You can find your copy of God's word or look alone as we go to Haggai chapter two. We've been doing a study in the minor prophets, and usually that's been in our first service. For those of you who haven't been here to follow along, we'll get this all into context. It'll be clear to you. But Haggai chapter two in the Old Testament, and our text is going to be starting at verse 10, but as we're about to read it, make a note about Haggai's dating system. And it occurs to me Haggai's dating system sounds like the latest way to meet some significant other online. That's a million dollar idea, feel free to take it and run with it. But what I'm talking about is in chapter one, verse one, he talks about the second year of King Darius and the sixth month on the first day of the month. That dates to August 29th, of 520 BC. We noted last time in Haggai chapter 2, it opens up less than two months later, October 17th. And now our text in verse 10 begins on the 24th day of the ninth month, which on our calendar would be December 18th. So Haggai's book is small. It's just two chapters. His ministry was short, it was less than four months, but his message is a big challenge. His first message was simply, it's time to get to work rebuilding the temple of God. His second message reassured them, don't be discouraged, that new temple doesn't look as impressive as you expected, God can use small things in big ways. And now the third message begins with a challenge, which is essentially, before we get too far in that project, before we even start stacking stones together, let's keep this truth in our minds. It is unreasonable to expect God's full blessings on partially dedicated people. Don't expect God to make your whole life fruitful if you won't make your whole heart faithful. Haggai chapter two, verse 10 through 23. On the 24th day of the ninth month, in the second year of Darius, the word of the Lord came by Haggai the prophet saying, thus says the Lord of hosts, now ask the priests concerning the law saying, If one carries holy meat in the fold of his garment and with the edge he touches bread or stew, wine or oil or any food, will it become holy? And then the priest answered and said, no. And Haggai said, if one who is unclean because of a dead body touches any of these, will it be unclean? So the priest answered and said, It shall be unclean. Then Haggai answered and said, So is this people and so is this nation before me, says the Lord, and so is every work of their hands and what they offer there is unclean. And now, carefully consider from this day forward, from before stone was laid upon stone in the temple of the Lord, since those days when one came to a heap of 20 ephahs, or it's a measure of green, There were but ten. When one came to the wine vat to draw out fifty baths from the press, there were but twenty. I struck you with blight and mildew and hail in all the labors of your hands, yet you did not turn to me, says the Lord. Consider now from this day forward. From the 24th day of the ninth month, from the day that the foundation of the Lord's temple was laid, consider it, is the seed still in the barn? As yet, the vine, the fig tree, the pomegranate and the olive tree have not yielded fruit, but from this day I will bless you. And again, the word of the Lord came to Haggai on the 24th day of the month saying, speak to Zerubbabel, the governor of Judah. saying, I will shake heaven and earth. I will overthrow the thrones of kingdoms. I will destroy the strength of the Gentile kingdoms. I will overthrow the chariots and those who rule in them. The horses and their riders shall come down every one by the sword of his brother. In that day, says the Lord of hosts, I will take you, Zerubbabel my servant, the son of Shealtiel, says the Lord, and will make you like a signet ring, for I have chosen you, says the Lord of hosts. All right. If you are at all prone to being squeamish, you might want to turn your ears off for about the next minute and a half to two minutes. the Food and Drug Administration in the US recognizes that food that gets packaged and sold in grocery stores that you buy and eat and feed to your family will contain what they call, quote, allowable defects. Now, the FDA isn't going to approve a bunch of insects in your cereal. but a few insect pieces here and there, that's not a problem. That's different. If there's a head here or a leg there or a nice little crunchy wing somewhere, that's okay. Your ground cinnamon is allowed to have up to 400 insect fragments per 50 grams of product. If the bugs are small enough though, then they can be in food in their entirety. Packaged mushrooms, some of y'all knew I was gonna bring up mushrooms. Packaged mushrooms can have up to 75 mites and 20 maggots per 100 grams. There's regulations about the number of rodent hairs that are allowed in peanut butter or popcorn or cornmeal or dried pasta. And then there is the defect called mammalian excreta, which is a polite scientific term. The simple way of saying that is mouse poo. Cocoa beans can have up to 10 milligrams of rodent poo per pound. Y'all want me to stop now? Some of you are saying please, I'm seeing head nods, a couple of you turning a little bit green. Here's how it relates to Haggai's message in our text. When is something disgusting? How much of it are you willing to accept? The rationale among the people of Judah at this time was we're about to restart this building of the temple. We are doing this work in service of God and we expect him to accept it. He's going to bless it because we are being mostly faithful. I assume that's similar to the mindset of some of us this morning. We can identify portions of our lives which are sinful, which are disgusting in the eyes of God, and yet we still expect his acceptance and blessing because we're, well, we're doing mostly good. We've embraced the idea of allowable defects. This is nothing but worldly thinking. If you ask the average person out in the world, what is their hope for heaven? How is it they expect to be judged? At the end of their life, very few of them would say, I'm going to be judged on the basis of the work of Jesus Christ, the Son of God alone. Most of them would say something like, well, God knows the good things I've done. He knows the bad things I've done and God's going to weigh those two in the balance. And I think I've done enough good things to outweigh the bad things. That is not how God will judge our lives, nor is it how God does judge our lives. Y'all, when you're buying cocoa beans, how many good cocoa beans does it take to turn rodent poo into something that's good? When you go to the doctor and you get a diagnosis of cancer, how much cancer is too much cancer? Do you have an allowable amount that's okay with you? If you expect the acceptance and blessing of God, why don't we ask God how much sin is too much sin? The message of God through Haggai demands God's people to spend some time contemplating this fact. I want you to note this from the text. Verse 15, consider carefully. Verse 18, consider now. At the end of verse 18, consider it. This is a call to actually think about this. And there are three main areas of contemplation which Haggai insists that we meditate upon. First, contemplate the pervasive influence of sin. Verses 10 through 14 cover this idea. Verse 10 dates this prophetic message, as we said, to December 18th. And that's helpful for us to understand because the early rains, in Judah come along in early to mid-October. Those rains make the ground softer so that it can be tilled and that seed could be planted. So those early rains would have been coming about the time of Haggai's second message at the beginning of this chapter. But by now, it is mid-December. Those early rains are over. The ground is soft and the plowings happen, the planting. has been done, the people would have sowed their seed already, but the actual harvest was still far down the road. This is gonna come up, for example, in verse 19, you'll see the question, is the seed still in the barn? It's a rhetorical question. No, it's not. But it's also too early to know how the harvest is going to be. Right, you realize even in central Illinois, farmers do not get to determine what the harvest looks like. God does. You can plant, you can water, it's God who gives the increase. And sometimes, God doesn't give the harvest you hoped for, and there's reasons for that. This theme makes this third message of Haggai very similar to his first. Look back to chapter one and remember what Haggai said in his first message in chapter one, starting at verse five. He says, now therefore, thus says the Lord, consider your ways. There's those words again. You have so much, and bring in little. You eat, but you don't have enough. You drink, but you're not filled with drink. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm. And he who earns wages, earns wages to put into a bag with holes. Thus says the Lord of hosts, Consider your ways. So in his first message, God used Haggai to call the people to sort of contemplate the fact that they're in this cycle of futility. God was not blessing them with great fruitfulness because they were lacking in faithfulness. Now the people who had done the planting and had sown all of their fields and they were waiting in hopes of harvest, And now they have this break in the work that they can really get to work in this temple project. They're hoping that that temple project, spiritually speaking, is gonna help them to reap God's blessings. But here's the prophet Haggai to demand them to contemplate, if the Lord didn't bless your fields because you weren't faithful, do you think he's gonna bless this temple project despite your unfaithfulness? Specifically, Haggai is sent to the priests. I love this. He's sent to the priests with a quiz from the Lord. Verse 11, thus says the Lord of hosts, now go ask the priests concerning the law. Saying, here's what you're supposed to ask them, verse 12, if one carries holy meat in the fold of his garment and with the edge he touches bread or stew, wine or oil, any food, will it become holy? The priest answered and said, no. Then you realize Haggai's question is not coming from God because God doesn't know the answer. God knows the answer. Haggai knows the answer. The priests know the answer, but admitting to this answer is going to set up the inevitable conclusion that's coming. It's a lesson coming in question form, the holy meat that's getting talked about. in verse 12 is meat that comes from a sacrificed animal. In ancient Israel, some of those sacrifices that they brought were to be entirely burned as a burnt offering, but some sacrifices had meat brought off and preserved, and it was limited to be used to feed the priests and their families. So it was holy in the sense that it was set aside just for the priest's use. It was sacred, it was consecrated. But does that holiness, the question is, does that holiness transfer by touch? It seems like a silly question, right? You can imagine one of the priests, he brings a sacrifice, he takes with him a leg of lamb that he gets to go home and feed his family, and he's got his robe, and he's carrying that leg of lamb in the folds of his robe. And when he does that, does that consecrated meat make his robe holy? And if it does make the robe holy, if that robe brushes up against a piece of bread or a bowl of soup or a pot of oil, does the bread or the soup and the oil become holy? The priests say, no, easy answer. Thanks for the quiz. Holiness does not transfer like that. That was easy. You can almost imagine the expression on Haggai's face when he's like, great, good answer, but it wasn't just a one question quiz. There is a part two to the question. Holiness doesn't transfer, but does it work the other way around? Look at verse 13. Haggai said, if one who is unclean because of a dead body touches any of these, will it be unclean? So the priest answered and said, it shall be unclean. Now again, the priests aren't being asked their opinion here, they're being asked to interpret the law of Moses, the word of God in the Old Testament. The Lord made commands concerning dead bodies. If you touch a dead body, you were considered unclean for a time. But in this case, you have to think the priest's opinion and their interpretation of the law fit together really well. Like they are in agreement, right? If somebody has touched a dead body, I don't want them buttering my toast, right? So yes, if they're defiled from that, anything else they touch, I'm gonna consider it defiled. This is straightforward, it's simple. I would assume we're all in agreement. We do have a, thus saith the Lord, but even without that, I don't want a funeral director embalming a dead body and then coming and ladling out some soup for me. Like this is just not something that we want. This is common sense. The problem is, we don't live making common sense application of this principle. And so having asked the priest these two questions, now the hammer is gonna fall in verse 14. Haggai answered and said, so is this people, and so is this nation before me, says the Lord, and so is every work of their hands, what they offer there is unclean. The priests have answered the question, is holiness contagious? If some holy meat touches your robe, your robe touches your bolus, does everything become holy when it touches? No, holiness is not contagious. What about uncleanness? Is uncleanness contagious? Does it transfer by touch? Yes, they said, absolutely it does. The contamination of sin is a communicable disease. It spreads like a virus. Like back in the days of COVID, plenty of folks were worried about getting too close to somebody who was sick, right? You're gonna get your germs on me. You know what I never saw during that whole pandemic panic? I never saw anybody take the mask off their face, walk up to a healthy person and say, would you sneeze some healthiness onto me please? Because we understand it doesn't work that way. God says sin is like that. It is sin, it's the bad things that spread and contaminate. It's contagious, it's toxic. I promise you that your sin disgusts God more than any of those things in the illustration I gave early disgusts you. So as the people were preparing their hands to do this work of rebuilding the temple, God sends Haggai to them to remind them, if you want the work of your hands to be clean, then your heart needs to be clean before that happens. The good things you do will never outweigh the sins in your life in God's eyes. And until you address those sins that you think are acceptable defects in your life, the reality is they will contaminate the very best efforts you make. Contemplate, Haggai says, the pervasive influence of sin. Second, contemplate the corrective discipline of the past. Look at verse 15 through 17. Now carefully consider from this day forward, from before stone was laid upon stone in the temple of the Lord, since those days when one came to a heap of 20 ephahs, there were but 10. When one came to the wine vat to draw out 50 baths, there were but 20. I struck you with blight and mildew and hail and all the labors of your hands, yet you did not turn to me, says the Lord. If you remember the timeframe here and sort of the order of events that things are happening in this book, the people had returned from captivity. The temple had already been destroyed. They'd been in captivity for 70 years. They get to return from captivity. They laid the foundation of the temple. They marked the ground like they threw a dedication ceremony. They all celebrated. And then they stopped work and went about their own lives for about 15 to 17 years. And we've already seen any lack, all the lack of production that followed. As Haggai said back in chapter one, right, you planted a lot, but you haven't harvested anything. Everybody who's earning wages, it's like you're putting it in a bag full of holes. You can't manage to keep anything. Now God insists, carefully consider this. Think about it, he says, from this day forward, in other words, from now on, remember how that worked out for you. When you came to your grain silo, it was only half as full as you expected it to be. When you came to draw from the wine vat, you could only fill 40% of your jars. Do you think that that was a coincidence? It wasn't. God says all of the blight and the mildew and the hail that ruined your efforts, God sent those. And yet, he says, yet you did not turn to me. says the Lord, right? There's struggles in the regular processes of life where educational opportunities to learn this isn't going right and maybe it's because we're not doing right. It is unreasonable to expect God's full blessings on partially dedicated people. And he is going to correct His people, He will not allow us to continue in that kind of pathway. When the Lord purposefully brings the consequences of sin, it's not a pleasant experience, but it is a sign of His loving discipline in our lives. So Hebrews 12, six through 11 says this. For whom the Lord loves, he chastens and scourges every son who he receives. If you endure chastening, God is dealing with you as with sons. For what son is there whom a father does not chasten? But if you are without chastening, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons. Furthermore, we've all had human fathers who corrected us and we paid them respect. Shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the father of spirits and live for indeed they, that's the earthly fathers. For a few days chastised us as seemed best to them, but he, for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness. Now no chastising seems to be joyful for the present, but painful. Nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. What's the description here is that the nation as a whole was experiencing the corrective discipline of their loving Father. And yet, they refused to respond to it. And as a result, what they had endured for the past 15 to 17 years, as they were laying the foundation of the temple, that would continue until they turned and became faithful. Now think about this from the perspective of the people, right? They would have complained about this idea. They would have said, right, but we have been faithful. We've been faithful in so much. We left our homes in Babylon. We returned to the land. We laid the foundation of the temple. We live by God's law and we keep the Sabbath and we bring the sacrifices. but they had disobedience in small areas of their life, specifically in this book, establishing the need for formal worship, and it had a pervasive influence over all of their life. In their minds, failure to finish this temple project was just a small part of what they did. It seemed like it's an allowable defect. They were sure, look, God's gonna weigh all the good stuff we've done, and He's gonna weigh it against those just little few bad things, and the good's gonna outweigh the bad, right? But this area of sin has a pervasive effect. It was the guy buttering their toast with dead body germs on his hands. It's the rodent poo in their cocoa beans, right? If the Lord loves you, He is not going to let you continue in those things. He's not going to continue to bless your life as if everything is okay. And He doesn't care about that contaminating sin that you've been concealing. When God causes you to suffer the consequences of sin, it is a loving reminder that He finds that sin in your life disgusting. No matter how small or insignificant you want to make it out to be, He finds it disgusting. So contemplate the pervasive influence of sin, contemplate the corrective discipline of the past, and then third, contemplate the promised blessings of God, verse 18 through 23. So with all that in mind, let's not forget that Haggai steps forward in December 18th for the final time in his short four-month ministry, and yet as he's doing this, something dramatic has changed. These people who had been failing are repentant and are turning to faithfulness. Look back at chapter 1 verse 12. It speaks of Zerubbabel, the governor, Joshua the high priest, all the remnant of the people. obeyed the voice of the Lord their God and the words of Haggai the prophet as the Lord their God had sent him and the people feared the presence of the Lord. So Haggai is unique among the minor prophets because God's people heard God's message and responded. And so now as Haggai is calling them to consider, to contemplate, to remember this lesson from their own recent history, He also insists that the lessons of the past should become part of your understanding about the future. Verse 18, consider now from this day forward. from the 24th day of the ninth month, from the day the foundation of the Lord's temple was laid, consider it, is the seed still in the barn? As yet the vine, the fig tree, the pomegranate, the olive tree have not yielded fruit, but from this day I will bless you. It said a little while ago, this prophetic message comes at the end of planting and long before harvest. So God says, now that you've contemplated this, you've been obedient, you've been repentant from this day forward, before you've reaped any grain, before you've collected any figs, before you've stored away olive oil, before any of those blessings of harvest come, Get it in your mind that when those blessings of harvest come, it's because I'm doing it for you. From this day, I will bless you. Just watch what I'm going to do. This is God's promise to them. Now that they've repented and confessed, they set their mind to serve and to work, they would honor the Lord their God with their hearts and their minds. He says, I'm going to bless you. So if we've seen that it is unreasonable to expect God's full blessings on partially dedicated people, we have to know that the reverse is also true. You can expect God's full blessings on fully dedicated people. Yet Haggai's not done. This is not about. Be good enough and do good enough and work hard enough and God's gonna give you a big harvest because he's gonna bless you for your faithfulness. The ultimate promised blessings of God in this text are not going to be found in the grain silo. They're gonna be found in God's son. So listen, just look at this. One of the facts we've stressed through this text is verse 10, right? It gets stressed. This is the 24th day of the ninth month of the second year of Darius. God says, watch from this day forward. He repeats that in verse 18, the 24th day of the ninth month. He stresses this because as he sends the prophet Haggai with what Haggai expects is gonna be his final message to the people, he begins that day giving this message and before the day is over, he gets another message. Verse 20, again the word of the Lord came to Haggai on the 24th day of the month. So let's just connect a couple of dots here real quick. And Haggai's second message a few weeks earlier. This was the promised blessing. Chapter two, verses six and seven, says, thus says the Lord of hosts, once more, it's just a little while, I will shake heaven and earth, the sea and dry land, I will shake the nations, and they will come to the desire of all nations, and I will fill this temple with glory, says the Lord. This is messianic prophecy. It is prophecy about the Messiah, Jesus, the Son of God. God, he says, is going to shake heaven and earth and all nations, the desire of all nations will come, will fill that temple with glory. That is fulfilled in Jesus. And so now Haggai comes with this third message and God ends it by saying, I will bless you. Unless the people think that the blessings God's promising is just a big grain harvest or figs or lots of olive oil, Haggai suddenly receives another message from the Lord. I don't know how he gets it, whether it's a trance, an inspirational thought, a vision, whether he gets it through Morse code, he downloads it from the cloud. I don't know how Haggai gets his message from God. That's him and God's business, right? But somewhere after delivering what he expects as his final message, later that day, he gets another message. God says, I will bless you. And then another message comes to Haggai, verse 21. Speak to Zerubbabel, governor of Judah, saying, I will shake heaven and earth. I will overthrow the kingdoms. the throne of kingdoms. I will destroy the strength of the Gentile kingdoms. I will overthrow the chariots and those who ride in them, the horses and their riders shall come down, everyone by the sword of his brother. And that day, says the Lord of hosts, I will take you, Zerubbabel, my servant, the son of Shealtiel, says the Lord. I will make you like a signet ring for I have chosen you, says the Lord of hosts. Let's face it, Zerubbabel is not a name that jumps up to the top of our list when we think about biblical heroes. As a matter of fact, I kinda wanna have a quiz later where everybody tries to pronounce Zerubbabel. But he is a descendant of King David. He's not a king, and the reason he's not a king is because he is governor of this region of Judah because The people in Judah are still now part of this big Persian empire. The Persian King Cyrus said, you can go back and rebuild the temple. But that guy is still the one who's in control. And he tells Zerubbabel, okay, I'll make you the head official. You can be the governor of this region. So he's not a king, but he is a descendant of King David. And he has called out for his part in God's plan for blessing his people. He is called here my servant, and we saw in earlier service this morning, this is a term for messianic promises, right? This is a promise about the coming Messiah. He's told, I have chosen you. He's told, I will make you like a signet ring. The idea there is like the royal ring that if you can imagine a decree being made and rolled up and wax being put on it and the king's signet ring gets pressed down into the seal. It seals, authenticates, ensures the royal authority. Zerubbabel is told by God, I'm gonna make you like my signet ring. It's something that's kept close. It's on the king's person. It's either on his hand or on a necklace around his neck. Zerubbabel is being called out and assigned the promises of God that God had made to his great, great, great, great, great grandfather, David. of a future king who would come and rule the nations. Right, and that's the description in verse 22. All the thrones, all the kingdoms of this world are going to be brought down and they are going to be under the authority of this one servant of God, who is Jesus. This isn't gonna be Zerubbabel himself. Just like Jesus' son of David, Matthew and Luke's genealogy in the gospels. You can read the long genealogy of Jesus and all of his ancestors and you will find in both of them, Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel is on the list. When you contemplate the promised blessings of God, it is not about a big crop or a nice house or a secure bag of money that doesn't have any holes. It's about the blessings of God that comes through full-hearted faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God. He is the shaker of heaven and earth. He is the coming king that all nations will have to submit to. He's the desire of nations, the chosen one of God. Jesus is that royal seal, the authority of God's promised blessings. all of the disgusting sin that contaminates our lives, Jesus is our only hope for purity. And when you come to Jesus, he demands your whole life. It's not little bits of it that get reserved as if it is an allowable defect that he's going to overlook. There are no acceptable defects. It is unreasonable to expect God's full blessings on partially dedicated people. To be part of God's blessings through Jesus, you have to submit your entire life to him without reservation. The thoughts of your heart, the work of your hands have to be fully dedicated to him. He is your Lord and master. You see His authority, you trust Him as Savior, and you dedicate your entire life to serve Him.