Advent Midweek III

Advent Midweek III: “From This Day On I Will Bless You”

December 18, 2024

Text: Haggai 2:10-23

            Building projects are hard.  Frankly, just searching for suitable and affordable property is hard, as we know all too well.  It’s a roller coaster ride of ups and downs, highs and lows, hope and anticipation, followed by disappointment and disillusionment.  Then, when you least expect it, things are looking up again.  What’s hard about this is, once you get on the coaster, you no longer have control.  You just have to go for the ride, trusting that our God does have control, that He will bring us safely through, and that, in the end, the destination will have been worth all the twists and turns.  And what is that end?  A place, a home, in which we can receive our Lord’s Gospel gifts often and routinely, Word and Sacrament, the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation.  And from which we can speak forth Christ to others, and be His merciful presence in this place by loving and serving our neighbors. 

            The Jewish remnant in our text knew the roller coaster ride well.  Down in the depths of Babylonian captivity, up on the heights of return from exile, plunging down again under Samaritan slander and threat of violence.  They actually tried to get off the ride mid-descent.  This is where we met them at the beginning of Haggai’s book, attempting to derail the whole thing, irrationally expecting that their endeavor to sabotage would end in anything other than disaster.  That is why God sends them His man.  “Don’t unbuckle your harness!  Don’t throw impediments in front of the wheels to knock the cars off the track!  You can’t get off this ride, now, without personal and corporate catastrophe!”  Remember, with high hopes the Jewish remnant began the project, laying the Temple’s foundation and constructing the altar.  But when things got hard, when the Samaritans opposed the work, the people decided to abandon the whole venture, neglect God’s House, and make their own houses comfortable and luxurious instead. 

            Well, that was then.  Now God, by the preaching of His prophet, reviews the state of affairs with His people.  “Do you remember how it was?  How were things going, then, when you abandoned My House?  Is it not true that everything always came up short?  The grain?  The wine?  Is it not true that the product of all your labor I struck with blight and mildew and hail?  Why was that?”  It was a call to repentance.  God was calling His people to return to Him, to the LORD their God.  The evidence of their return would be their getting back to work on His House.  See, their idolatrous fear of people and things that are not God had not only stopped the work, it had made the people unclean.  Their apathy and self-interest had made the people unclean.  And as a result, nothing was holy to them.  Because there wasn’t a Temple to make them holy.  Instead, they spread their uncleanness to everything they touched, right down to the very food they ate.  Nothing was blessed.  God does not bless idolatrous fear.  God does not bless selfishness.  God does not bless apathy. 

            But He does bless the call to repent.  God gives the perilous plunge into the depths of the dark valley as occasion for the Jewish remnant, for us, to repent, to turn once again, away from fear and selfishness and apathy, to Him, and to Him alone.  God gives us nosedives into shadow and shade to exercise our faith, that we abandon, not Him, but our delusion of control, and thus cling to Him alone.   The amazing thing is, the Prophet Haggai came and preached that… and the people repented.  And responded in faith.  They took up their tools once again, and got to work.

            That is always amazing to a preacher.  What made the difference?  It wasn’t only the preaching of the Law.  It was God’s Gospel Promise.  We heard it the last two weeks.  And it applies to us, as much as to them.  “I am with you, declares the LORD…  Be strong…  Work, for I am with you… according to the covenant that I made with you…  My Spirit remains in your midst.  Fear not” (Hag. 1:13; 2:4-5; ESV).  And so, three months after the work began again, God says to the people, whatever may have been the chastisement in the past, “from this day on I will bless you" (2:19). 

            Note, it’s not that He will bless them because now they are doing the work by which they have earned His blessing.  No, He will bless them because they are with Him once again.  They have returned to Him.  They are no longer going their own way.  To go your own way (to abandon the roller coaster, to stick with the image) is to remove yourself from the blessing of the LORD.  It is never that He is unfaithful in blessing.  That is not why the blessing ceased.  It is that we are unfaithful in remaining in His blessing.  Where the LORD is, there is blessing.  Even in the valley of the shadow.  He is with us in the darkness.  He is with us in death.  And if He is with us (Emmanuel), who is there to harm us?  If He is with us (Emmanuel), what is there to fear?  We can take up our tools, now, and get to work in faith.  Because His Spirit remains in our midst.  He is in control.  It is true, we can wreck the roller coaster and abandon it, but He never will.  He does not abandon us.  He will never leave us or forsake us.  He does not perpetrate evil against us.  Beloved, we have these Promises in our efforts at procuring a building of our own.  Whatever happens.  Whatever our perception of success, or lack thereof.  He is with us.  He will prosper us.  Let us repent of all apathy.  Let us repent of all fear.  Let us trust in the Lord of the Church, that as we go forward in His Name, He will bless.    

            Now, in our text, there is an additional Promise.  For the second time that day, the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, in the second year of Darius, God sends His prophet, this time to the governor, Zerubbabel, son of Shealtiel.  Not only will the Temple be rebuilt.  From the stump of Jesse (to borrow a phrase from the Prophet Isaiah [11:1])… from the House of David that was cut down by siege and exile… shall come forth a shoot.  David’s royal line shall be resurrected through you, O Zerubbabel.  Zerubbabel was a son of David.  No, Zerubbabel was not to be king (He was just the vassal governor of Judea under the authority of the Persian Empire).  But through him, God preserved the line.  He is right there in the genealogies recorded by Matthew and Luke, an ancestor of THE Son of David, our Lord Jesus Christ.  This is a Promise of Christ!

            It will shake the heavens and the earth when this Promise is fulfilled.  He (The Promise Incarnate) will overthrow the kingdoms of the nations when He comes, the chariots and their riders.  He will overthrow all evil.  Zerubbabel is the LORD’s signet ring in accomplishing this.  God has chosen him to be the key.  You know what a signet ring is, of course?  In the ancient world, it is the seal of authority.  Pressed into the wax seal of a letter, or on tablets of clay, it conveys the image effecting royal authority.  Zerubbabel is the seal of God’s proclamation.  He is the proof.  He is the sign.  The LORD will do this.  It is as good as done.  Our Advent anticipation will give way to Christmas joy when a Child, God’s Son, is born to Mary. 

            He is the true Temple, of which every Tabernacle or Temple that came before is but a type.  The LORD Himself builds a House of Prayer for all nations.  And zeal for this House consumes Him.  “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19).  He is speaking of the Temple of His Body (v. 21).  The Body descended from David.  The Body descended from Zerubbabel.  The Body born of Mary, nailed to a cross, raised again on the Third Day.  The Body ascended to the right hand of God the Father Almighty, the seat of all power and authority.  The Body to which you are joined, living stones to the Living Stone rejected by men, but in the sight of God, chosen and precious, built up as a spiritual house, the Holy Church.  The Body given you to eat, thus rendering you, once and for all, clean, holy, and precious to God. 

            The Promise to Zerubbabel, and of which he is the signet, is the reason we undertake a building project.  It is why we’re on this roller coaster ride to begin with.  Not so that God will bless us.  We must never think that if we do this for God, He will respond by doing some things for us.  That isn’t how things work in the Kingdom.  But because, with Him, and in Him… in His presence… by His gifts… His Spirit in our midst… we know our work will be blessed.  We can take up our God-given tools, and get to work with rejoicing.  Because we know that the end of this ride is a place and a home to be with our Father, and with His Son, Jesus Christ, in the Spirit who proceeds from them both.  To gather around the Christian Family Table.  To hear His Word, receive His Wisdom, to treasure it and keep it.  To be cleansed of all sin.  To be nourished for eternal life.  To be loved by God, and to love one another.  To be the Body of Christ, and the Temple of God in this place.  Beloved, the Lord has put you on this ride.  Don’t unbuckle your harness.  Don’t attempt to knock the cars off the tracks.  Stay seated, stay calm, and enjoy the ride.  God is in control.  He will bring us safely to our destination.  Remain in Him.  Cling to Him.  Even when things are hard and scary.  Trust each other.  Work with each other.  Love one another.  “(F)rom this day on I will bless you,” says the LORD.  You have His Promise on that.  He will do it for Jesus’ sake.  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son X, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.