Fresh Manna 2021

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Strong Tower Radio

Through the Bible

Cody Francis

Joshua & Judges: Right in Our Own Eyes

Ruth: Next to Kin

1 & 2 Samuel: After God’s Own Heart

1 & 2 Kings: A Divided Heart

Ezra & Nehemiah: Moving Mountains

Psalms: Praise the Lord

Job: Trusting God in the Dark

Song of Solomon: The Flame of Yahweh

Isaiah: The Lord is Salvation!

Jeremiah & Lamentations: Beware of Your Heart

Ezekiel: The Lord is There

Daniel: God is My Judge

Hosea: A Heartbroken Lover

Joel: Rend Your Heart

Jonah: On the Run

Micah: Before the Divine Tribunal

Nahum: The Good News of God’s Vengeance

Habakkuk: Yet I Will Rejoice

Zephaniah: Hidden by the Lord

Haggai: Is It Time?

Zechariah: The Lord Remembers

Malachi: My Jewels

Matthew: Behold Your King

Luke: The Savior of the World

Mark: Follow Me

John: The Word of God

Acts: All Who Believed Were Together

Romans: The Obedience of Faith

1 & 2 Corinthians: One Body

Galatians: A Different Gospel

Ephesians: In Him

Esther: Unlikely Deliverance

Proverbs: Two Paths

Ecclesiastes: The Meaning of Life

1 & 2 Chronicles: From Temple to Temple

Amos: The Danger of Success

Obadiah: The Tale of Two Mountains

Fresh manna fell to the ground as a gift from God while the Israelites were in the wilderness.

It was fresh from the ovens of heaven, baked by the master baker himself.

How the Israelites must have anticipated the taste and the smell of each morning's delivery.

Just like the Israelites, you too can now experience the taste and the smell of fresh manna.

Today, you'll be listening to Cody Francis, Ministerial Department Director for the Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists.

We're going to continue our study through the Word of God and we're in the book of Haggai.

And as we study the book of Haggai, I want to begin with, we see some events taking place in Haggai that I wanna illustrate as we begin.

In 1902, a boy by the name of Walt was born.

And Walt had a little bit of a challenge as he was growing up.

He didn't have the greatest relationship with his father.

As he was in class, he would fall asleep because his father ran a paper route and he and his brother actually were the ones that had to do it so they would have to get up at 430 in the morning and deliver their papers and then come home in the afternoon and deliver the evening papers as well.

He tried to join the army for World War I, but he was too young.

He actually forged his date of birth on his birth certificate and was accepted into the Red cross, but he arrived in France after the war was over.

And he got a job doing some artwork for a paper in Kansas City, but was laid off from his first animation job.

He formed his own company and they made what they called Laugh-o-grams, but that company went bankrupt.

Walt Disney went on to California, but as he went on to California, it still wasn't easy for him.

He created at the time, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.

And he and his team actually, it wasn't him per se, but then because they did not own Oswald the Rabbit, the company they were producing him for required that he lower what they were charging.

And when he said he couldn't do that, the company took a lot of his animators and took Oswald the rabbit as well.

Shortly after that, they searched for another creature to create and he and 1 of his animators that he'd worked with all the way in Kansas City came up with Mortimer Mouse.

Now Walt Disney's wife decided that Mortimer was not the best of names for this mouse and convinced him to change it to Mickey Mouse.

And although Mickey Mouse became enormously successful, throughout his career he kept facing debt and challenges.

And many times it seemed like until the very end that things were always going wrong.

When we turn to the book of Haggai, we find a group of people that came with great hopes and great ambitions, but things always seemed to go wrong.

Haggai, as we turn to it, is the second shortest book in the Old Testament.

Haggai is 1 of the few prophets that has a successful career, if you will, because when we look at Haggai, the people actually respond to his message.

When we look at Jeremiah, the people refuse his message.

The king wants to hear, but says, don't even tell anybody that you were here and refused to follow it.

At the end of Jeremiah's life, as Jerusalem is destroyed and there's just a few people left they say now we will follow God's Word should we go to Egypt or not Jeremiah prays and he comes back with the answer and the Lord says, don't go to Egypt and what do the people do?

The Lord didn't tell you that, we're going to Egypt anyway.

And that is par for the course for most of the Old Testament prophets.

But not for the short period of Haggai's ministry.

Only from actually Haggai was prophesying from August to December of 520 BC.

And for those few short months the people respond to the message of Haggai.

What is the message of Haggai and does Haggai still have a message for us or was it only for that 5 month period 2, 500 years ago?

Of course God has preserved it in the Bible so we believe and we know that God has a message for us from this book as well.

But let's turn to Haggai chapter 1, we'll read verses 1 and 2.

In the second year of King Darius, in the sixth month, on the first day of the month, the word of the Lord came by Haggai the prophet to Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel governor of Judah and to Joshua the son of Jehozadek the high priest saying thus says the Lord of hosts saying this people says the time has not come, the time that the Lord's house should be built.

The Lord sends a message through Haggai that this is what the people are saying.

The people are saying that the time has not come for God's house to be built.

They had developed spiritual amnesia spiritual amnesia.

Because just 16 years before God had worked miraculously for them and around 50, 000 people had left Babylon where they had been exiled and returned with Zerubbabel and Joshua and they returned to Jerusalem and their specific purpose in returning to Jerusalem.

Keep in mind, these people were leaving their homes in Babylon.

Many of them had been born and grown up and lived all of their lives in Babylon.

A few of them remembered Jerusalem from when they were boys and girls.

It had been 70 years before that they had been taken captive, but there was a specific reason that they were returning to Jerusalem.

In fact here in Ezra chapter 1 God moved on the heart of Cyrus king of Persia.

1 of the important, in fact this is as far as biblical history, the most important thing that he does after conquering Babylon is he issues a proclamation.

Ezra chapter 1 verses 2 and 3, Thus says Cyrus king of Persia, all the kingdoms of the earth the Lord God of heaven has given me, and He has commanded me to build him, what does it say?

May his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem which is in Judah, and build the house of the Lord God of Israel, he is God which is in Jerusalem.

Notice the decree of Cyrus here, What was the purpose of Cyrus's decree?

Go back to Jerusalem and whoever's willing to leave your homes, to leave your jobs, to leave your life here in the Babylonian province, whoever's willing to do that, go back to Jerusalem, God has commanded me to build the house of God at Jerusalem.

Then Jeshua the son of Josedec and his brethren the priest and Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel and his brethren arose and built the altar of the God of Israel to burn burnt offerings on it as it is written in the law of Moses the man of God.

They assemble, they gather around, they build the altar and they begin to offer sacrifices upon the altar And we see that there is great rejoicing.

Notice verse 11 of chapter 3 And they sang responsibly, praising and giving thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy endures forever toward Israel.

Then all the people shouted with a great shout when they praised the Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid.

Because God's work, God's house was being rebuilt.

There were a few that remembered Solomon's temple.

And as they remembered Solomon's temple, those that had to be at least 70 plus years old.

They wept because they saw that this temple was becoming nothing close to equaling the magnificence of Solomon's temple.

This was 16 years before Haggai's message.

They had left Babylon full of hope, full of purpose, full of plans to rebuild God's temple.

They had rejoiced with great shouting and joy.

We come to Haggai and God says through Haggai, this is what the people are saying, the time has not come to build the house of the Lord.

Well they had some hindrances and some discouragements that came as they began to build.

We read about it in Ezra chapter 4, we see that some of the adversaries wanted to come and help them and they said, no, you have no part in it.

Verse 4 says the people of the land tried to discourage the people of Judah.

But then the most difficult challenge of all came.

They sent a letter to, it's referred to as Artaxerxes.

This is not the, Well, there's different understandings, I guess.

It doesn't seem like it's the same Artaxerxes as what's recorded and made the decree in 457.

Probably someone that is being called by Artaxerxes here.

And some have suggested it's the false Smyrtus that reigned for a time.

Others have said it was just another king with a different name.

At any rate, they write to the king of Persia, and as they write to the king of Persia, the king of Persia says, you're right, Jerusalem has been a rebellious city.

And it says in verse 23 of Ezra 4, By force of arms they made them cease.

Thus the work of the house of God, which is at Jerusalem, ceased.

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Through the Bible

Haggai: Is It Time?

Transcript

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