Fri.’s Devo - Get to Work Building God’s Kingdom

Read: Haggai 1:1-2:23; Revelation 11:1-19; Psalm 139:1-24; Proverbs 30:15-16 Haggai means “festive”. Haggai along with Zechariah, which we will begin reading tomorrow, were prophets during the time of post exile. Darius was king in Persia and many Jews had returned to Jerusalem to rebuild the Temple. They started out well, building the altar and even sacrificing on it. Then they laid the foundation for the Temple. That is when the enemy came in and discouraged them so much, they stopped. They turned their attention to building their own houses and enjoying the prosperity they had missed while in exile. *** Haggai came to get them interested back in the Lord and his purposes. He reminded them that because they had made the Lord their last priority, their blessings had been stopped up. Their hard work in the fields produced much less than it should have. They did not have all they needed to survive because they had put themselves first and stopped building God’s house. *** Zerubbabel, the governor and Jeshua the high priest began to obey the message Haggai brought and began working on the Temple once again. God sent them the message that He was with them. *** A month into their project God sent another message to address their discouragement. Some of the older ones had remembered the greatness of Solomon’s Temple and were not impressed with the size of the new Temple. God sent them a message to be strong and get to work because God was in this. God was going to shake the heavens and the earth and all that is in it and the nations would bring its treasures to this place. God would then fill it with his glory and the future glory of this temple will be greater than the glory of Solomon’s Temple. *** Two months later, God explained to them through examples that sin was contagious but holiness was not, it was an act of God. Since man is defiled by their sin, they are robbed of their blessing but God was telling them that God was about to bless them from this day forward. He would destroy the power of foreign kingdoms and cause them to destroy themselves. When this happened God would honor Zerubbabel because he obeyed the Lord. *** In Revelation John is given a rod to measure the Temple of God because judgement begins in the house of the Lord. This is a picture of the Lord counting who is his. He is measuring the hearts of his people to see who is totally sold out to him. Luke asks “When the Lord returns will He find faith on the earth?” This is that. Those that aren’t found worthy are in the outer courtyard and they do everything they can to do to discourage and trample the Christians. They do it for 1,260 days or 3.5 years or like in Daniel 7:25 and 12:7 for”time, times, and half a time.” *** Two witnesses will appear during that time who are mourning the sin going on and are praying for God to intervene for the sake of humanity. These two witnesses are the religious world and the political world. The God-led religious institutions keep society in check and the God-led government brings justice. Without them there would be anarchy. The religious deals with our hearts and the government deals with our actions. They are suppose to bring healing and peace (the olive tree) and bring light. They are to shine the light on the evil that is going on and stop it. *** If any man tries to hurt them, fire will come out of their mouths. We have the power with our testimony to take them down. The government has the power to enforce law and order. Elijah went against the prophets of Baal and Moses went up against the government of Egypt and both won and we can too. *** In verse 7 the beast comes up out of the pit to make war against God’s people. He shut up the voice of the church with Johnsons’s 501C3. The church, though on every street corner became irrelevant to the world. The world put up their buildings of sin right beside the churches. In our day, the religious institutions and the Government has been overcome by tyranny, satanic rituals, sexual perversion and disregard for justice. All the while the New World Order laughs and celebrates. *** But, in the middle of the time, the Church begins to stand up all over the world! We woke up! We are standing up like the bones in Ezekiel who became a great army. *** Next, we see the earth quaking and the New World Order coming down. The worldly kingdoms become the Kingdoms of the Lord. Judgment comes to the wicked and rewards come to the righteous. *** In heaven the Temple is opened and the Ark of his covenant is seen inside the Temple. On earth there is lightning, thunder and an earthquake and a terrible hail storm. All of these happened when Christ was crucified. It is earth responding to God’s move. *** Lord, how exciting is all of this! All glory and power and dominion is yours. We extoll you higher than any other power in all heaven and earth. Thank you for your goodness to us!