Friends, please do turn back with me to the book of Haggai, chapter 2. Page 791 in the pew Bibles. And while you’re turning there, let’s remember who this book was written to. Haggai was ministering to a discouraged people. They had their fresh start back in the land, and already they had messed it up. They made a start, a beginning on building the temple, just like all of us have made a start on our New Year’s resolutions, but before long, other things just began to seem more important. They had their own houses to build, their own lives to get on with. And all of a sudden, sixteen years have slipped by. The temple building site lay in ruins and chapter 1 verse 10, the land is suffering all the signs of God’s displeasure. The heavens are dry; the crops are dead; the cupboards are empty. They prioritized the world instead of the God who would dwell in their midst, and they ended up with neither.
And then came two sermons from a prophet sent in love by their merciful God. Sermon one, “Why have you put your own houses before Mine? Now is the time to treasure the temple, the place where God and man come close.” And wonder of wonders, the people listened and obeyed. Sermon two – “Don’t give up. Yes, this looks small, but work, because I am with you.” And in this temple, chapter 2 verse 9, this little building site, “I will give you peace, shalom.” But how? How can God make peace with a people who have messed things up so badly already? Well, that is what the close of the book is here to answer.
If you’re sharp-eyed, you’ll spot that I have been handed with two oracles tonight, but they belong together. Both of them, verse 10 and verse 20, were preached by Haggai on the same day, the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, or in our calendars, December 18, 520 BC in the second year of the reign of Darius, a Persian king. And for Haggai, that was the day that everything changed forever. You see, that day, verse 18, was the day the foundation of the temple was laid, some formal ceremony to mark the people’s recommitment to that great kingdom building project. From now on, building the temple, that place where God might one day return to dwell in their midst, that was the thing they had set their hope on.
And so you’ll notice, as we read these sermons, that there is a “this day” and a “that day.” The first oracle, then, verses 10 to 19, will tell them how everything changed on “this day” – the day they turned their hearts back to God; the day when a contaminated covenant was restored. And then, in the final few verses, the focus shifts to a future day, a “that day” – a day, verse 23, when the God they longed to dwell with them would rule them at last through His servant king. The day when a cast off crown would be reclaimed. Let me pray, and then we’ll read it together.
Gracious God, without Your help we would have no love for Christ, no hunger for Your voice, no care for Your presence here with us. And yet we know Lord that all our good comes from the God in our midst. So we pray, would You breathe the life of Your Spirit into us now so that Your Word would do Your work in the hearts of Your children. For Christ’s sake we ask it, amen.
Haggai chapter 2, beginning at verse 10:
“On the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, in the second year of Darius, the word of the Lord came by Haggai the prophet, ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts: Ask the priests about the law: ‘If someone carries holy meat in the fold of his garment and touches with his fold bread or stew or wine or oil or any kind of food, does it become holy?’’ The priests answered and said, ‘No.’ Then Haggai said, ‘If someone who is unclean by contact with a dead body touches any of these, does it become unclean?’ The priests answered and said, ‘It does become unclean.’ Then Haggai answered and said, ‘So is it with this people, and with this nation before me, declares the Lord, and so with every work of their hands. And what they offer there is unclean. Now then, consider from this day onward. Before stone was placed upon stone in the temple of the Lord, how did you fare? When one came to a heap of twenty measures, there were but ten. When one came to the wine vat to draw fifty measures, there were but twenty. I struck you and all the products of your toil with blight and with mildew and with hail, yet you did not turn to me, declares the Lord. Consider from this day onward, from the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month. Since the day that the foundation of the Lord’s temple was laid, consider: Is the seed yet in the barn? Indeed, the vine, the fig tree, the pomegranate, and the olive tree have yielded nothing. But from this day on I will bless you.’
The word of the Lord came a second time to Haggai on the twenty-fourth day of the month, ‘Speak to Zerubbabel, governor of Judah, saying, I am about to shake the heavens and the earth, and to overthrow the throne of kingdoms. I am about to destroy the strength of the kingdoms of the nations, and overthrow the chariots and their riders. And the horses and their riders shall go down, every one by the sword of his brother. On that day, declares the Lord of hosts, I will take you, O Zerubbabel my servant, the son of Shealtiel, declares the Lord, and make you like a signet ring, for I have chosen you, declares the Lord of hosts.’”
Amen.
Well friends, before we go any further, I wonder if you can feel the thing about yourself that Haggai wants his readers to feel in verse 14. We are a church who don’t shy away from big, theological terms, so let me use one. I think the word we’re looking for is “ickyness.” Every so often I will open the fridge for a late night snack and I will discover that some young scoundrel has got there before me with their grimy hands. The first warning sign is that horrible gritty feel on the handle. Your fingers stick to it ever so slightly. The light comes on inside to reveal a world of horrors. There is peanut butter dripping down the shelves, coating the jelly jar! In fact, everywhere you look there are sticky little fingerprints, and so you give up, disgusted on your snack, you wash your hands and crawl into bed, hoping for the refuge of those crisp, clean sheets. But of course, foolish man, you have four kids and you both work. Who do you think changed the linen? And so in the dark and the grime, you say your prayers. But even there, you can’t escape those smudges of ick, because you see them, don’t you? They’re all over your heart.
Well oracle number three comes to a people who have become icky, dirty in the sight of God. Even after the exile, they have made choices that exposed a world of horrors in their hearts, priorities, all back to front. And yet Haggai’s final two sermons are about grace for grimy hands. First, in verses 10 to 19, he preaches of a contaminated covenant restored. And he begins with a question to the experts in cleaning things up. Verse 11, the priests, it was their job to distinguish between the clean and the unclean; the holy and the icky. “So let’s get their advice,” says Haggai. Two hypothetical questions. Let’s say someone has made a peace offering to God and they are on their way home from the altar with their share of the sacrifice. There’s no saran wrap, and so they have a couple of consecrated lambchops wrapped up in their tunic. If they were to bump into some ordinary food, does that suddenly become holy? “Well not,” say the priests. “Holiness is not that easy to spread. It doesn’t just happen.” Okay, verse 13, what if someone has been polluted by something unclean? He’s touched a dead body, something that should put him right outside the camp. If he comes home and touches the dinner, does that become contaminated? “Well yes,” say the priests. “You don’t want to eat that.” The scholar Alec Motier puts it beautifully. “Clean hands don’t leave a clean mark.” Isn’t that true? But uncleanness, that is far more contagious. Sin pollutes everything it touches.
We have a long running marital dispute over whether there is such a thing as a two-person diaper emergency. My wife, of course, is supremely competent. She can change a diaper blindfolded while she’s doing the ironing at the same time. I, on the other hand, will often discover what I am convinced could only possibly be a two-person diaper change! Jenn will hear me crying for help from the other side of the house. The baby is kind of wriggling on the floor, I’m trying to pin it down, the filth is oozing and spreading up their back onto the carpet, and my hands are contaminated. Everything I touch becomes defiled.
Well verse 14, “So it is with this people, declares the Lord.” Here is the point of my hypothetical questions – and aren’t these some of the most devastatingly bleak words in the Bible? “So it is with every work of their hands, and what they offer there is unclean.” You might ask, “What is so serious about a delayed building project?” They had an altar by now, clearly, a place they could sacrifice. They had so many other things to prioritize; surely the temple could wait awhile. But you see, the problem Haggai diagnosed in chapter 1 was hearts that didn’t really value the Lord. His presence with them was just never the one thing they could not live without. But God could see those lukewarm hearts. That unfinished building site was a monument to their spiritual indifference. And to Him, it was as if their hands were filthy. Every work of their hands, contaminated by half-hearted love – the homes they built, the fields they tilled, the families they raised, all the products of their toil, verse 17. But also something much, much more serious, verse 14 – the sacrifices they offered. The very gifts they gave to God to try and clean things up and make things right were filthy in His sight.
And so I wonder if you can see how dire their situation was. How can you atone for sin when all you have to offer are dirty sacrifices in a dirty, half-built temple to a God whose glory doesn’t even dwell there anymore. It is a hopeless condition. And our basic problem is the same, isn’t it? Outside of Christ, the works of our hands are dirty, unfit for God’s presence. And we cannot clean ourselves up with our own dirty diaper hands. Friends, there is wonderful good news for us to come, but I wonder, first, if you can see how desperately we need it. Our sin, even the priorities of our hearts, have the ability to contaminate all of our kingdom work. Pray that God would help us see it and hate it before it soils all of our building of God’s temple, everything we touch – all our giving and all our prayers, all our relationships and all our offerings, and all our attempts to make ourselves fit for God just smear the filth and make the stain worse and worse and worse. “And so how has that gone for you?” asks Haggai. “Has all your toil and striving after your own priorities,” literally verse 16, “all the works of your hands, has that done you any good? Well, no. You’re back, sure you’re back in the promised land, but it’s as if the milk and honey tap has been turned off.”
You come to open your paycheck, looking for that nice number, and there was half what you expected sitting in the bank. You fill up the gas, but you’ve barely got to work when the light comes back on and the tank is empty because filthy hands can’t produce fruitful lives or fruitful ministries. How can you possibly have expected God’s blessing on your crops and your vines and your olive trees when you never really wanted God? How can you possibly have expected God’s grace when you’re not really bothered about the means of grace He’s given you, the temple, where you can come close and enjoy Him? You see, Haggai looks at first like a book about a building, but it is not that little, is it? This is a book about a contaminated covenant. It’s as if the return from exile never happened. All these miseries in verse 17, these are the covenant curses of Deuteronomy 28 yet again. And that should have been recognized as a wakeup call from their loving, covenant Lord. That by neglecting His temple, they were rejecting the God who would meet them there. That empty building was the unwanted house of an unwanted God, and those priorities, they are poison for their relationship with Him.
And so what changed on the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month in the second year of Darius’ reign? Somehow, three times God says, “consider.” Literally, “Stamp it on your hearts. From this day forward, all of it’s forgiven.” And so what changed? Well God, in His mercy, sent a prophet who preached some sermons and mercy of mercies those sermons stuck in people’s hearts. They began to build. They obey, and just like that, God turns curse into blessing. So it’s the answer that by obeying God, God’s people have at last managed to clean themselves up and offer enough to make themselves fit for Him. Well, clearly not, because remember, by verse 18 the temple site is still just a pile of bricks and dirt. All they’ve actually done is relayed some ceremonial foundation stone. They are still an unclean people offering imperfect sacrifices in an unfinished temple. But that was the day they began seeking God in the way He was offering Himself to them all along. That was the day that they made God’s ordinary means of grace their one great hope of coming close to Him so that He could put things right.
How do you ever repair a relationship when everything you touch just turns to filth? Surely someone else has to come in and clean things up for you. You cannot make it right with your own dirty hands. I can only think of one time in all of history when this principle Haggai asks the priests about here worked in reverse. One time when holiness was more infectious than sin. Do you remember it? There was a leper, wasn’t it, an untouchable, crying in his misery for help to the God of all the universe who dwelt with His people in human flesh. “If You are willing, You can make me clean.” And moved with pity, Jesus Christ, the God-Man, the living temple, He did something unthinkable. He stretched out His hand and He touched him, He touched him, and said, “I am willing. Be clean.” And that leper who began, Mark chapter 1, filthy and isolated, he went away cleansed, whereas Jesus ended that chapter excluded, driven out by the crowds, into the wilderness as if to show what that cleansing would cost. The clean and the filthy would have to trade places.
Well how will God keep the promise of verse 9 and give this unclean people His shalom, His wholeness, His peace? Only through a true sacrifice in a true temple. Only through the Jesus who this whole building project was always all about. God’s glory come back at last to dwell in the midst of His people. If you want to get clean, He is the one you need to come close to. Do you see how all the blessings of the covenant, verse 19, come from His presence. They enjoy the covenant by prioritizing the presence of the covenant God, the temple. God with man is the great blessing. Shalom is where Jesus is. Seek Him and you get everything else thrown in.
Now friends, here is the most wonderful thing of all. This day for you, this day when everything changes – it could be today, couldn’t it? You don’t have to clean yourself up first. Just seek God the way He is offering Himself to you through His true and living temple, Jesus Christ. You can come close to Him right here. He speaks to us through His Word. He feasts with us in His sacraments. He pours out His love as His people enjoy Him together, cleansed and forgiven. A contaminated covenant restored.
Now all of that seems a long way off, doesn’t it, for Haggai’s listeners. Right now, verse 19, all the seed is in the ground and they have nothing but trust that God will keep His promises to bless them. The barns are bare, the cupboards are empty, the temple is unbuilt, and verse 2, the calendar is still set by the rule of a Persian king. In fact, if you remember where Felker ended last week’s sermon, there was one thing howlingly absent, wasn’t there? Israel had a prophet, they had a priest, but where was their king? All they have is this sad, little descendant of David who the Persians have patted on the head and given the title of governor to – Zerubbabel, the pitiful mayor of a ruined city.
And that is where Haggai’s final sermon, verses 20 to 23, comes – to encourage them by preaching of a cast off crown, reclaimed. “Don’t give up building,” Haggai says, “because your pathetic little pile of rubble and your petty little mayor, they are in fact the key to a glorious future. Speak to Zerubbabel and promise him this – your warrior God, the Lord of hosts, will soon shake the cosmos to put His king upon the throne to shake the heavens and the earth.” That is the language of theophany. That is what happens when the Lord Himself appears to judge and to save. And there will be one great final time when God picks up this world like a snowglobe. And as He shakes it, every king and every rival power will fall off their little throne. Their armies, verse 22, will be thrown into chaos. Mighty warriors will come spilling from their chariots and their horses like kids tumbling off their bikes. It’s an allusion there to the exodus, the crossing of the Red Sea, because Israel might be back in the land but they aren’t yet home. Sin’s long exile isn’t over, not without a temple and not without a king.
But when the snow settles on God’s new world order, there will be just one throne left standing. “On that day, declares the Lord of hosts, I will take you, O Zerubbabel, my servant, and make you like a signet ring.” Now a signet ring is what a king or an official would use to verify his authority. There are thousands of records still surviving from the Persian Empire. A king would give orders and they would be carved into wet, clay tablets and he would seal it with his signet before it was baked in the sun into stone as the word of the king. So that signet ring, that was a precious, precious thing, something that the king would keep close, guard jealously. One scholar compares it to your credit card. It’s something you would never let out of your sight. The ring itself of course is nothing, just a little stamp, but when it’s worn by the King of kings, it’s everything. And that is what a Davidic king was always meant to be – like the signet ring of the God of heaven, always kept close to God’s heart; His human regent through whom He rules the cosmos. That is what it was meant to be like.
But here they are now with no one more impressive than little governor Zerubbabel. How has it come to that? Well, two generations before, in His wrath, God had sworn a terrible, terrible oath to Zerubbabel’s grandfather, Jekoniah. You can read about it in Jeremiah 22. “As I live, declares the Lord, even if you were the signet ring on my right hand, I would tear you off and throw you away. Write this man down as childless, for none of his offspring shall succeed in sitting on the throne of David.” Why is Zerubbabel now some washed up governor in a backwater province of a foreign empire? Well, because he is the grandson of a cast off king and none of Jeconiah’s immediate offspring, those sons carried away with him into exile, none of them ever did sit on the throne. But do you see what God is saying here? “I am not done with My promises yet. One day, I will pick that signet ring up again. One day, I will set My king on Zion’s hill.”
Just notice how carefully the promise is worded. There is never a command to crown Zerubbabel himself. He will never be anything more than a Persian puppet. “In reality,” says one scholar, “he was heir to nothing, just like that building site never really became God’s earthly temple.” We never read of God’s glory returning, the ark of the covenant was never replaced, but look closely at verse 23. Little, weak Zerubbabel was also God’s servant, God’s chosen one. Two deeply Messianic titles. He’s not called “governor” this time. Now, he is “son of Shealtiel,” and “heir to David.” There would never be a true temple or a true Messiah until this man’s tenth great-grandson rode into Jerusalem to reclaim that cast off crown through a crown of thorns. A servant with even less form and even less majesty. But until that day, that day when his great son, Jesus, came, Israel had a kind of temple and a kind of king representing a Bible full of promises. And so Haggai is urging them, “Don’t give up the work of building a kingdom for your Messiah. Your small, unimpressive little shadow temple and your weak little mayor, those are the key to all of God’s glorious plans. So will you treasure them, small though they seem?
Friends, we love this church, don’t we? But in many ways, if we’re honest, this can feel pretty small, pretty unimpressive, can’t it? Our kingdom building is slow, slow work. We gather here and listen to the same old preachers week after week, preaching from the same old Bible. Most of us don’t feel that successful in battling sin or winning souls. But do you realize what treasure you have in those ordinary ways that the God of the universe has promised to meet with us? All the good stuff that God has to give you, He gives you through His Son. All of God’s blessings flow from His presence – the King in our midst, cleansing, relationship, forgiveness, a glorious future. And so let me ask you as we close this book, is drawing close to Him the one priority of your heart that you could not live without? Let me pray.
Glorious Lord, how we praise You that You who are of such pure eyes that You will not even look at evil are yet so full of grace that You made a way to come close to us in Your Son. He truly is the one blessing we could not live without. And so we pray, Lord, that living close to Him and under His smile and enjoying His means of grace would be the one treasure of our heart and of every heart in this room to the praise of Your transforming love. Amen.