He made a story of John Payton who went to be a missionary in
what was then called the New Hebrides, now Vanuatu, as he
declared his desire to go and take the gospel to these
unreached lands and explains to a mission conference perhaps not
unlike this one, why he was so full of passion to reach this
people with the gospel. Eventually someone in the the
congregation couldn't hold back anymore and they stood up.
This was in Scotland. They stood up and said the
cannibals, the cannibals, you'll be eaten by the cannibals.
And John Payton very calmly replied, Mr. Dixon, you're
advanced in years now, and your own prospect is soon to be laid
in the grave there to be eaten by worms.
I confess to you that if I can but live and die serving and
honouring the Lord Jesus, it will make no difference to me
whether I'm eaten by cannibals or by worms.
And in the great day of the resurrection my body will arise
as fair as yours. In the likeness of our Redeemer.
There is a man with a passion for mission.
There is a man willing to sacrifice all so that others
might hear of the grace and the love of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And yet, I think there is a a danger.
There is a danger not with John Payton or any other of 1000
inspiring missionary stories we could have shared this week,
whether from history or no doubt in the lives of some of those
missionaries. Sponsored by sent from PCPC.
But the danger is that we begin to think that missionary
conferences are about recruiting All Stars.
That is 123-4000. People today hear about mission,
hear God's voice in the book of Haggai.
We think what's going on is that the top 1% point 5% are being
creamed off and sent to do something exotic in some exotic
corner of the world. And then we can go back to
everyday life happy and wait for next year's conference.
But to do so, we're to miss God's desire, God's desire to
see the nation's one and its desire to use ordinary people,
not All Stars to reach the nation's in its final section of
Haggai this evening, we need to ask the question, what do I need
to be in order to be effective in mission in God's church?
And the answer will be, you need to be nothing but just see that
God is everything. We will ask the question, what
do I need to have in order to be effective for his cause?
And we'll hear the same answer. You need to have nothing except
the confident trust that Christ is all you may feel.
Mission is for others above you, beyond you.
And the Lord says no, you. It is you, young and old, rich
and poor. It is you that I'm going to use.
And he does say first of all this evening by saying to you,
you are totally incapable. You're totally incapable.
That's what I want you to hear. This evening.
There's a final greeting from the UK Dallas PCPC.
From the bottom of my heart, let me tell you, you are totally
incapable. But that is the Lord God.
Verse 10, we get this strange last prophecy where God comes
and gets Haggai to ask the priest some questions.
The first one actually is verse 12.
He asks the priest, look, if someone carries holy meat in the
fold of their garment. In other words, meat that's been
sacrificed on the altar and then cooked because the altar in the
temple was a was a bit like a giant BBQ, some of the meat
afterwards could be eaten. If someone's got that meat and
it's kind of wrapped up in their garment, notice it's in the
garment. That's going to be really
important later. And then the garment touches
something else. Does the other thing become
holy? In other words, is holiness
infectious? Now that strikes us as a very
weird question, but for the priest it was a very easy
question. There were rules about this in
the book of Leviticus, to which we are not going to turn this
evening, you'll be relieved to hear.
And the rules were this, that if something holy touches something
unholy, the holy becomes unholy. It is unholyiness, uncleanness
that is infectious. We know this, don't we,
children? When you sorry parents, when you
send your children out wearing white trainers and a white
T-shirt and they come into contact with a muddy puddle, the
puddle doesn't get cleaner. The child gets dirtier.
So too the Levisqal laws. And so Haggard goes back a
second time. Second question.
Such a strange sounding question for a book that's meant to
motivate us for mission. But stick with me first. 13 If
someone who is unclean by contact with a dead body touches
any of these, does it become unclean?
And the priest answered again correctly, it does become
unclean. Second time round, it's the
reverse. A dead body is unclean.
What happens if a dead body comes into contact with
something that's clean or the unclean?
Sorry, the clean thing becomes unclean.
It's Leviticus 101. During COVID, my wife and I had
a young girl from the church living with us.
She was, she worked in the hospitals and it was that stage
where no one knew quite how serious the disease was going to
be and all the rest of it. And I came, we all were locked
down, but she was a hospital worker, so still going into
work. And I came downstairs one
morning to find her sat with my young, probably 5 year old
daughter on her lap kind of combing her hair.
And I said to this, this young woman, oh, you're, you're not
going to work today. And she said, no, I've got
COVID, she's going to take my daughter back, please.
Unsurprisingly, my healthy daughter did not cure my logic
of COVID. And unsurprisingly, not much
later, my family all got COVID. They're all fine.
It is disease that spreads. What's the punchline?
Why is God asking these questions?
Verse 14 Haggai answered and said so it is with this people
and with this nation before me declares the Lord.
And so with every work of their hands and what they offer is
unclean. Do you remember the whole book
of Haggai has been God saying time and time again, build my
temple. It's in ruins.
Build it, reconstruct it. I need a holy dwelling place on
earth. There needs to be a point where
heaven and earth meet. Build, build, build.
And finally by this stage of the book they have been building and
God says everything you do is going to be unclean.
What is the work of their hands? The work of their hands has been
the building of the temple. Their hands are muddy with with
brick and cement and yet God says you can't do it.
Even what you offer there. Verse 14, your sacrifices, your
offerings, they're not going to be acceptable to me.
Why? Because you are unclean and your
uncleanliness is going to spread to everything you touch and do.
You are incapable of building a home fit for me.
They cannot bring heaven to earth.
They cannot give God anything He needs or deserves.
Why? Because they're unclean.
He needs people to realise they can't do anything.
Why? Not to crush them, but to get
them ready to receive grace. To make them realise that
without Him they are nothing, but in Him they have everything.
That is where the Christian life begins, isn't it?
We realise there is nothing we can do to save ourselves,
Nothing we can contribute. No good deed, no prayer, no zeal
of repentance, nothing. In my hands I bring simply to
the cross, I cling. It is not the fervency of my
repentance, the soundness of my faith, but it purely the grace
of God that saves me. But so to the Christian life.
We don't leave grace behind. Every day should begin in the
same place. Lord, I am helpless, but you are
mighty. John 15 I am the vine, You're
the branches, Whoever abides in me, and I in Him.
Here it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can
do nothing. You're totally incapable of
building God's Kingdom. You cannot convert a single
native of Dallas or of Leeds or of Japan or of Canada.
You are unable to bring new life.
And yet, and yet, the book doesn't end there.
You're incapable, says God. But in verses 15 to 19, he turns
the tables and says, I am gracious.
It's a tricky little section of the book and we won't get into
the weeds. But he asked them in verse 15,
look, look, what's been going on?
Have things been blooming since you turned back to me?
Have your crops been bursting at the seams?
Are your barns full? Is all well?
And the answer is no, things haven't been good.
God has been disciplining them. Their crops have been less than
they hoped for. Verse 17 Why?
Because God struck them. I struck you and all the
products of your toil with blight and with Milji, yet you
did not turn to me. I tried to wake you up and you
would not listen. Time and again I appeal to you,
and you would not listen. Disappointment after
disappointment, prophet after prophet sent to call God's
people back to him, and they would not listen, and so he sent
hardship upon them. God does that sometimes, doesn't
He? There are times that He will
discipline us, send tough things into our lives, not because He
hates us or is turned against us, but because He wants to wake
us up. He's done that to his people and
still nothing. You're hard hearted, you're
apathetic. Everything you do is unclean.
You will not listen. You will not listen.
So what am I going to do with Jesus God and the answer is
there at the verse end of verse 19.
What am I going to do with you people who will not listen,
people who are not interested in me, people who don't care about
mission. What am I going to do with you
says the Lord God, I'm going to bless you.
You see end of verse 19. But from this day on, I will
bless you that, but it's it's it makes no sense.
In fact, liberal commentators, non gospel believing
commentators on this part of Haggai get to this sentence and
say it is nonsense. It makes no sense.
God is telling them off, telling them off, telling them off,
showing them what they've done wrong and then saying he's going
to bless them. That makes no sense.
And it doesn't make sense. Unless you understand the
gospel, you have nothing, but God wants to give you everything
graciously. This is Romans 3.
No one sees God, no one is righteous, no one does God good.
But but God gives his Son. But now, says Paul, despite all
your sin, but now the righteousness of God has been
revealed, apart from the law, apart from anything you can do,
God is preaching the gospel to his people through Haggai.
He will bless. And indeed he did, didn't he?
This temple was built. This temple of Haggai was built.
And if you read the rest of the books of the Old Testament,
you'll see the end of the story. Haggai doesn't tell it, but it
was unclean. It was unclean because humans
cannot build, cannot build heaven on earth.
And so the Lord Jesus comes, and he is a true temple, isn't he?
His flesh is holy. He is the one place on earth
that God can dwell because he is not built with human hands.
He is born of a virgin by the power of the Spirit, and so his
body becomes a temple of the Holy Spirit, a fitting place for
God to dwell on earth, because he's made not by the will of
man, but by the will of God. He is pure and spotless and
sinless. And there's an extraordinary
chapter in his life, Mark 6, where he's called by Jairus, A
synagogue ruler, to come and heal his daughter.
And as Jesus goes, a woman who's been bleeding for years touches
the hem of his cloak, his garment.
She's unclean. If you believe you're unclean,
she touches him. And what happens?
Does he become unclean? No, she is healed by touching
the garment that is wrapped around holy flesh.
And by Haggai, what happens in the Old Testament garment
wrapped around holy flesh, holy meat, but it becomes unclean.
Sin is contagious, but not with Jesus.
With Jesus, righteousness is contagious.
And if you think the the the parallel is too stretched.
How does Jesus continue? He continues on having almost
accidentally cured that woman who touches his garment.
He goes to the House of Jairus, where the young girl is now
lying dead. Haggai, what happens when a dead
body meets something pure? The pure is made unclean.
Jesus touches the dead body of this girl and life flows into
here. Finally we have the real temple,
the true temple, the source of life and blessing.
Blessing here is paradise on earth.
Here is salvation in the Lord Jesus.
Everything comes from Him. What do you need from Him?
Everything. What does He demand from you?
Nothing. If you're not a believer here
this evening, if you've never come to trust Him, don't think
that you're not good enough or pure enough.
Don't wait until you're confident enough in your faith
or you hate your sin enough. Don't hold back.
He is not asking anything of you other than to come to Him and
receive His grace. His mercy could my zeal no,
respite no Could my tears forever flow all, for sin could
not atone. Thou must save, and Thou alone.
Just come to Him and He will forgive you with all your mess
and He will use you for those who already Christ's.
You want to be involved in building his Kingdom.
Kill off self-reliance. John Newton, great Anglican
minister, used to say that Mister Self was his big enemy.
In one of his letters he writes and says that it's self
righteousness that has been the main barrier to his growth.
Interesting that, isn't it? Not sin, but self righteousness,
which of course is a sin. He says this I've wanted to
contribute. I'm tired of being totally
dependent on Jesus, always having to come to Him as a
miserable, helpless Sinner. I wanted, and I'm paraphrasing
here, the 18th century English. I wanted to be able to sort some
things out on my own and come to Him for the big things.
But I found I can't do anything without his help.
That is true, isn't it? Nothing without him.
But Newton goes further. He's so honest.
That's why his LED is a beautiful to read.
He says this. If this had only humbled me and
LED me to rejoice in his or sufficiency, it would have been
well. But it has often had a different
effect to make me sullen, angry and discontented.
Very honest. We don't.
We're so proud. We don't like having to rely on
Jesus. We want to be able to bring our
kids to faith without having to pray daily for them.
We want to evangelise our friends without the need to be
bringing them to the Lord on our knees.
We want to act without needing to rely.
But Lord says no, you can't do it apart from me.
You can do nothing but again with me.
I will cleanse you and empower you and you can do anything that
I call you to you. He wants to bless.
That's why he came to earth to bless.
He wants to build this temple till it fills the earth.
His desire, as we've said time and again this weekend, his
desire to bless far exceeds your desire to be blessed because
he's full of grace. And that's why the book ends
with this promise from God, this final prophecy.
I promise that that we could summarize very simply by saying
God declares I will win. I will win right at the end of
your sheets there. And we get a final prophecy from
verses 21 through 23, and it's given to Zerubbabel, who's the
king figure. He is a descendant of David and
an ancestor of Jesus. And he's promised, he's promised
that the nations are about to be shaken up, the heavens and the
earth. I'm going to knit together, says
God, two things that never should have been torn apart,
religion and politics. Now, I'm not about to get
political. Don't panic.
But the gospel is political. The gospel is political because
the gospel declares Jesus Christ is king.
That is ultimately a political statement.
I don't mean in terms of Democrats and Republicans or
Labour and Conservative or whatever it is in your own
country. There are of course,
implications for politics, but ones that I'm not foolish enough
to get into this evening. But it's the rubbable.
The King is told. I will shake the nations that
stand against you. Nothing in heaven or earth will
be able to stand against you. The rubbable, the strength of
the kingdoms of the nations, the Chariots, they're riders.
They'll be overthrown. It's Exodus language.
Remember the Exodus where Pharaoh sends his Chariots and
God throws them upside down in the Red Sea for user rubber
ball. The same thing will happen,
heaven and earth. The physical enemies of the
church will not stand. Ultimately, neither will the
spiritual enemies, heaven, God. In the beginning, God made the
heavens and the earth, the invisible realm and the visible
realm. Both have rebelled in differing
degrees, but neither will win. Satan will fall.
And so on that day, verse 23, because the Lord of hosts, I
will take you, Zerubbabel, my servant, and make you like a
signet ring, like my image, a signet ring bears your image.
For I've chosen you, declares the Lord of hosts.
I will shake the world and enthrone you, and then I'll rule
through you. Did it happen?
Was the world shaken and Zerubbabel enthroned?
No. But yes, you'll find
Zerubbabel's name again in the Scriptures.
It's not a well known character, is he?
But he's back in the genealogy of the Lord Jesus.
This promise, as it were, is a family heirloom passed down from
Zerubbabel to his Son, to his Son, to his Son, until
eventually it is put into a cradle, into a Manger in
Bethlehem, and into the hands of the King for whom it was always
meant. And that king grew up, that holy
King who was both king and temple, who was holy flesh and
holy warrior, and he rode into battle in the most unexpected of
ways by riding into battle on the cross.
On the cross he defeated Satan as he paid for our sin.
He took away all the allegations that that Satan could hurl
against the church. All sin cancelled, all debts
written off. He defeated Satan and died.
And as he died, you remember God shook the earth.
Matthew's Gospel. But the dead come out of the
tombs, and the Lord Jesus comes out of his tomb, rises again as
king. The temple rebuilt the rubble.
The name means out of exile, the seed of exile.
Lord Jesus was sent into exile, castaway from his Father's
presence on the cross, but then rose again to triumph and sent
his disciples to make all nations his.
He is determined to see the nations one and the way he's
going to do it is through you and through me.
How, how specifically in your life?
That is a question for you to think through.
But that He will do it is sure and is certain.
And that's why a book that is about the building of the temple
ends with the promise of a Kingdom.
Because we're not going to build a cult, a little sect in the
corner of the world. The church and the Kingdom
become one because there's one king and one saviour.
Christ has not come just to run 1 little corner of the earth,
but the whole earth. And the way into the Kingdom is
through the door of the church. As you enter the church, you
enter Christ's palace. And the nations need to hear
that because there is no other way to be saved.
Only one life will soon be done. Only what is done for Christ for
Christ, Only what is done for Christ will last and say PCPC,
that is your call. Go and make disciples of all
nations in the power of Spirit and confident that Christ
Himself is sending you, is with you and is ahead.
Let's pray. Our Father in Heaven, we bring
before you one final time this weekend the Great Commission to
make disciples of all nations. We ask that in your loving
kindness you would establish churches and bring men, women
and children to bow the knee before the Lord Jesus, as
Saviour and as Lord, as priests bringing cleansing and as King
bringing victory. Give us confidence that he will
win, that in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus we see already
that the victory is won. Send us out with humble
confidence, we pray cast down the remaining forces of
darkness, and we pray save many millions.
We ask for the glory of Christ, and in His name, Amen.