Telling the Truth

Guest (Male): Discouragement can do more than take the wind out of our sails. It can truly be debilitating. But as we're about to be reminded in this message from Stuart, we must not overlook the tremendously powerful effect of encouragement. We'll get started with that teaching in just a moment. But first, everyone experiences disappointments in life. And when those thoughts are left unattended, they can lead you to despair and cause you to miss out on the abundant life Jesus promises. That's why we want to help you win the battle against feelings of discouragement by sending you Stuart and Jill Briscoe's five message series, Hope for the Disheartened.

The Hope for the Disheartened series is our thanks for your gift to help more people experience life through the teaching and resources of Telling the Truth. So request your copy when you give today. 1-800-889-5388. That's 1-800-889-5388. Or you can give online at tellingthetruth.org. Now here's today's message from Stuart.

Stuart Briscoe: Now we're going to turn our attention to the ancient prophecy of Haggai. A couple of people said to me, I've never heard of Haggai. And somebody else sent word to me, why in the world are we spending time talking about a building project that didn't get off the ground 2,500 years ago? Well, that's a good question. Let me remind you. The situation was this. The children of Israel had been banished from Jerusalem and from Judea and from Israel as a result of their disobedience towards God. He had warned them this would happen. And it happened.

He told them that there would be an exile for 70 years. At the end of 70 years, Cyrus, the king of Persia, looked favorably upon them, gave them freedom to return to Jerusalem, actually gave them all kinds of help and encouragement in rebuilding the temple and the city of Jerusalem. They went back with considerable degree of enthusiasm, got started and is reinstituting the worship of Jehovah there. They very very quickly ran into discouragement and for about a space of 18 years, nothing much was done in terms of rebuilding the temple. Then along came a prophet called Haggai.

And in the name of the Lord, he asked him a very good question. He said, all right, you say you don't have time to rebuild the Lord's house. But if that's the case, how come you've got time to be doing all kinds of work on your own houses? That that was a pretty good question. He went on to explain to them, look, you're experiencing all kinds of difficulties in your lives. What you don't seem to understand is this. There is a direct connection between the fact that you're not rebuilding the Lord's house and the difficulties that you're running into.

In other words, what Haggai was saying to the people was this. There can be a very direct connection between a failure to nourish our spiritual lives and the practical problems we run into in our lives. Now I hope that's clear because you see, that is a principle that obtains in all generations and in all cultures. And many of us perhaps need to be looking at our lives and saying, what in the world went wrong with it? And we may have looked for all kinds of solutions when we've all looked what could be the root problem.

And that is a failure to nurture and nourish our own spiritual life. Well, this was the message that Haggai brought. He did it very effectively. And the people responded to what he had to say. And they said in effect, yes, you're right, Haggai. We really need to get to work and rebuild the Lord's temple. And the reason they did that was they recognized that what Haggai was saying to them was the word of the Lord. And they also believed it when Haggai reminded them that the Lord was with them. And so their spirits were stirred up.

And with great enthusiasm, they went back to the work after 18 years. Well, the encouragement didn't last very long. For less than a month later, Haggai comes with a second message to them. And the reason for this second message is quite frankly this. Less than one month after their return with great enthusiasm to the work of the Lord, they're running out of gas again. They are becoming discouraged. And so he has for them today a message of encouragement. That's where we pick it up in Haggai chapter two. Now notice that the question that Haggai asks them is this.

Verse three. Who of you is left who saw this house in its former glory? How does it look to you now? Does it not seem to you like nothing? In other words, the foundation had been laid. They've done about three and a half weeks work on it. And when they look at what they've done, they say to themselves, gee, this doesn't amount to much at all, does it? And there's a note of discouragement there. Doesn't take long for people to become discouraged in their lives. Now there are very good reasons for these people experiencing discouragement.

If you check in the book of Ezra sometimes, remember you need to read Ezra and Nehemiah and Daniel and Jeremiah and Ezekiel in conjunction with Haggai or Zechariah as well. They're all related to each other. But if you check in the book of Ezra sometime, this is what you'll discover that almost as soon as Haggai and Zechariah got them rebuilding, along comes a very important official called Tattenai. And Tattenai says to them, well, who gave you authority to build this building? And what exactly are the names of the people involved in this project? And I am going to be questioning the king Darius in headquarters about this.

And we are going to be checking out if you are doing something totally unauthorized. That's how people in authority tend to speak to you when they want to put a wrench in the works. And so the the people immediately are running into all kinds of problems with the authorities. Now if you check in Ezra, you'll also discover that this wasn't just a temporary thing. Actually, after king Darius died, another king and then king Xerxes, they were still giving them problems. And after king Xerxes, there was king Artaxerxes. And they were still giving them problems. And my estimation is that these problems probably went on for 60 or 70 years, just plain awkward cursedness on the part of the authorities.

I don't know if you've ever run into that kind of thing, but it can be pretty discouraging.

Guest (Male): More teaching from Stuart and Jill Briscoe is coming up, so stay with us. Did you know you can find more life-giving content from the Briscoes at tellingthetruth.org and on the Telling the Truth app? There you can sign up for daily devotionals, watch videos, read blogs, and access a variety of other resources to help you experience life. And while you're there, you can also request this month's featured resource as thanks for your gift of support to help share the abundant life Jesus offers with more people around the world. Visit us online or download the app today and experience life with Telling the Truth.

Now let's hear some more of today's teaching from Stuart.

Stuart Briscoe: There's something else that we've already suggested to you. And that is the the remembrance of the former glories. Which of you says Haggai, which of you can remember the the former temple? Well, there couldn't have been many of them because it was 70 years since it had been destroyed. So if they were still around on their hind legs 70 years later, then they probably were very old and they must have been extremely young when they saw the temple. Now you remember when you're a kid and you look at a building and then you go back when you're an adult, you say, oh gee, how small it got.

Now it that's didn't get any smaller. It's just that from a child's vantage point, that building looks magnificent. Well, there were there were two problems here. There were there were children when they'd seen it, so it looked magnificent, this former temple. But now there's all kinds of nostalgia. Oh, this thing they've built now, it doesn't amount to anything much at all. So they've got all kinds of problems, roadblocks from the authorities. And then they 've got the old-timers bleaching about the good old days and their enter nostalgia trips. And you can feel the enthusiasm draining out of the project.

But then there's something else. They had been in captivity in Babylon. And while they were there, one of the preachers was a man called Ezekiel. Now Ezekiel wrote a whole lot of stuff and he put it on the one huge prophecy called Ezekiel, funnily enough. Now it's a weird and wonderful book. You should read it sometimes. You won't understand a lot of it, but a lot of it is very very gripping and very very dramatic. I don't know why, but one time I wrote a book on on the prophecy of Ezekiel. And I called it All Things Weird and Wonderful.

And funnily enough, the Dallas Theological Seminary did a review on it. I was amazed. And they said very few people will even attempt to write a book on Ezekiel, but Stuart Briscoe attempted to. And his book is called All Things Weird and Wonderful. And they said if you're looking for a contemporary treatment of an ancient book, frankly this is wonderful. But if you're looking for a good, solid, dispensational, premillennial treatment, this is weird. Well, I thought that was a very valid commentary on my commentary. I thought you'd be interested to hear that, but I can see that you have no idea what I'm talking about.

So I will press on regardless at this particular point. The point of Ezekiel is this. If you look at chapters 40 through 48, he has a grand vision of the temple. And if you look at this grand vision of the temple, it is splendiferous. It is absolutely magnificent. It is wild. It It is huge. It is absolutely immense. And he gave them this prophecy 25 years after they've been in captivity. They were there for 70 years. So for 45 years, they'd been fed on this great picture of this wonderful temple. And they come back and look at it.

Look at this thing. This is the best we can do. You know there's nothing quite so discouraging as unrealistic expectations not being met. Now Zechariah came along two months after Haggai started preaching. And Zechariah comes up with a very powerful statement. He says, who are you to despise the day of small things? That's a good question. You people who are down in the mouth, you people are all discouraged because you've got these unrealistic expectations and you're turning your nose down, you're giving your thumb down on this project because you despise the day of small things.

How dare you? You know why? You know why Zechariah raises that question? Because God, when he works, usually starts in a small, quiet way and lets things grow. In this whole human race thing, we've got more than 6 billion of them. According to Genesis 1, it started with one couple. That's a pretty small start. When God started doing something with his chosen people, the children of Israel through whom his eternal purposes will be worked out, he chose one little man called Abraham. When God wanted to do something dramatic called the Exodus to bring the people out of Egypt, he had to get them in there first.

So he took one young fellow called Joseph, put him down there. When God wanted to bring a savior into the world, what did he do? He sent a baby born of a virgin. When God wanted to get a group of people who would rally around his son, what did he do? He picked 11 fishermen from Galilee. When God wanted to start the work, what did he get? He get 120 frightened people locked in a room in Jerusalem. When God wanted to build a church called Elmbrook in the western suburbs of Milwaukee, what did he do?

He got 13 people, 13 people. When God wanted to establish a ministry called Telling the Truth that would be the media arm of Elmbrook that would reach literally around the world every single day, what did he do? He got two or three of us down in the basement with one tape recorder. Whenever God does anything, he starts small. Never never despise the day of small things. But you see, there people will always do that. And when you've got the authorities putting roadblocks in the way and you've got people thinking nostalgically about the glory days that are more a figment of their imagination than anything else.

And then you've got the people who are despising little things and saying, this will never amount to anything. You can just hear the air going out of people's tires. Not only that, as they looked at the situation that were confronted them, they recognized that there was no way that their problems were going to be solved overnight. They got immense problems with the harvest. They got immense problems with food. They got all kinds of problems with adequate clothing. They got all kinds of problems. And even if God says, I am going to fix your problems, they were smart enough to know that they were not suddenly going to be rectified.

Everything that had gone wrong was not suddenly going to be put right. But you see, their problem was this. They were a little bit ahead of their times. They were into instant gratification. They wanted it fixed and they wanted it fixed now. The problems of life are rarely fixed quickly. They're rarely fixed easily. They rarely fixed cheaply. They rarely fixed painlessly. They rarely fixed immediately. But what do we want? We want our problems fixed. We want them fixed now. We want them fixed quickly. We want them fixed painlessly. We want them fixed effortlessly. And we want them fixed cheaply.

It's called instant gratification. And when you begin to realize that the problems even if God is working in the problems are going to be rectified, but you realize it's going to take time, that becomes discouraging. And on top of that, they realize that the simple fact of the matter was that if this temple was ever going to be built, it was going to be built on the basis of blood, sweat, and tears. And who's interested in blood, sweat, and tears? So we're going to discourage bunch of people here. And listen very carefully. Less than a month after they're all enthusiastic.

Anybody who's involved in motivating and mobilizing and organizing people knows it is relatively easy to get people fired up. It's relatively easy to get them fired up, particularly if you've got charismatic leadership. The problem is working with them so that you produce people who are characterized by keeping on keeping on. Because you see, discouragement is infectious and contagious. And that was the problem that Haggai was addressing. So much same for what I would call the debilitating dynamic of discouragement. Now here's the message that Haggai brings. And I want to call this the empowering effect of encouragement.

Don't let's downplay the debilitating dynamic of discouragement. It's real. It's powerful. We have to cope with it. But don't ever let us be so overwhelmed by it because we forget the empowering effect of encouragement. Now we pick it up now in verse four of chapter two of Haggai. This is his message to them. Now be strong, O Zerubbabel, declares the Lord. Be strong, O Joshua, son of Jehozadak, the high priest. Be strong, all you people of the land, declares the Lord, and work. For I am with you, declares the Lord Almighty. This is what I covenanted with you when you came out of Egypt.

And my spirit remains among you. Do not fear. That's pretty straightforward. That is a message of encouragement. Let's look at it piece by piece. The first thing I want you to notice is this that when it says be now, but now be strong, O Zerubbabel, declares the Lord and repeat declares the Lord and then says declares the Lord Almighty, the statement there is that what has just been said is an oracle of God. The word oracle is put after the statement. And that means this is not just any old run-of-the-mill statement. This is just just not some good idea that somebody has had.

This is an oracle of God. This is a statement of God. It is a categorical statement of God. It is an authoritative statement of God. This is God speaking. And when God speaks, people listen. Now then, this is what God is saying. Be strong. And he faced you didn't hear it the same time. He says, be strong a second time. And in case you missed it the first two times, he then says, be strong. Guess what God is saying authoritatively to his people. What's he saying to them? Be strong. Is this a suggestion? No. Is this a nice idea?

No. Is this a little pat on the head? No. Is he wiping their fevered brow? No. Is he patting them on the back? No. Is he kicking them lower down? No. He is simply saying, I am God. Sit down, be quiet, listen. I'm going to tell you something. Be strong. It is not an optional extra. It is that which is expected of those who live in a relationship with the Lord of hosts. Now that is a powerful word for us. Because you see, sometimes, and we know different from the people in Haggai's day, sometimes our discouragements are so discouraging that we feel it is perfectly appropriate and perfectly legitimate for us to go around being discouraged.

If we are looking at the discouragements, that is the answer. That is legitimate. If on the other hand we are listening to the oracle of God, the authoritative statement of God, it is totally illegitimate for us to be going around being discouraged because the command of God, the authoritative statement of God, the oracle of God is what? Be strong. You say, oh this is Old Testament. Well, what about New Testament? What did the apostle Paul say? He said something very very similar. In fact, he amplified a bit. Be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might.

After the Gulf War, George Bush invited his greatest ally during that whole situation, Margaret Thatcher, to come over. She had been kicked out of power, so he brought her over and gave her some kind of an award. And at the awards ceremony, President George Bush told a rather interesting story. He said that during the middle of the Gulf War, when things were very difficult and some major decisions had to be made, he got a phone call from Maggie Thatcher. And Maggie Thatcher said to him, and I thought it was rather interesting that President Bush admitted to her saying this to him.

But she said to him in her inimitable style, George, this is no time to go wobbly. George, this is no time to go wobbly. Well, good old Maggie, she was right. This is no time to go wobbly. And I think Haggai is standing there in the ruins of Jerusalem with this pathetic little piece of work that they've worked on for three weeks. And it's the best that they could do. And he stands on a rock and he says, ladies and gentlemen, in the name of the Lord, this is no time to be wobbly. What a word of encouragement.

Does You see, you encourage people different ways. And that's one way. But he uses other ways. He may immediately goes on to say be strong to Joshua and be strong to Zerubbabel and be strong to the people and work. Now here's a here's a great encouraging factor. He tells them, do something. Just do something. We got a temple to build here, folks.

Guest (Male): Thanks for joining us today here on Telling the Truth. We pray today's message has helped you to experience life in all its fullness through Jesus Christ. Everyone experiences disappointments in life. And when things don't go the way we expect or desire, either tragically or in similar ways, discouragement can become entrenched as we begin to believe destructive thoughts like it's always going to be this way or I'll never overcome this. And when those thoughts are left unattended, they can lead you to despair and cause you to miss out on the abundant life Jesus promises. That's why we want to help you win the battle against feelings of discouragement by sending you Stuart and Jill Briscoe's five message series, Hope for the Disheartened.

In it, Stuart and Jill help you discover why your hope must be tied to trusting God and reliant on his strength and timing. You'll learn that even in trouble times, you have a God who loves you and gives you every reason to look forward with unspeakable peace, hope, and joy. The Hope for the Disheartened series is our thanks for your gift to help more people experience life through the teaching and resources of Telling the Truth. So request your copy when you give today. 1-800-889-5388. That's 1-800-889-5388. Or you can give online at tellingthetruth.org. Thanks for joining us today.

Come back tomorrow for the conclusion of Stuart's message, The Empowering Effect of Encouragement. That's tomorrow here on Telling the Truth.