Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Okay, you guys can actually go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Haggai chapter one. I know that many of you might be thinking, wow, this is a tough sword drill, but if you need help, you can look in the table of contents at the front of your Bible to find Haggai.
[00:00:19] H A G G A I It's a smaller book. It's only got two chapters, and so it is often, you know, forgotten for maybe that reason, maybe some other reasons, but it's kind of maybe 2/3 into your Bible, and you're just going to look right at the beginning at the big number one. We're covering that chapter.
[00:00:46] You know, when studying for this, I was brought. It brought to my mind a time when I was with a lot of my friends in Louisville. I was just visiting there. This is after I lived there.
[00:00:59] And I had. We were at a Mexican restaurant, and there's a pretty big group of friends there. And I had Annie in my lap. She was. She was pretty young, but she was around six months, so she was just starting to eat, you know, real food.
[00:01:14] And I was telling a story to this group of friends, and I didn't notice, but somehow. But the whole time that I was telling the story, the whole table was just not listening to me. They were just locked in on Annie.
[00:01:30] You know, she's so cute, but it was actually because she was choking on a tortilla, and I was just yucking it up, talking about some story. I don't even remember the story, but she was choking. Not seriously. But keep in mind, most of them were not parents. They had no clue if it was serious or not.
[00:01:47] But I was oblivious while telling this story, you know, and while I carelessly went on about whatever I was going on about, I was overlooking the person that really needed my attention. I really should have been more focused. Even though it was fine, she didn't seriously need my attention, you know, but I still should have been a little bit more present. I. I should have helped her maybe remove the giant tortilla piece from her throat instead of making her figure it out.
[00:02:20] Now, I think this is maybe analogous to Haggai in this way. In this book, we find the returned Israelite exiles. So, you know, the nation of Israel, because of their sin, they were judged and sent into exile by Babylon. And they've returned now, but they're just going about their days without a single care for God's house.
[00:02:47] The thing which should be occupying their attention, they're ignoring. They're, you know, doing normal everyday life stuff. Not Caring while God's house lied in ruin.
[00:02:59] So to understand what's led up to this, and so we can kind of get a little more context even than that, actually read from another book. You can just listen or you can flip there.
[00:03:10] Second Chronicles 36, verse 22 says now in the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled. The Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, so that he made a proclamation through all his kingdom and also put it in writing. Thus says Cyrus, king of Persia, the Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever is among you of all his people, may the Lord his God be with him. Let him go up.
[00:03:46] So this is a non Jewish king, you know, boastfully allowing Israelites to go and rebuild the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem.
[00:03:57] And this proclamation is actually also repeated in another book at the beginning of ezra in chapter one.
[00:04:03] So in the year 536 BC, nearly 50,000 Jews and their servants went up to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple.
[00:04:13] Haggai's first prophecy comes in 520.
[00:04:17] So that in 536 they went. This prophecy first comes in 5, 20.
[00:04:23] So what happened in those 16 years?
[00:04:27] Well, they arrived, they cleared away some rubble, they even laid the foundation of the temple. But then trouble came. Ezra chapter four tells us about this. It says then the people of the land discouraged the people of Judah, made them afraid to build and bribed counselors against them to frustrate their purpose. All the days of Cyrus, king of Persia, even until the reign of Darius, king of Persia.
[00:04:53] And this is where we pick up in Haggai 1. They have been paused. They have been afraid. They are not building the house for various reasons.
[00:05:01] And here's where we're picking up. And this is, you know, corroborated Even in Ezra 5, which says the prophets Haggai and Zechariah prophesied to the Jews who were in Judah and Jerusalem in the name of the God of Israel, who is over them. So both Haggai and the next prophet will study Zechariah where prophesying at the same time. So we kind of get some different perspectives from them.
[00:05:24] Now the prophet Jeremiah, I know these are a lot of prophets, don't worry about all the names. But all of these prophets, they're speaking into this situation in different ways. Jeremiah was preceded them in time by quite a bit. He had Prophesied long before. He's saying, this whole land shall become a ruin and a waste, and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon. And 70 years then, after 70 years are completed, I will punish the king of Babylon and that nation, the land of the Chaldeans, for their iniquity, declares the Lord, making that land an everlasting waste. If you want to look that up, it's Jeremiah 25:11 12.
[00:06:03] So 70 years from 586, when the exile began, would be 5:16, right? Does that math. You guys are in math classes? I haven't taken a math class in like a decade.
[00:06:17] That. That's 70 years right now, 516 B.C. just four years before or after this prophecy. So he's prophesying there at year 66 of the 70 from this time when Haggai is prophecy prophesying. So Haggai's urgency is. Because they're running out of time. The 70 years is almost over.
[00:06:40] The house of the Lord is still in ruin, but God intends to dwell with his people.
[00:06:46] That's one of the main themes of all three of the prophets we're studying this semester. God intends to dwell with his people, but his house is in ruin.
[00:06:56] And this is important because this temple, the one that was destroyed and the one that they are building in at this point in history, foreshadows and points to God's desire to dwell with his people.
[00:07:10] So to encapsulate Haggai in one phrase. So if you had to just remember one phrase, and when you open haggai, you remember that, maybe that helps you kind of understand what's going on. I would say maybe you could say, consider your ways that they be pleasing to God.
[00:07:26] That's kind of the tone of the book. Consider your ways that they be pleasing to God.
[00:07:33] In a second, we'll read Haggai Chapter 1. But the main idea of Haggai 1, the main idea is a dead faith leads to selfish living, but a living faith brings one into God's presence. So a dead faith leads to selfish living, but a living faith brings one into God's presence. I have three points. The first is a dead faith. But first we will read the chapter Haggai 1. In the second year of Darius the King, in the sixth month of the first day of the month, the word of the Lord came by the hand of Haggai the prophet, to Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of Jehozadak the high priest. Thus says the Lord of hosts These people say the time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the Lord.
[00:08:22] Then the word of the Lord came by the hand of Haggai the prophet. And is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses while this house lies in ruin?
[00:08:33] Now therefore, thus says the Lord of Hosts, consider your ways.
[00:08:37] You have sown much and harvested little.
[00:08:41] You eat, but you never have enough.
[00:08:44] You drink, but you never have your fill. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm, and he who earns wages does so to put them into a bag with holes.
[00:08:56] Thus says the Lord of Hosts, consider your ways.
[00:09:00] Go up to the hills and bring wood and build the house, that I may take pleasure in it and that I may be glorified, says the Lord.
[00:09:08] You looked for much, and behold it came to little. And when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why? Declares the Lord of Hosts, because of my house that lies in ruins while each of you busies himself with his own house.
[00:09:21] Therefore the heavens above you have withheld the dew and the earth has withheld its produce. And I have called for a drought on the land and the hills, on the grain, the new wine, the oil, on what the ground brings forth on man and beast, and on all their labors.
[00:09:39] Then Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and Joshua the son of Jehozadak the high priest, with all the remnants of the people, obey the voice of the Lord their God, and the words of Haggai the prophet, as the Lord their God had sent them and the people feared the Lord. Then Haggai, the messenger of the Lord spoke to the people with the Lord's message.
[00:10:04] I am with you, declares the Lord. And the Lord stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and the spirit of Joshua the son of Jehozadak the high priest, and the spirit of all the remnant of the people.
[00:10:16] And they came and worked on the house of the Lord of Hosts, their God, on the 24th day of the month, in the sixth month, in the second year of Darius the King.
[00:10:27] So point number one I have is a dead faith. Kind of see this mostly in the first chunk of this I have the verses I think on your handout.
[00:10:37] And now as I speak the words dead faith, I want us to be clear that, you know, this is not just some text that's just talking about how bad Israel is. In fact, this version of Israel is completely different from the callous, idolatrous, hard hearted Israel that was exiled. This is a different Group of people, much even the majority of the nation of Israel is not present because they chose to stay where they were in exile.
[00:11:09] Thus these people being addressed are the 50,000 that loved the Lord and desired to please him by building the temple. So let's remember who these people are.
[00:11:19] They left behind what was probably fine or even prosperous lives in Babylon to come to this heap of rubble with their families.
[00:11:32] One scholar says that this group was the right people living in the right place, wanting to do the right work for the right reasons.
[00:11:40] This is, you know, the remnant. I think we saw that word a couple of times in there. This is the, the faithful remnant of Israel.
[00:11:48] So one might ask, okay then, why are they being rebuked by God through Haggai if they're so great?
[00:11:54] Well, they have sinned. We, we can know that for sure.
[00:11:58] But I want you to kind of imagine yourself in the scenario. Imagine going to a place that is just heaps of rubble and ruin with your family and other families.
[00:12:09] What do these people need? Well, they need to build homes, they probably need to establish a market and trade and commerce. They need to establish a community.
[00:12:19] They need to be able to farm and educate their children. All these things are real things that they need to do. So how can they build a temple if their wives and children are suffering at home?
[00:12:30] So I'm not saying that they were making the right decision. Clearly we see that they are not. But we can maybe sympathize a little bit with the difficulty that they were under.
[00:12:40] You know, I do believe that these were well meaning Israelites that wanted to serve the Lord. They just were misled and not doing it properly.
[00:12:49] I think in a lot of ways we see Christians around us these days where we live in Oklahoma or America, broadly or whatever.
[00:12:58] They might be quite a bit like us or people we know.
[00:13:02] They're the right people in that they are people who believe in Christ, that they believe fundamental truths of the faith. People around here that may be living in the place that God has called them, they want to be faithful. Many people go to church, they pray, they read their Bible, and they don't just pretend to be Christians for social or political gain, but they really do believe in Jesus.
[00:13:26] But at the same time the worries of life can drag them away, can cause them to live with a dead faith. They can really earnestly assent, at least intellectually, that they believe, but their lives don't reflect it.
[00:13:42] Or even if they do, they're kind of half hearted, in and out. You know, I'll do some things because I want to be close to God, but you know, it's not the top priority for me. I need to build my paneled house.
[00:13:56] I can't serve the church that much, or I can't go to church, or any of these types of excuses we might have set ourselves or heard others say.
[00:14:05] Now, of course there are exceptions, but we probably know people and indeed ourselves. We have probably been like this at times, if not now.
[00:14:14] So what happens when the conditions in which we live, the worries of life, take control?
[00:14:21] This can happen so subtly.
[00:14:25] We see fathers not serve or even go to church because the pressures at work, or sometimes men and women want more profitable jobs, so they take a job that maybe causes them to miss church consistently on Sundays.
[00:14:38] Sometimes students skip time to fellowship and study the Word because they're more concerned with a transcript, a college resume.
[00:14:46] Maybe as you even look at college options for those of you that are of that age, maybe you care about the prestige of the school, maybe the social life of the school more than is there a healthy evangelical church in the town?
[00:15:01] It's easy to get caught up in these worries and these thoughts. It's easy to get caught up in the humdrum of everyday life and suddenly notice that your faith appears to be dead.
[00:15:12] You didn't know it was dying, you didn't try to kill it, but it appears to be dead, or at least inactive, unconscious, in a vegetative state.
[00:15:23] What does God say to these people dealing with real worldly difficulties, though he says, consider your ways in 5 and 7 verses. 5 and 7, consider your ways. We also see that the people have begun to make excuses to justify their inactivity. And even though they feel like they're making reasonable sacrifices, God rebukes them anyway and he reveals their hypocrisy so they're not just trying to scrape by and survive. He says, you have paneled houses. That's right, they have paneled houses.
[00:15:58] Now, I'm not going to pretend like we definitely know what that means, but.
[00:16:02] Or that you don't know what it means. Now, I think we can assume that God is not just pointing out that they have houses, but they have nice houses.
[00:16:11] The paneled house. You can just imagine this as a very ornate and beautiful house. In fact, the word for the word paneled in Hebrew, it's used five other times in the Bible. And four of them describe King Solomon's temple, or not his temple, his house.
[00:16:29] And he had a very nice house. I'll just say that. A very nice house. It's very ornate and Solomon too was criticized by the author of First Kings in a similar fashion. Actually in First Kings 6 we read he was Solomon. He was seven years in building the temple.
[00:16:48] Solomon was building his own house 13 years.
[00:16:52] This is the author trying to point out he is spending a lot more time making his house beautiful than God's.
[00:17:00] And you start to see, even in Solomon, some unhealthy habits and some misordered priorities.
[00:17:09] And so I think in using this word, he might even be calling their attention to Solomon, reminding them, do not build your house in a greater way than God's house. Don't prioritize it over where the Lord your God lives.
[00:17:27] You know? And because of what they've done, God will now show them the futility of their dead faith, their selfish living. In verse 6 he says, you have sown much and harvested little. You eat, but you never have enough. You drink, but you never have your fill. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm. And he who earns wages does so to put them into a bag with holes.
[00:17:47] Why are these things happening? Because God has made it so. Verse 9. You looked for much and behold, it came to little. And when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why? Declares the Lord of Hosts, because of my house that lies in ruins while each of you busies himself with his own house.
[00:18:02] So because they were pursuing worldly gain at the expense of God's pleasure, their lives were futile and unfulfilling.
[00:18:14] Now be careful to notice that there is no guarantee that all of their worries would melt away if they were to build his house. In fact, they would still likely have the same struggles they had anyway.
[00:18:27] But I want us to think, do you feel that your life is futile and unfulfilling? That there is no point, that you're without value?
[00:18:38] My friends, faith in Christ is the only solution.
[00:18:42] Nothing affords more joy and actually true joy more than the gift of the Spirit from God, the Spirit given to those who have faith in His Son, Christ.
[00:18:55] That's why one of the fruit of the Spirit includes joy.
[00:18:59] You have a purpose. You are living according to God's will and plan.
[00:19:05] If you are struggling with that, I implore you to consider your ways and to consider Christ.
[00:19:12] Look to Christ, serve his church and find your value in how he sees you when he looks upon you as if you are wearing the righteousness of His Son, Jesus, through faith.
[00:19:23] You know, sometimes serving the Lord maybe can bring more troubles. But you know why we do it. You know why people endure persecution. You know why people serve the Church even when it's inconvenient to please God.
[00:19:39] To please God. And pleasing God is fulfilling for those who love him. Do you love God and do you want to please Him?
[00:19:49] The answer to both of those questions should be the same.
[00:19:52] So die to yourself and live to God.
[00:19:56] How might you be pursuing your own goals at the expense of God's pleasure? That's something I would encourage you to think about and maybe even discuss in your small groups.
[00:20:04] How might you be pursuing your own goals? Be at the expense of God's pleasure?
[00:20:11] Point number two.
[00:20:13] Die to self and live to God.
[00:20:18] Now look at verses 7 and 8. Let me read these again. Thus says the Lord of hosts, consider your ways.
[00:20:24] Go up to the hills and bring wood and build the house, that I may take pleasure in it and that I may be glorified, says the Lord.
[00:20:34] Students, lose the preoccupation with your worldly pursuits. Those matter, but they're secondary to pleasing God.
[00:20:44] The New Testament often describes conversion. So this is the act of turning from sin and to Christ. Conversion as a death. You know, Paul says a whole new creation comes.
[00:20:57] We see that when Christians are baptized, it's symbolizing how they have died with Christ and are raised to life. Conversion is symbolized as a death. Frequently one spiritually dies with Christ in order to live with him. And this is a concept that I don't believe is too distant even from these Jews being prophesied to by Haggai.
[00:21:17] Why? Because during the exile, while they were living in Babylon, Ezekiel prophesied. He prophesied about a valley of dry, dead bones.
[00:21:28] They depicted Israel. They depicted how Israel had died.
[00:21:33] And they were not just dead, but they were dry, rotten bones.
[00:21:39] Those bones came to life by the word of God.
[00:21:42] So the word of God could and would raise them again to life. And this is further fulfilled by the work of the Spirit during conversion. But it had a more immediate fulfillment in the the return of the exile. See, the return from exile is in this way a sort of resurrection. It's pointing to a greater resurrection in the future.
[00:22:03] They had returned from their death and God is showing them. This is how I intend to save you. Though you are dead, I will give you new life. Just as my own son will die and raise himself to life.
[00:22:18] That same eternal life he is raised to is offered to you through faith.
[00:22:25] So Israel should live to the God who raised them out of their death by exile. And so you too consider your ways, though dead in your sins. The call of the Gospel is for each and every one of you, die to yourself.
[00:22:45] Turn from your sin and from your justification of your sin, live to God through faith.
[00:22:53] Faith that Christ has accomplished what even this temple that they're building could not now. The temple that they are supposed to be building and what had existed before it had not stopped Israel from sinning and falling into judgment by exile in the past.
[00:23:11] And even with this more faithful remnant, this temple will not be the final solution.
[00:23:19] God was not calling them out of materialism, which means loving and trusting in your possessions.
[00:23:26] He didn't call them out of that to then trust in the temple.
[00:23:30] So I don't want us to get confused that this temple is magical.
[00:23:34] No, he wants them to see that they're preparing a way for a better temple. He is showing them how he intends to dwell with them through a better temple.
[00:23:46] God still desires to dwell with his people, but there will be a better way coming 400 years from this prophecy.
[00:23:54] In John 2, Jesus answered them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.
[00:24:00] The Jews then said, it has taken 46 years to build this temple, and you'll raise it up in three days.
[00:24:07] But he was speaking about the temple of his body when therefore he was raised from the dead. His disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.
[00:24:20] God still takes pleasure in dwelling with his people, but he does so now in the body of Christ.
[00:24:28] In each individual believer, God dwells.
[00:24:32] And even different way God dwells in the church. When his people are gathered together.
[00:24:39] The church then is what we could call now the house of God.
[00:24:43] And God, through Christ, built it himself.
[00:24:48] It can never be laid in ruins. It will never be a heap of rubble, and we can't build it without him.
[00:24:56] Now, these Jews, the remnant, they want to please God, and they seem to understand that he is pleased to dwell in his house with his people, though they still kind of lack that clarity that Christ will bring. Nonetheless, we see, I think, a remarkable response from the Remnant in the latter part of this chapter.
[00:25:17] So point number three is living faith.
[00:25:20] And if you look at verse 12, we see. I'll just reread these verses then. Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel and Joshua the son of Jehozadak the high priest, with all the remnants of the people, obeyed the voice of the Lord their God, and the words of Haggai the prophet, as the Lord their God had sent him, and the people feared the Lord.
[00:25:41] Then Haggai, the messenger of the Lord, spoke to the people with the Lord's message. I am with you declares the Lord. And the Lord stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and the spirit of Joshua, the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, the spirit of all the remnants of the people.
[00:25:58] And they came and worked on the house of the Lord of Hosts, their God on the 24th day of the month, in the sixth month in the second year of Darius the king.
[00:26:08] I say this is remarkable because they obeyed the voice of the Lord. They are rebuked, and we see basically an immediate obedience.
[00:26:18] Their dead or stagnant or unconscious faith was awakened.
[00:26:24] This is the heart and attitude that Christians should have when confronted with sin. How do we respond?
[00:26:32] We should respond like them, with quick repentance and obedience.
[00:26:39] Now, there are at least three lessons to draw from this section.
[00:26:43] The first is to pursue a living faith.
[00:26:47] Pursue a living faith.
[00:26:51] Do you say if somebody asks you that you're a Christian?
[00:26:55] Let me ask you again. Is your faith alive?
[00:26:59] Can anyone from outside of you actually tell that you're a Christian? And how certain would they be?
[00:27:06] I think it should be evident even to those who don't necessarily know us well.
[00:27:12] So think of your life.
[00:27:14] Is your faith dead or alive?
[00:27:20] Second, repent.
[00:27:23] Which Repent means to turn from your sin and obey immediately.
[00:27:30] Haggai's initial prophecy is dated.
[00:27:34] So these dates, they actually are important.
[00:27:37] If we kind of do the math. It's dated in the sixth month of the first day of the month.
[00:27:42] That is equivalent to basically our August 30th, which was recent.
[00:27:48] They resumed their work on the temple on the 24th day of the sixth month.
[00:27:52] So that would be like hearing the prophecy on August 30th and the whole remnant fully repenting and obeying by September 21st, 50,000 people, you know, word's got to spread and get out to them. I think that is remarkable.
[00:28:09] Repentance should never be on the back burner. It's not something we should just get to when we have time. Repentance, it's just not something that we try to ignore.
[00:28:21] Verse 12 tells us that they feared the Lord.
[00:28:25] That drove them to this response of repentance and obedience to the word of God.
[00:28:32] And third, rely on the Spirit, rely on the Spirit.
[00:28:42] It seems clear enough that repentance and obedience, the repentance and obedience of the remnant begins with the Spirit stirring up the hearts of Zerubbabel and Joshua and also the entire remnant.
[00:28:56] I think this is how God continues to work. You cannot do this apart from God working in your heart.
[00:29:04] The Spirit gives new life to those who trust in Christ. According to 2nd Timothy 2:25. This reminds us that God grants repentance, leading to a knowledge of the truth.
[00:29:17] So your work of becoming more like Christ must be animated by the Spirit or you will tire out.
[00:29:25] So let me translate that a little bit.
[00:29:29] A lot of times for us that grow up in church, and, you know, I know that's many of you, probably not all of you. It was true of me.
[00:29:36] We think we can kind of bank our surety, our assurance of faith and our Christian identity on the things we do. And, you know, we'll say, no, no, no. We're saved by faith, not by works. But really, when you think about it, when you look deep in your heart, you are making yourself feel better by going to church, reading your Bible, and then kind of looking at someone else and thinking, you know, I'm a little bit more holy than them. You don't think in those exact terms, maybe, but we kind of just do this. We kind of fall into this. We're, oh, my faith is dead. That means I need to work more. You know, this is not the point. The point is, when we recognize we have a dead faith, it means to look to Christ and his work and pray for affection for him and love for Him. That would drive you to obedience. The answer is not, oh, I need to work more so that I will look like a Christian. You don't want to fool yourself into looking like a Christian. You want to really be one. You must trust in Christ and his perfect work. If the whole answer to the question is, I need to fix my works, you're answering it wrong. Look to him.
[00:30:44] Love him as he first loved you by dying on the cross, raising to life again. Any of you who believe in him will be saved. But you must trust him and trust in his works, that they were perfect and complete and sufficient.
[00:31:02] That is how you can be born again. And that is the key to a living and active faith.
[00:31:10] So repent of, you know, if selfish living or inactivity of faith.
[00:31:16] The only way to true blessing and fulfillment is to devote yourself to building God's house, to devote yourself to the church and to evangelism and missions, to build churches all over the world. And when I say build, I mean to plant, to evangelize, for people to come to know the Lord and to gather in churches more and more all over the planet. This is what we should devote our lives to. This is what we must do, all in different roles. But this is what we do together.
[00:31:51] Now I know that there are probably many of us in here, many of you in here, that maybe you don't trust the Lord or maybe you're unsure if you do. Maybe you have some questions. You don't have faith in His Word, but maybe you want to.
[00:32:07] If you feel the pull of God tonight, you must look to the one who was consumed by zeal for the house of the Lord. And zeal is like a passion. Who had such passion and zeal and love for God's house?
[00:32:22] John 2:17 says that it was Jesus.
[00:32:26] Jesus was consumed by zeal for the house of God, and he has now rebuilt the house of the Lord so that it will never crumble. It is a safe haven for all who seek refuge from a sinful and futile existence. So do you want to dwell with God?
[00:32:44] You must enter through faith in Christ.
[00:32:50] But though he built the temple in an eternal way, we must remember, as one commentator writes, God's work is the foundation and encouragement for our work.
[00:33:01] It was because God roused their spirits that Haggai's hearers set to work with enthusiasm. It is because God is at work in our earthly bodies by his Spirit that we are called, motivated and empowered to glorify God with our bodies.
[00:33:17] It is because the whole body is joined together in Christ that we are no longer to walk as the Gentiles do. It is because God is committed to establishing his kingdom in and through us that we are called to seek that kingdom first. Above all other things, we should be stirred to a holy zeal to love and build God's church.
[00:33:39] Now remember, a dead faith leads to this sort of selfish living, but a living faith brings one into God's blessed and glorious presence.
[00:33:51] Let's pray.
[00:33:54] Father Almighty, we thank you for your word and that you are a God who wants to dwell with his people.
[00:34:01] Lord, we need your mercy for that. And Lord, we thank you that through Christ such grace and mercy are made available for all who believe.
[00:34:11] Lord, we pray that we would rely on your spirit, those of us who know Christ, and that others would call upon your name and repent of a dead faith, and you would grant them affection and love for you, that they would happily and readily live out their faith.
[00:34:28] We pray all of this in Christ's name.
[00:34:31] Amen.
