Haggai's third message

Brother Zeke Rivera continued his Haggai series with chapter 2, verses 10 to 19. He recapped that God does not change (Malachi 3:6), so the Old Testament shows us how He deals with people. Solomon's temple was gold, the returning exiles built one of wood, and 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 says that for believers today our body is the temple. When people get distracted or discouraged, God sends a prophet. Haggai's first message was to consider your ways and the second was "how do ye see it now?" The third shifts from the whole people to the priests and ends with "from this day will I bless you." His question for the night was what brings God's blessing, and he gave three answers.

What brings God's blessing

Being thoroughly right with God in holiness. In verses 12 and 13 God asks the priests, experts in the law, two questions. If someone carries holy meat in the fold of his garment and it touches bread, wine, or oil, does that make them holy? The priests answer no. If someone made unclean by a dead body touches those things, are they unclean? Yes. The lesson is that holiness does not spread by touch, but uncleanness does. Doing holy work, serving in a church or a ministry, does not make a person holy, and bringing uncleanness to that work makes it unclean to God.

Brother Rivera pointed to Leviticus 6:14-18, where the meat offering was "most holy" and had to be made without leaven. Yeast is not wrong in itself, he said, but the offering was set apart because God said so. He described two extremes among independent Baptists: those who say you are not holy unless you dress and sing as they do, and those who are so loose that they keep no standard at all. The truth, he said, is in the middle. In 2 Corinthians 6:14-17 believers are told to come out and be separate, and he compared separation to wedding vows, which close off other options and that is the beauty of them. He said separation is personal between each believer and God, and told of a missionary who gave up the saxophone, not because the instrument was wrong, but because of where playing it took his walk with God. The blessing of separation, he said, is getting thoroughly intimate with God.

Genuine repentance, turning to God. In Haggai 2:15-17 God asks the people to consider how things were before the temple foundation was laid: a man expecting twenty measures found ten, and a man drawing fifty vessels from the winepress got twenty. God had struck their work with blasting, mildew, and hail, "yet ye turned not to me." Their blessing was held back because their backs were turned to Him. Brother Rivera then turned to Zechariah 1:4-6, where the second prophet (who began preaching at the same time as Haggai, Ezra 5:1) says "be ye not as your fathers." Their fathers and the earlier prophets died, but God's words and statutes took hold of the people anyway. God's word is alive and it catches up, and Galatians 6:7 says God is not mocked. God sends prophets, preachers, and messengers, and we should listen.

100% faith in God and 100% faith in your work. Haggai 2:19 asks, "Is the seed yet in the barn?" The vine, fig tree, pomegranate, and olive tree were still bare, and the people had to keep planting and working in faith before any fruit showed. He pointed to Daniel and his friends, who held a conviction not to defile themselves and still kept up their training, and God blessed them. In 1 Corinthians 3:6, Paul planted and Apollos watered but God gave the increase, which he called the law of division of labor: you work believing your work will bring results, and you pray and seek God believing He will bless it. Some people are not blessed, he said, because they are not working hard enough, and blaming the church, family, or school will not allow God to bless them.

Closing

He closed in prayer, asking God to search every heart, so that believers would not be the group that gets distracted and derailed when they are not facing Him. Pastor Ortiz added that the teaching was something to take home.