.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: She'd say, Oh, really?
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: All for me?
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, you so it's such a generous man, you.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: Are you sure you don't want more?
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, that's precisely what you and I do with God.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because what we do with God is we say, not out loud, but in our hearts, we say, uh, I'll tell you what, let me do what I want to do, let me do what I need to do, let me buy what I want to buy, and if there's any time left over, and if there's any energy left over, and if there's any money left over, well, I'll give it to you.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: But since we're consumers, we end up, of course, saying yes to everything that demands our time and our energy and our money, and so at the end of the day or at the end of the week, we're tired and we're tapped out, and there's really nothing left for God except for a few chunks of pepper and a little bit of limp onion.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so we hand it up to him and we say, God, I'm wow, I am really exhausted and tapped out, and I can't serve you right now.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, but by the way, won't you help me with my exhaustion and uh with my credit card debt?
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: And this morning, God sends a prophet from long ago and from far away to say, God is really kind of sick and tired of you promising to eventually, you know, come through for him and give him the leftovers when you're finally finished.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: He wants to tell you that Christianity isn't about fitting him in at all.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: That whether you treat him as Lord or not, he truly is Lord and God and priority one.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: And the sooner you realize that and start putting first things first, the happier you'll be.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: The name of the prophet is Hagai.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, how do you say that?
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you say haggai or haggai.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: My secretary said to me this week, hold it, last time you came in the office, it was haggai, and this time you said haggai.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I go, well, you know, I'm trying to keep it even, you know, just back and forth.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: And the fact of the matter is haggai is the typical English pronunciation, which is just fine.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: And the Hebrew pronunciation is haggai, so if you're really cool, you go haggai, haggai, and nobody will know what you mean.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: But uh but let me just say that always pronouncing words in the Hebrew way is not uh not something that even people that know Hebrew do.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, otherwise you'd say Nebuchadnezzar instead of Nebuchadnezzar, and nobody wants to do that because people will come up to Tony Evans afterwards, who knows the right pronunciation?
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: They go, Tony, it's actually Nezr.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: And then he'd get or you know, for instance, for instance, the place, this is all extra, guys.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: The place name Ai, have you ever heard of Ai, Joshua 6 and 7, little town called Ai?
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe, yeah.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, you know the way you pronounce that in Hebrew, I.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: I dare you to go through a whole talk, you know, on Joshua 6 and 7 saying, and then they went to I.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: I, I, I.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: Some of you think you're really proud.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, that's all extra.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: So you can say haggai or haggai, and you're fine, all right?
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: So so anyway, um the book is, I dare you to find the book.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, grab a Bible, there's some in the pew bottom in front of you.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: See if you can find this in less than five minutes.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's this tiny little book, 38 verses, two chapters.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: The fastest way to do it, I found out this week, is go to Matthew, first book of the New Testament, and go exactly 12 pages back.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: No matter what the Bible is, that'll work.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's a page and a half, Haggai.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: And now Haggai lived, let's, the first verse of the book goes like this.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: In the second year of King Darius, on the first day of the sixth month, and by the way, once you get to dates uh after about 800 BC, you actually can figure out, historians can figure out exactly the day.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: And this was on Melody's birthday.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: My wife's birthday, August 29th, 520 BC.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: She was only about three years old at the time.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: And uh.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: Lori, do not tell her I said that.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: Just kidding.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: The word of the Lord, wow, I'm loose today.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: The word of the Lord came through Haggai the prophet to Jerubabel, son of Shealtiel, the governor of Judah, and to Joshua, son of Jehosedak, the high priest.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, is that powerful?
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, are you blessed or what?
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: So, okay, but anyway, what this is is that the word of the Lord comes to this guy named Haggai, who's a prophet, and the re- and just a quickly, quickly, a two-minute seminary review, is that remember the nation of Israel was twelve tribes, and they had three common kings, the north and the south was together in a thousand BC, and they had King Saul, and the next one, the most famous king of all time, David, and then come Solomon, and then the kingdom split after 120 years or 961 BC, and it divided, they had a fight, and so twin tribes up north, they called Israel, two tribes in the south called Judah.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: And especially in the north, they were just evil, they rebelled against God, and so in 722 BC, a couple hundred years later, God just kicked them out, Assyria conquered him.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: And another hundred years later, he Babylon came and conquered the south, Judah.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: And now we move 70 years of exile, and now the generous King Cyrus of Persia has said, you can go back to the land.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so what happens is Haggai and Zachariah, his buddy, and 50,000 Israelite exiles returned from Babylon to Jerusalem and Judah.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: And number one job, job one, get ready for this, is to rebuild the temple of the Lord.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: Because the temple of the Lord was actually the center of all Israel's religion.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: This is where Yahweh sort of dwelt in his glory, and so that's their first job, and that's what they did in 538, 37, 36 BC.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: They started rebuilding and they laid down the footprint and they laid the foundation, and then what happened is they sort of lost interest.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: They had some opposition, and that made some of them afraid, and then some of them go, you know, Joe over here, he hasn't been helping us.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: I notice he's been building his house on the other side of town.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's looking pretty good.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: We haven't been building ours, we've been working on the temple, we've been living in a tent.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: I think I'll take the next couple weeks off.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: Someone else says, Yeah, Nathan, he's been out planting crops in the field instead of working here, and you know, he's raising crops and selling them, he's making a little bit of money.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so people kind of filtered away and stopped working on the most important thing, on priority one, on the temple of the Lord.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: And that lasted year after year, and then a decade and 12 and 15 years, and God said, You know what?
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a little tired of this.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: And he sent Haggai, and the Lord spoke to Haggai and said, This people keep saying, the time's not yet come, the time for the Lord's house to be built.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: They keep procrastinating, they keep saying, I'll eventually get around to it, but not right now.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: Verse 3.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: Then the word of the Lord came by Haggai the prophet to the people, saying, Is it time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses and this temple to lie in ruins?
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: God's making fun of me, He's going, Oh, okay, so you need to do a feasibility study before you can come and work on the temple.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: Not time yet.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: You've got to figure out whether you have the time and the energy and the money and so forth.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: And you're going, oh, that'll time will come where the Lord will lead.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure He'll lay it on our hearts.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: We're just gonna wait on him to let us know when to serve him down there.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: But are you doing any feasibility studies or waiting on my leading to know whether or not that you ought to build your own houses?
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: You've not only built your own houses by now, you did that a dozen years ago.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now you've renovated them twice.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: And instead of coming down here to church on the weekends, you know, down here to the temple, what you're actually doing is you're hanging around working on the house.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: And that money you used to earmark for the temple, you've now earmarked it for paneling for the den.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mention paneling.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: It does because paneling was was a luxury.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: Not even kings in that day often had paneling.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: And God says, you know what, you guys are revealing that you really have wrong priorities.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: Temple, my house is in ruins, but you have houses with walls, ceilings, gardens, barns, fences, windows, and doors.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's called putting yourself first.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: And that happens today, doesn't it?
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: You know, God, I love you, but right now I don't have the time or energy or money to serve you, but there'll be a right time for that.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: I know, and I'll know when that time comes.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, really?
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: God says.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: So did you have uh enough time and energy this week to sit down and watch television?
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: Did you check with my leading before you went shopping?
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when you went out uh with money to buy yourself a good time, did you work that out carefully?
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: Do the same kind of feasibility study?
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: Do I really have the time, energy, and money to please myself?
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: No, you didn't do that because when it comes to me, myself, and I, I just do what I want to do, what I feel like doing.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: And God says there's a double standard there.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you're saying you treat me really carefully.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna analyze that, and it's not yet time, but you don't do that with yourself.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: You don't do that with what you want to do.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: You you don't even think twice when it comes to the stuff you want to do, but if it's something for me, then you need to check it out in detail.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: I call that putting yourself first.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: You know what God says?
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: I think God says through Haggai this morning that some of you may be surprised to find that someday in your life, and maybe if the Spirit moves in your heart this morning sooner than you think, you may actually not just sing about putting God first, not just sit around and talk with other people about putting God first.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: You may actually put God first in your life.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: You may actually care more for his house than you do for your own.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: And when you do that, and when you stop the procrastination game of, well, eventually I'll get around to it, then God says, everything will change for you.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because you'll finally realize what's always been true is that you've always had the time for me.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: You've always had the energy to serve me, you've always had the money to give to me.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now, do you always have the time and the energy and the money to give to me and yet also to maintain the lifestyle that you've told yourself that you want and need to maintain?
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: Probably not.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: So at that point, you unconsciously or consciously you make a decision.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: What's the most important in life?
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: Is it God or is it me?
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: And usually, usually, it ends up being me.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this may seem to you like a crazy fanatical thought, but Haggai 1 is saying, really honestly put God first in your life.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: Recognize that there's a big competition, it's M E, and your temptation is when it comes to God to procrastinate.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: But Jesus laid it out just as bluntly when he said, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: And the New Testament's full of lines like this: deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: Set your heart on things above.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: You can't serve two masters.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: And if you dare, ask the question why?
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Haggai's ready with an answer for that question because no less than 14 times in 38 verses, the name he uses for God is Yahweh Sabayoth.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: Lord of hosts.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: It may be translated in your Bible as God Almighty.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: You can't go two or three verses without finding Lord of hosts, God Almighty.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: Literally, it means Yahweh of armies, the Lord of armies.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: What armies does God have?
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I know, because I've read books 67, 68, and 69 of the Bible, generally called Lord of the Rings.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: No, I'm kidding.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: I love Lord of the Rings.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: Now, have you ever seen those elf armies?
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever seen the soldiers in Lord of the Rings, the elves?
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, if you haven't, would you please, you know, get to it?
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: These books are gonna be in heaven, I think.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: So, but I mean, they're tall and they're straight and they're pure.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, just think of an army of legolasses.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, and and this is this is what God has.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: He has 10,000 times 10,000 angelic warriors in heaven.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: He does.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: And they're at his beck and call.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: And you know how at the end of book three of Lord of the Rings, when the war looks absolutely lost, you know, in the Pellinor fields or whatever, and all of a sudden Prince Aragorn rides out of the mist and he has uncountable numbers of irresistible warriors from beyond the grave that he brings with him, and they just sweep over the battlefield and defeat the orcs and the enemy.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: Do you realize that something similar will happen at the end of the time of time?
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: That the Middle East will look like it's being lost.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: Jerusalem will look like it's absolutely scorched.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: And all of a sudden the skies will open and the prince of heaven will ride down on a white horse, and behind him will be innumerable, irresistible forces, warriors from beyond the grave who will sweep down and they'll absolutely destroy all of God's enemies and yours and mine.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's who he is.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: He's the Lord of armies.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: So why is it again that you think that you deserve to be first in your life and you can kind of give him just the leftovers?
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: I brought along with me just for third service.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: I ran over to the children's department between services because I only thought of it.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: I brought along a little man.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: I know he's a strong little man, but he's just a little man.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to think for a second about the difference between me and my little man.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: I keep him in my pocket, I get lonely.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: Not really, but just isn't it astounding the difference between me and this little man?
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: Now think for a second about who God is.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: Once upon a time, there was no universe.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: There was absolutely nothing except for God.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then God had in his mind the idea of creating a universe, and he created it with the word of his mouth.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: And as part of creating the universe, he thought that, you know what, I'm going to create people, and he thought of you, and he created you as well, but you're a little man compared with him.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: Doesn't it make sense that you would put him first and realize that he shouldn't just get the leftovers?
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: For me, the army thing, you know, it doesn't, the Lord of armies doesn't hit me deep because today I'm more scared of like a nuclear bomb or of 12 Islamic terrorists who could behead me, you know.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: And for me, I was sitting at my computer the other day thinking, what is it that impresses me about the greatness of God?
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: And for me, to be honest, it's astronomy.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's just part of it is astronomy.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: I just think of all those stars and so forth.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: This is a picture of the Milky Way, that milky strip that you can see in western Kansas on a really dark night.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: For as you, I hope know, we're on a planet called Earth in a solar system where the sun is our governing star, but the sun is just a minor star in comparison with what used to be thought of as a hundred billion such stars in our galaxy, and now they're saying a minimum of two, three, four hundred billion, maybe as many as a trillion stars in just our galaxy.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: Where if you were in a spaceship going 186,000 miles a second, eight times around the Earth in a second, speed of light, it'd take you 100,000 years to get from one side of our galaxy to the other side of our galaxy, and this galaxy is just one galaxy, because there are hundreds of thousands, no, hundreds of millions, no, hundreds of billions of galaxies all around the universe.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: Although here's what's interesting, just recently we found out that the total mass of the universe, if you took all of the weight of the earth and all the galaxies and everything, and you weighed them in a scale, the mass, the weight, and all that stuff, would only be 5% of the total weight of the universe.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: Where's the other 95%?
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's the weight of dark matter and black holes and dark energy and so forth.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: And God, God is so great, who's scooped up the ocean in his hands, who's measured the sky between his thumb and little finger, the span of his hand, that's how great my God is.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes doesn't it make you want to sing with that song?
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: I think Chris Tomlin, indescribable, uncontainable.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: You place the stars in the sky and you know them by name.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: You're amazing, God.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: I fall on my knees.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: I fall on my knees, and yet I'm going to put myself first and give him the leftovers.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: I was sitting at my computer when I was thinking about this stuff, and I thought, you know, the other thing that kind of blows me away these days is all of the bits of information.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: The fact that there are just a trillion bits of information out there, and from the beginning of this service till the end of this service, we're going to double the amount, the bits of information that are floating out there in the sphere.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: Double the total amount of bits of information in the time of this service.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I think, who is it that can handle all of those, that can grasp all of those at the same time?
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: The answer?
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: God, oh the depths of the riches of his wisdom and knowledge.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: This information avalanche is going to keep going.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: All of the information that has ever existed in history will double every 73 days pretty soon.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't it just common sense to put God first, who knows all of this stuff, and who also knows all of the future?
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're still slow to do that, then God says, you know what?
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's a key word of the book, verse 5.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to consider your ways.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: I want to tell you, I want to explain something to you in verse five.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: Five times in the book.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: He says, stop and think.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: Have you noticed, he said, that when you left working on my temple and you went home and you started building your house and renovating it and digging in the fields?
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: Have you noticed that you've been planting much but harvesting little?
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: You've been eating but never have enough.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: You drink, but you never have your fill.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: You put on clothes, but you're not warm.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: You earn wages only to put them in a purse with holes in it.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: Have you noticed that?
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: And they go, Yeah, we've been sitting around drinking coffee every morning, God, going, life's so hard.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: Why is it?
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: Why is that we plant all these crops and then it doesn't rain?
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: God says, I got the spigot up here.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: Why do you think?
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: Why do you think you've got a draught?
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: You think I'm gonna go ahead and bless you when you put me last?
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: When you decide that on the weekends you're gonna work around the house instead of coming to my house when you decide that you're gonna spend the money on paneling for your house rather than for me, you think I'm gonna go ahead and prosper you?
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, really?
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: How's that working out for you, living for yourself, really?
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: But we do it, don't we?
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: We go, if only, if only I could have that relationship, that would fulfill me.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: If only I could have that income, that level income, that would fulfill me.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: If only I could get to that job right there, if I could have that position, that would fulfill me.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: But then what happens?
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: You get that income, or you get to that job, or you get that relationship, or finally you get a child in your house and so forth, and all of a sudden you go, I don't know.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: I thought I was gonna be fulfilled, but I'm not.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: God said, Why do you think that is?
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: Could it be that you were putting yourself first and just giving me the leftovers?
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's verses 6 through 11.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: And they listened.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: So he says to this, that's why you've got to draw it.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: And guess what they did?
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: They go, oh, that's why.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: And they went back to work on the house of God, verse 12 and 13.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: So Zerubbabel and Joshua and the entire remnant of the people, I'm reading verse 12, obeyed the voice of the Lord and feared the Lord, and they began work, verse 14, on the house of Yahweh of hold, Lord of hosts, their God.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: And as a result, Haggai, the Lord's messenger, gave this message of the Lord to his people.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: I am with you, declares the Lord.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, I don't know about you, but knowing that God is on my side, because I'm seeking him first.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, is there anything that you want more than that?
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, they go back.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: Let's move to you know, the summary of verse 10, of verse chapter 1 would be put God first, and you're gonna always wonder why life is so good.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: You put yourself first, and you're gonna always wonder why life is so hard.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because Haggai is about putting God first, putting him first in your life.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: Now we move to chapter 2, putting him first in your service, because now they're working on the temple, all right?
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: And something happens that that that happens to you and to me and to thousands of people down through life, and again shovel off the throne.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: And you know what it is?
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's this brutal game of comparison.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: We read in chapter 2 that they're building the temple and so forth, the young bucks are building the temple, they're hammering nails, they got the nail guns, they got the screwdrivers, they're building this thing and so forth.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: And the older guys, the 70-year-old guys, they're standing around and they're uh I don't know, they're spitting tobacco or they got the thumbs in their pants or something, and they're saying stuff like this.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: They're saying, wow, sheck.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: Remember the way the Solomon's Temple was 60 years ago before it got knocked down?
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, all that silver and gold.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the other guy says, and the Cedars of Lebanon, man, that was beautiful.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: This thing, this thing's got about one-tenth of the footprint of that building.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: And the young guys can hear them.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: They can hear them making this comparison.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: This building doesn't seem like anything at all compared to Solomon's temple.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's like an outhouse.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: What is going on?
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so the young guys are, you know, they're going, wow, what are we doing here?
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: What a waste of time.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: What we're doing really, really doesn't matter, does it?
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: And they're tempted to just quit.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: And you know what God says?
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: God says, you know, I am not content with you to push yourself off the throne only to put other people on it, because that's precisely what happens in a church our size, doesn't it?
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: In a church our size with people like this, do you realize?
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: Of course you do.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: You cannot help being within 10 or 20 feet every single Sunday of someone who's more attractive, more talented, more experienced, more intelligent than you.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's just the way it is.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe, okay, maybe you're at the top of the heap and you're the prettiest and most intelligent.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: But you know what?
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: You feel that way.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: You're always looking around, playing the comparison game because you you can't help it.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: And if and if there's nobody in a room like that, you can't help being exposed on Christian TV and Christian radio.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: And when you go to a conference and look at people, you know, you know, seminars and so forth, you can't help seeing people who are light years, light years ahead of you in intelligence and attractiveness, right?
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: And in talent and in gift.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: Sort of like, well, this this thing we're doing hasn't, you can't compare it with the beauty of Solomon's temple and see what happens then is you tend to go one of two ways.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: When you're playing the comparison game, you tend to either try to pull down under a cloak of criticism, you pull down that person who you think is higher than you.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so you you rag on them or you compare them or you say something about their appearance or their talent, or you know, you know, yeah, if you're if you're on, let's just say you're working in the first grade class and you notice all of the kids are always running and hugging the other person and never you.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you go, well, you know, she's always giving them crackers.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: Or, you know, if if if you look at the person on stage and they're singing, you know, they're they sing better than you, or person who's teaching the Sunday school class teaches better than you, you go, well, you know, they sure got that thing wrong, or man, she messed up on that song, right?
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's a devastating, ugly way to live.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: But it's what we do when we play the comparison game because we're we're just overwhelmed by feelings of inferiority and inadequacy and insufficiency.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: And the other thing we do, maybe we don't pull them down, but the other thing we do is we just back out.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: We just we just quit.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: Why should I work here?
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: You remember the story of the talents in the New Testament?
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: God, you know, the master gave five talents to one, two talents to one, and one talent?
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: Which of the three of them is the one who backed out, who hid the talent in the ground because they were afraid?
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have any talents to waste.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's always the one talent person, at least in their own mind, who's afraid, who hides their talent, who says, you know, I don't think I'll serve because I I, you know, I'm nobody really likes me as much as the other people, and I don't teach as well, and I'm not, you know, and I'm not not as smart as they are, or they have far more experience.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, what God hates about that is it's just putting someone else up on the throne.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: Now it's putting other people on the throne, and so God encourages them and he encourages you.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: He says in Haggai 2, 4, listen, take courage, take courage, take courage, he says it three times, and get back to work, for I am with you, declares the Lord of hosts, which leads us to one of the great ministry principles in the Bible.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: It is not the greatness of who I am that counts, but the greatness of the one who is with me.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: Amen?
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: Say that out loud with me right now.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: It is not the greatness of who I am that counts, but the greatness of the one who is with me.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_00: You put God first by not comparing yourself with other people.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: And the other encouraging thing God says is not just I am with you, but I am a builder too, and I am looking at the future of what you are working on.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna shake the nations.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: The gold and silver of all the nations is gonna come into this, and I'm gonna fill this house with glory, says the Lord of armies, and the glory of this present little shack will one day be greater than the glory of Solomon's temple, says the Lord Almighty, and in this place I will grant peace, declares the Lord Almighty.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: How did that happen?
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it happened because in the days of Jesus, King Herod built this beautiful golden silver temple, one of the seven wonders of the world, but Jesus himself was in that temple and filled it with his glory and filled it with his peace.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: And God says, I'm a builder too, and I'm just not looking at what you're doing today.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'm looking, I'm looking down the years, I'm looking at the impact of that little thing you are doing today.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm looking at things you can't even see.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: You are building something you can't even see.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: Don't you remember Abraham and Sarah?
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: Hundred years old nearly.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: Would you have ever thought that this childless couple that old, so weak and frail, would ever be your father, the father of the faith, father of Israel, father of the church.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: Why is that?
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: Because the important thing is not what you do, the important thing is what I do with what you do.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: Ministry principle number two, it's not, say it with me, it's not the greatness of what I do that counts, but the greatness of what God can do with what I do.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: Dear friend, if you're going to put God first in your life, then you need to put him first in your life with your time and with your energy and with your money.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: But as you do that, you'll find that as you start serving God, you'll begin, you can't help it, you'll begin comparing yourself.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: And God says, I'm not happy with you pushing yourself off the throne of your life only to put someone else on because they're more talented or beautiful than you.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: No, I want to be on the throne.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so I want to remind you that it's not the greatness of who you are, but the greatness of who I am, and it's not the greatness of what you're doing, but what I can do with that little thing that you're doing.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_00: Haggai.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_00: Putting God first.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: And if you put me first, he ends the book with this I will bless you, and I'm gonna bless you from this time on.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's really true.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: The book of Haggai says it.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_00: Put God first, and you'll always be amazed that your life is so good.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_00: Put yourself first, and you'll always be amazed that life is so hard.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we thank you for the opportunity to put you first at work and put you first at home, to put you first with our time, put you first with our energy, put you first with our money, put you first in our relationships, and now for the next few minutes to put you first in our thoughts as we eat the bread and drink the cup and think back to the greatest moment in our lives, that moment when your son, Jesus, died with us and for us, and for our sin.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.