WEBVTT 00:00:00.080 --> 00:00:10.000 Yeah, we're talking a little bit of hope today, and our passage uses the phrase, the days are surely coming, says the Lord. 00:00:10.000 --> 00:00:12.320 Are those comforting words for you? 00:00:12.320 --> 00:00:14.800 All right, because they're supposed to be comforting. 00:00:14.800 --> 00:00:16.640 The days are coming. 00:00:16.640 --> 00:00:18.399 They are on their way. 00:00:18.399 --> 00:00:19.920 You know, God is coming. 00:00:19.920 --> 00:00:22.399 God's going to get things set right. 00:00:22.399 --> 00:00:23.839 So be hopeful. 00:00:23.839 --> 00:00:26.960 Be hope-filled for gosh sake. 00:00:26.960 --> 00:00:30.480 And in that spirit, we're getting ready for Advent, right? 00:00:30.480 --> 00:00:45.679 Advent, that the four Sundays that lead into Christmas Eve, the season of preparing and getting ourselves organized and maybe even building something up so that Christmas Eve, the birth of Christ, means something. 00:00:45.679 --> 00:00:51.840 So this series is going to be living into that spirit just a little bit, anticipating it. 00:00:51.840 --> 00:01:00.960 So I hope that you are up for a series that essentially a season of preparing for a season of preparing. 00:01:00.960 --> 00:01:04.480 We're preparing to prepare, friends. 00:01:04.480 --> 00:01:05.840 All right. 00:01:05.840 --> 00:01:07.200 I hope you're ready for that. 00:01:07.200 --> 00:01:12.319 The hope is that Christmas itself can mean much, much more. 00:01:12.319 --> 00:01:18.319 Advent, Christmas Day, more than just the cultural pieces that we work with, right? 00:01:18.319 --> 00:01:25.519 The presence, the family, the food, uh, but that it means something more substantial. 00:01:25.519 --> 00:01:26.719 That's our hope. 00:01:26.719 --> 00:01:36.799 Uh, it's also our season of deepening in our understanding of who Christ is and what it meant that Christ came to be with us. 00:01:36.799 --> 00:01:39.760 So I hope that you are ready for that journey. 00:01:39.760 --> 00:01:46.079 And now that I've got you all geared up, let's dig into some Old Testament for some hope. 00:01:46.079 --> 00:01:47.359 Who's ready? 00:01:47.359 --> 00:01:50.239 All right, all right. 00:01:50.239 --> 00:01:51.840 Me and Gary are ready. 00:01:51.840 --> 00:01:53.439 All right, the rest of us. 00:01:53.439 --> 00:01:55.359 All right, here's how we're gonna start. 00:01:55.359 --> 00:02:00.799 What I need is your list of your top ten prophets. 00:02:00.799 --> 00:02:02.719 All right, top ten prophets. 00:02:02.719 --> 00:02:04.159 Let's start with number 10. 00:02:04.159 --> 00:02:06.879 Who's your tenth favorite prophet? 00:02:06.879 --> 00:02:11.919 Jeremiah? 00:02:11.919 --> 00:02:15.280 Okay, why are you ranking him so low? 00:02:15.280 --> 00:02:19.840 Oh, he's just he was always whining. 00:02:19.840 --> 00:02:21.039 Is that what you said? 00:02:21.039 --> 00:02:23.120 I mean, a poor guy. 00:02:23.120 --> 00:02:25.199 It was there when the temple gets torn down, right? 00:02:25.199 --> 00:02:27.199 He has a reason to be disappointed and all that. 00:02:27.199 --> 00:02:29.840 Top five prophets? 00:02:29.840 --> 00:02:31.680 We do we have our favorites? 00:02:31.680 --> 00:02:34.000 I'm kind of joking. 00:02:34.000 --> 00:02:38.960 I know not everybody is deep into their Old Testament prophets. 00:02:38.960 --> 00:02:50.560 We start with the gospels, we do some Paul, uh, you know, maybe we get into Genesis, but after that it's uh so how about a favorite prophet? 00:02:50.560 --> 00:02:52.159 A prophet you like? 00:02:52.159 --> 00:02:53.280 Yeah, Gary? 00:02:53.280 --> 00:02:55.680 Isaiah, right? 00:02:55.680 --> 00:03:05.599 Isaiah, a lot of his uh uh prophecy is what we understand to be the coming of Christ, and so we do a lot of it at Christmas time and and in Advent time. 00:03:05.599 --> 00:03:08.560 You know, some people like Daniel in that lion's den. 00:03:08.560 --> 00:03:14.879 Uh some people have fun with Jonah, uh, some people are deep, deep people like a Job. 00:03:14.879 --> 00:03:17.840 Heavy, heavy. 00:03:17.840 --> 00:03:19.199 All right, yeah. 00:03:19.199 --> 00:03:26.000 Anyway, uh today we're talking about a prophet we don't generally get into, Haggai. 00:03:26.000 --> 00:03:28.159 Have you read Haggai? 00:03:28.159 --> 00:03:32.159 All right, all right, then this will be good. 00:03:32.159 --> 00:03:36.000 Hey, the good thing about Haggai, really, really short. 00:03:36.000 --> 00:03:41.199 You know, you can get it done in 10 minutes, maybe 15 minutes. 00:03:41.199 --> 00:03:49.759 So, in order to understand Haggai, you have to know some history, you have to know some ancient history. 00:03:49.759 --> 00:03:56.159 And I know how much you love ancient history, he said sarcastically. 00:03:56.159 --> 00:04:07.840 And so, in order to get that history out, I have made some slides and I'm giving myself three minutes to get it all out. 00:04:07.840 --> 00:04:10.159 Are we all agreed that's fair? 00:04:10.159 --> 00:04:13.360 Three minutes of ancient history is okay. 00:04:13.360 --> 00:04:14.719 I can do this. 00:04:14.719 --> 00:04:18.399 All right, I'm starting now. 00:04:18.399 --> 00:04:22.319 All right, we're gonna start with the United Monarchy. 00:04:22.319 --> 00:04:24.720 You probably have heard of King David, right? 00:04:24.720 --> 00:04:27.040 He's sort of famous from the Old Testament. 00:04:27.040 --> 00:04:36.639 Well, he was an effective king, which is probably why a lot of our Old Testament is committed to his story and his writings in the Psalms. 00:04:36.639 --> 00:04:48.000 He created a lot of stability in the kingdom, and his son came behind him and did the same kinds of things and was able to really get something grounded, right? 00:04:48.000 --> 00:04:54.560 So you're seeing David and Solomon, right around 1,000 leading up to 931 BCE. 00:04:54.560 --> 00:04:57.600 By the way, BCE before the Common Era. 00:04:57.600 --> 00:05:01.839 A lot of folks are using those words instead of BC and AD. 00:05:01.839 --> 00:05:03.519 So they get it started. 00:05:03.519 --> 00:05:07.519 It's a pretty healthy time for the Jewish people. 00:05:07.519 --> 00:05:08.959 All right, next slide. 00:05:08.959 --> 00:05:13.680 Then after Solomon dies, they get into some division. 00:05:13.680 --> 00:05:17.279 Sometimes nations will divide. 00:05:17.279 --> 00:05:18.160 I don't know. 00:05:18.160 --> 00:05:21.920 You'll hear about it sometime because it's certainly not happening today. 00:05:21.920 --> 00:05:26.319 Divided kingdom starts happening right after Solomon's death. 00:05:26.319 --> 00:05:30.240 We end up with a northern kingdom which is called Israel, right? 00:05:30.240 --> 00:05:36.879 And then we have a southern kingdom called Judah, and you can see kind of where they set up camp, each of them. 00:05:36.879 --> 00:05:40.800 Judah is where uh David and Solomon were, though. 00:05:40.800 --> 00:05:45.279 And it was a much more stable uh kingdom than Israel became. 00:05:45.279 --> 00:06:00.560 And you'll learn here in the next slide that eventually, after some years of coexisting not necessarily well, uh the Assyrian conquest comes, and the Israel part is taken over. 00:06:00.560 --> 00:06:08.879 And when they take over, these Assyrians they take all of the resources, not only uh the stuff, but they take the people. 00:06:08.879 --> 00:06:09.439 Right? 00:06:09.439 --> 00:06:17.600 So you can imagine if if we were conquered and then they took all of our smart folks, all our people who are innovating, and they were just gone. 00:06:17.600 --> 00:06:19.600 And now we were trying to figure it out. 00:06:19.600 --> 00:06:25.040 Not too much later, although longer than you might think, the second kingdom goes down. 00:06:25.040 --> 00:06:26.639 Judah is destroyed. 00:06:26.639 --> 00:06:35.199 And in the midst of that, the temple that Solomon had built, this massive temple that was a she was a beauty. 00:06:35.199 --> 00:06:36.800 This is what we understand. 00:06:36.800 --> 00:06:39.279 Really did a good job on the temple. 00:06:39.279 --> 00:06:49.920 It gets broken down really uh just in the conquering and uh the desire to quash the Israelites, the desire to quash the Jewish people. 00:06:49.920 --> 00:06:53.439 And so even more exile happens at that point. 00:06:53.439 --> 00:06:58.399 The Babylonian exile, you may have heard of in some Bible study and all that. 00:06:58.399 --> 00:07:06.399 And so all of their resources, all of their intelligence, all of their innovation again gets taken away. 00:07:06.399 --> 00:07:27.759 And then there's just this period of the Jewish people living oppressed, those who were taken away lived in oppression in that way, and then those who were left left in, you know, to be sad in a sense that their country had been conquered and that all their people had been, or so many of their people had been taken away. 00:07:27.759 --> 00:07:41.680 Then finally, in the next slide, the uh uh Babylonians are overtaken by the Persians, and Cyrus, the king, Cyrus the Great, offers to let the Israelites go back home. 00:07:41.680 --> 00:07:42.319 Right? 00:07:42.319 --> 00:07:47.680 So they get back home and they're given permission to resettle and to figure themselves out. 00:07:47.680 --> 00:07:55.040 And part of that resettling is that they're gonna build the temple again, a second temple. 00:07:55.040 --> 00:07:59.199 This is where uh Haggai comes in. 00:07:59.199 --> 00:08:11.120 He is a prophet who is doing his ministry at the time of them resettling and looking to rebuild what they had, rebuild that temple. 00:08:11.120 --> 00:08:13.600 I think we can skip that last slide. 00:08:13.600 --> 00:08:16.720 Oh, dang it, 355. 00:08:16.720 --> 00:08:20.879 Oh, I'm one minute over on that thing. 00:08:20.879 --> 00:08:23.279 Yeah, yeah. 00:08:23.279 --> 00:08:24.959 When you're having a blast. 00:08:24.959 --> 00:08:26.000 Not too bad, though. 00:08:26.000 --> 00:08:26.959 Four minutes? 00:08:26.959 --> 00:08:30.079 You know, you can eat oatmeal one morning, right? 00:08:30.079 --> 00:08:31.600 Ay, ay, ay. 00:08:31.600 --> 00:08:33.279 All right, yeah, this last slide. 00:08:33.279 --> 00:08:36.799 That's a little more of the history that takes us into the time of Jesus. 00:08:36.799 --> 00:08:42.000 But the point is, Haggai, this is when he is doing his ministry. 00:08:42.000 --> 00:08:45.679 This is when he is preaching uh his message from God. 00:08:45.679 --> 00:08:54.240 And we assume he was pretty effective because the the uh um the temple does get rebuilt. 00:08:54.240 --> 00:09:04.720 And part of his uh technique, well, and I talk about the title of my message here today is even better than before. 00:09:04.720 --> 00:09:09.600 Because that's kind of how he preached about building that second temple. 00:09:09.600 --> 00:09:12.879 It is going to be even better than before. 00:09:12.879 --> 00:09:15.200 And how did he get this message across? 00:09:15.200 --> 00:09:17.519 Well, some of it was nostalgia. 00:09:17.519 --> 00:09:20.799 He said, Some of you were around when the other temple was here. 00:09:20.799 --> 00:09:28.799 You remember how great that temple was, that thing we got built with God, and it was this glorious thing. 00:09:28.799 --> 00:09:30.240 Well, guess what? 00:09:30.240 --> 00:09:33.120 God is still here. 00:09:33.120 --> 00:09:40.320 God is still working with us to build this temple, this new temple. 00:09:40.320 --> 00:09:52.320 And because God's with us, this next one's gonna be even better than the one before God, because God was with us then, and God is with us now. 00:09:52.320 --> 00:10:04.799 So it's an interesting passage in my mind, this passage for us given today's context, because we don't necessarily have a fallen temple. 00:10:04.799 --> 00:10:12.799 We aren't a people who got conquered and then taken away and then are now getting to come back and try to figure things out. 00:10:12.799 --> 00:10:22.799 And even if our church here got destroyed and taken down, we wouldn't necessarily see that as a weakness from God, right? 00:10:22.799 --> 00:10:25.600 That wouldn't say to us, oh, God must be really weak. 00:10:25.600 --> 00:10:28.960 That temple got broken down, God should have protected it. 00:10:28.960 --> 00:10:31.440 We would think, oh no, something else happened. 00:10:31.440 --> 00:10:41.360 We weren't doing our work to take care of the building, or we just uh there was a journey that was happening here that we weren't really taking that we should have. 00:10:41.360 --> 00:10:44.799 But we wouldn't blame it on God if that fell. 00:10:44.799 --> 00:10:56.639 But we do live at a time in which our positivity, our hope for the nation, maybe even for the world, is a little bit in check. 00:10:56.639 --> 00:11:05.360 Our anxieties about the future of the world, our anxieties about our own nation are a little bit high. 00:11:05.360 --> 00:11:11.840 Maybe it's because of our commercialized news, maybe it's our politicized news. 00:11:11.840 --> 00:11:19.840 It just, it's always bombarding us with the things that make us afraid, the things that make us anxious or angry, right? 00:11:19.840 --> 00:11:23.279 And we just we get them coming to us all the time. 00:11:23.279 --> 00:11:24.080 Why? 00:11:24.080 --> 00:11:30.000 Because that's what we watch, and that's what they want to give us, are the things that get us to watch. 00:11:30.000 --> 00:11:32.000 Maybe that's why we're anxious. 00:11:32.000 --> 00:11:40.000 Maybe it's social media, these little uh echo chambers that we fall into, all right. 00:11:40.000 --> 00:11:47.440 And obviously older folks aren't always in there as much as maybe younger folks, but let's not kid ourselves. 00:11:47.440 --> 00:11:49.600 We're in those echo chambers too. 00:11:49.600 --> 00:11:55.440 That's information, the way it gets delivered to us, it's almost unavoidable. 00:11:55.440 --> 00:12:03.120 So I would argue that our sense of hope for the future is a bit hindered these days. 00:12:03.120 --> 00:12:11.200 And what's even more interesting or maybe disappointing is the sickness that we have of the they, right? 00:12:11.200 --> 00:12:16.879 If only they would do this, everything would be fine. 00:12:16.879 --> 00:12:17.679 Right? 00:12:17.679 --> 00:12:21.919 We rarely kind of look and think, we don't use that word we. 00:12:21.919 --> 00:12:24.159 We need to. 00:12:24.159 --> 00:12:26.320 It's always about they. 00:12:26.320 --> 00:12:32.879 And I wouldn't want you to hear me saying, oh, it's really us, we're our own problem. 00:12:32.879 --> 00:12:46.000 We aren't truly the whole problem, but we never get anywhere when our conversation, when our communication is using those words they, you, you're not getting it done. 00:12:46.000 --> 00:12:49.120 That's kind of what we live in a little bit. 00:12:49.120 --> 00:13:01.200 And even more complex for us, maybe even more uh pessimistic, I would say, is we largely disagree on who the they are. 00:13:01.200 --> 00:13:04.960 If only they would do this. 00:13:04.960 --> 00:13:13.840 Well, one group has their version of they, and then the other group are probably those they, and they're gonna got their their think they are the they. 00:13:13.840 --> 00:13:15.600 You get what I'm saying. 00:13:15.600 --> 00:13:18.159 We are all kind of pointing and pointing, pointing. 00:13:18.159 --> 00:13:30.639 So I wouldn't say we have a temple per se, but a metaphorical temple, maybe, as a people, as a country, as a nation. 00:13:30.639 --> 00:13:34.879 And we're a little concerned for this temple. 00:13:34.879 --> 00:13:38.559 A lot of people would say it's kind of crumbling. 00:13:38.559 --> 00:13:43.840 We'd have different uh beliefs about why it is crumbling. 00:13:43.840 --> 00:14:00.159 And in the midst of that concern, that anxiety, we really aren't creating the uh um the environments, the arenas for us to have good communication to solve some of the things that we're concerned about. 00:14:00.159 --> 00:14:11.759 So when we're talking about a temple following or falling, there is a way the passage might be talking to us. 00:14:11.759 --> 00:14:29.759 There may be a passageway into this passage as we talk about the temple of our existence in our community, maybe being at threat a little bit or concerning a little bit. 00:14:29.759 --> 00:14:34.000 And hey guy's message this is the turn. 00:14:34.000 --> 00:14:38.080 Hey guy's message is to encourage us. 00:14:38.080 --> 00:14:40.879 Hey guy's message is to give us hope. 00:14:40.879 --> 00:14:42.480 And what is that message? 00:14:42.480 --> 00:14:46.399 Well, hey, God is with us. 00:14:46.399 --> 00:14:50.320 God is with us. 00:14:50.320 --> 00:14:59.519 I wonder I wonder if we believe that message. 00:14:59.519 --> 00:15:03.600 Do we believe that God is still with us? 00:15:03.600 --> 00:15:05.600 Well, amen. 00:15:05.600 --> 00:15:07.440 We got some people of faith out there. 00:15:07.440 --> 00:15:08.799 Good, good, good. 00:15:08.799 --> 00:15:12.960 And sometimes, even when we believe it, then we have the next question. 00:15:12.960 --> 00:15:14.559 Okay, well then how? 00:15:14.559 --> 00:15:15.759 Where is God? 00:15:15.759 --> 00:15:17.519 What is God doing? 00:15:17.519 --> 00:15:21.600 How do we know that that's actually happening? 00:15:21.600 --> 00:15:32.879 And I was wrestling with that this week, and uh I happened to be listening to a podcast, and it had uh former president uh Barack Obama on there. 00:15:32.879 --> 00:15:51.279 Um, I don't want to get into politics, so I will just say I hope that uh we can all respect a good human being and a good representative of being a human being uh that led our country for a while. 00:15:51.279 --> 00:15:57.279 But I remembered my story with Barack Obama, especially when he got elected. 00:15:57.279 --> 00:16:22.799 I remember that evening just feeling kind of elation, not necessarily because of what he was going to be standing for or what he might do, but because I still had memory of environments of some pretty significant prejudice, discrimination. 00:16:22.799 --> 00:16:30.480 I remember looking in a history book when I was in middle school and seeing a really horrific picture. 00:16:30.480 --> 00:16:41.759 I'll let you guys guess what kind of picture it might have been about prejudice and discrimination, and being shocked that the picture came from 1968. 00:16:41.759 --> 00:16:46.720 For me, I was alive in 67. 00:16:46.720 --> 00:16:51.759 It was so easy to say, oh yeah, we were prejudiced, but it was in the past. 00:16:51.759 --> 00:17:02.159 And then I had to go, oh shoot, that wasn't that long ago, and it wasn't just bad words or anything, it was it was well, it was murder. 00:17:02.159 --> 00:17:17.279 And I remember sitting there in 2000, well, it would have been uh well 2008, but then the parade in 2009 thinking, well shoot, we we've moved. 00:17:17.279 --> 00:17:42.480 We've gone in what some might call a generation, generation, maybe two generations, from giving ourselves well, you what you might say is legal discrimination to a point where somebody from that discriminated community was now by a vote allowed to be president. 00:17:42.480 --> 00:17:54.720 To me, I in my heart, in my spirit, I was celebrating that because it meant to me that we'd we'd taken a journey, a pretty significant journey. 00:17:54.720 --> 00:18:03.039 And to me, I like to think that God was with us on that journey. 00:18:03.039 --> 00:18:14.160 We can believe that God is with us in our challenges because God was with us in our previous challenges. 00:18:14.160 --> 00:18:24.000 God walked with us through this journey from legal discrimination to electing a president from whom we discriminated from group we discriminated against. 00:18:24.000 --> 00:18:26.480 And God was with us on that whole journey. 00:18:26.480 --> 00:18:49.440 It was a journey that started, by the way, not in 1968, but way back when when one cultural group decided it had permission to grab people from another cultural group, to kidnap them and enslave them, allowing themselves to believe that their race was better than another race. 00:18:49.440 --> 00:18:58.160 Can you imagine the darkness that has to go on in someone's mind to allow them to treat people like that? 00:18:58.160 --> 00:19:06.880 And on that day in 2008, we had this moment of saying, okay, we have moved. 00:19:06.880 --> 00:19:09.680 God has walked with us. 00:19:09.680 --> 00:19:12.720 There is hope in that. 00:19:12.720 --> 00:19:27.759 Even the darkness that our country has had in slavery, we were able to rise above it, at least to the extent that we have today, and hopefully even rising above it more and more. 00:19:27.759 --> 00:19:34.640 We know God is with us because God has been with us. 00:19:34.640 --> 00:19:40.880 From our passage today, God was with us in the time of kings when everything was going pretty good. 00:19:40.880 --> 00:19:48.480 King David's writing Psalms and uh really informing generations about the relationship with God. 00:19:48.480 --> 00:20:01.119 God was with us in that time of division, Israel and Judah, when we were living uneasily with each other, despite all being people of the Jewish faith. 00:20:01.119 --> 00:20:04.720 God was with us in that time of being conquered. 00:20:04.720 --> 00:20:21.519 When all of our resources, all of our intelligence was taken away, when we felt hopeless and powerless and vulnerable, and God was with us in that time of rebuild, of getting that temple going again. 00:20:21.519 --> 00:20:26.960 This is the hope that that we hold as Christians. 00:20:26.960 --> 00:20:31.920 This is the hope that we look to a time of Advent for. 00:20:31.920 --> 00:20:35.680 What are we doing during Advent? 00:20:35.680 --> 00:20:37.279 What is it we wait for? 00:20:37.279 --> 00:21:02.480 We're waiting for this presence, this hope to be made real in the birth of God's Son, whom God sends that we might know God intimately, and that we might know a deep, deep hope for ourselves and our world because of that relationship. 00:21:02.480 --> 00:21:10.079 I invite you on that journey in this pre Advent to Advent. 00:21:10.079 --> 00:21:11.599 Amen. 00:21:11.599 --> 00:21:13.119 Amen.