Life.Church with Craig Groeschel - The Time Is Now, Part 1: The Hard Right

Episode Date: November 7, 2015

No matter how much we want one, there’s no blueprint for a perfect life. Feel like you’ve hit a wall? Don’t be discouraged. Maybe it’s just a part of what God wants to help you rebuild. The Time Is Now to lay the first brick on a new foundation. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Once upon a time, there was a man named Solomon who built a mighty temple. But before long, the people of Judah turned away from God and began to worship foreign gods and idols. One day, God allowed the Babylonians to attack Judah and destroy the whole city, including God's temple. The people of Judah remained in captivity. Until one day, God raised up the prophet Haggai to inspire the people to go. get back to work, saying the time is now. I want to welcome all of you today from all of our churches, our network churches, our family online.

And I'm going to start by taking a moment to give our God praise and honor that we get to be a part of celebrating over 1,500 people being baptized today at all of our life churches. That's something we will never, ever take for granted. Imagine, I can't even count to 1,500. 1500 people standing publicly saying Jesus has saved me. My sins are washed away. Never ever take that for granted that God is doing amazing things. I love our Jesus.

I love our church. I love that we get to be a part of so many lives being transformed today. I'm also massively pumped that we're starting a brand new message series. It's on the Old Testament book of Haggai. It's also pronounced Haggiy. Both are acceptable. Haggai was a minor prophet, which my dad, who I've told you can only talk in baseball language, said, poor Haggai never made it to the majors. Kind of a rough joke, but if you knew my dad, you'd laugh like I do.

Haggai never made it to the majors. If you want to turn with me there in your Bibles, go ahead and grab Haggai. Some of you are sweating right now going, uh-oh, where is Haggai? I'll tell you where it is. It's after Zephaniah and before Zachariah. Did that help? So there's another reason to thank God for the U-Virgin Bible app. H-A-G-G-A-I.

Oh, there it is. Amazing. We're going to be in Haggai today. And before we get into it, I want to just start by acknowledging. I know so often you can wake up in a certain stage of life and have this real unsettling and sinking feeling. You think, by this point in my life, I just expected more.

I thought by the time that I reached this, whatever this is, that there'd be something different or something better. I'm kind of surprised that this is where I am. And it could happen really at any stage. You don't have to even wait until you're older. It could be that you're in college. And you think, well, by this time in college, I thought I would knew what I wanted to do with my life.

And I don't have a clue, okay? It might be that you're out of college and you've got a degree and you thought, well, since I had a degree, I'd have a real job with real benefits. And instead I'm doing something that seems to be way beneath my capacity. I thought there'd be more. It might be that you're such and such age and you just thought, well, I certainly would have been married by now and I'm not married. Or you are married and you thought, well, I would have had a good marriage and you don't really like your marriage the way you should. And then you thought, well, we'll have kids and that will kind of fill the void. and now you have kids and you're simply busy and broke.

You know, you're thinking, I thought there would be something more. I know some people who would say, well, you know, I'm going to try religion. I'm going to try religion. And so we try to do the religious thing, and then life doesn't really change, and they wake up and think, I really thought that by this point there would be something more, something better, or something different. This quite honestly was the mood during the time when had to be something more, something better, or something different. Haggai was written. The people were saying, I just, I really, really thought we would be in much different shape than we are now. And so before we dive into the book of Haggai, what I want

to do is I kind of want to give you the backstory before we look at the main story. So we'll look at the prequil and then we'll look at the main movie, if you will. Let's go back to the reign of King Solomon is what we'll start. And I'll give you kind of the real quick overview. During the fourth year of King Solomon's reign, King Solomon started construction on the most magnificent temple for God. This temple was more glorious than you could ever imagine. People from all over the world traveled just to see this temple and offer their worship to God. It was completely amazing. But after King Solomon died, the people's hearts turned away from God. They got distracted like people often do, and they started worshiping idols.

So God allowed a series of events to take place in order to pull the people's hearts back to himself. And just to make it easy to follow, I put in your notes three bullet points to kind of give you the high points. If you want to look at those, we'll just look at them briefly. In 587 BC, King Nebuchadnezzar and his army crushed the southern kingdom of Judah, destroying the temple. So not only was it completely humiliating, destroy the whole city, grab all these people, but to add insult to injury, they destroyed the house where God dwelt, stripping away the spiritual identity of the Jewish people, and they're completely devastated. The next bullet point says that the Jews were taken into captivity for decades,

specifically 50 years, technically 70, because they were already in captivity for a while, before the destruction of the temple, but for 50 years after the temple and on, they were in captivity. Now, we often read this, and it kind of just doesn't quite register in our minds. Like, yeah, they were taken into captivity. So let me try to bring up modern context to you. Imagine this. Some enemy nation develops massive nuclear power,

and they say, we're going to take out five major U.S. cities, and we're going to take out 10 cities of your ally country. unless your government surrenders to us. And so the president and the council leaders meet, and they think, well, we can't retaliate. This will start massive global nuclear war. And so the only thing we can do is surrender. So all of the government leaders step down.

And suddenly, we're all no longer citizens of our nation. Now we're captives to somebody else. We can't worship as we want. We can't go anywhere we want. We're completely in bond. completely in bondage for 50 years, okay? I'm not even 50 years of age. So all my children would have been born in captivity,

and that's essentially all we know. So that's the state of what's going on here. If you can put yourself in their minds, this is our worst nightmare come true, and it just doesn't end. Then, you can only imagine the relief and the good news, when in 538 BC,

about 50,000 people were allowed to travel back to Jerusalem, the capital of Judah to rebuild. finally, after five decades, we get to go back to our home. We get to rebuild a house for our God. We get to have our own place again, and you can only imagine the relief and the excitement. So the Jewish people went back, and they started to rebuild the temple for God. They built the foundation, and they built the altar. then the Samaritans came in and opposed their work

and suddenly like, oh no, this just got hard. This just got difficult. It must not be the right time because this is not easy for us to do. That is the backstory. So for 14 years, people didn't work on the temple. For 14 years, for five decades, that's all they thought about. And when it got difficult, for 14 years, they put the project on hold.

And instead of working on God's house, guess what they did? They actually started building their own houses. And they built very, very nice houses, and they forgot about God's house. So what God did is he raised up the prophet Haggai to call the people back to rebuild the temple for God. All right? Does that make sense? Did that make sense? Everybody say, it makes sense?

Good. The rest of you, if you're confused, sorry, we're moving on. All right? So we're going to dive in to verse two of Haggai 1, and it actually starts off to me, this is kind of funny. You might see the humor in this. I hope you do. Haggai 1, verse 2.

This is what the Lord Almighty says. He says, these people. Everybody say these people. God says, these people say, the time has not yet come to rebuild the Lord's house. These people say the time has not yet come. Now, the reason I find this kind of humorous is because almost everywhere else in the Old Testament, when God talks about his people, he calls them my people, my people, my people. And in this case, he does what my wife does to me when our kids do something wrong.

I don't know what this happens at your house, but God's not saying, my people, like, these people, like, you know, he didn't have a wife, so he can't, like, say, they're your kids did this, you know, these people did this, and that's what Amy does. when I come home and our kids do something wrong, you're not going to believe what your kids did today. I'm like, if my memory serves me correctly, you were there with me when these kids were conceived. We enjoyed it. It was fun.

It was fun. I can say that at church, right? Because it is fun. If it's not fun, you're not doing it right. Somebody say amen. That's the loudest amen I've ever heard from this church in my life. You just talk about that. Amen.

Amen. Yeah. Glory to God. Hallelujah. Preach it. Preach it. Preach it. Okay. So anyway, so God's like, these people, they're not my people. These people are saying, the time is not now to build my temple. The time is not now. Now, why did they think the time wasn't now? They thought the time wasn't now because they received opposition. The Samaritans were opposing them. It was so funny is so often whenever we receive opposition, we think, it must not be God's will. It just got hard. This is difficult. And we need to understand that the closer we get to doing something that matters to the heart of God, the more likely we are to face opposition. You see, receiving opposition isn't a sign that God's against you. A lot of times, it's a sign that you're doing what God wants you to do.

That's why I always tell people, I don't really worry when people are opposing me. I worry when no one is, right? Because then I'm not doing much for the glory of God. So the moment you start to move forward and do something and be obedient to what God called you to do, mark it down. There's very likely spiritual opposition on the way. When you find yourself being obedient to God and it gets difficult and it gets challenging and it often does, I want to encourage you with this one simple thought, oh, it's hard, oh, it's challenging, oh, it's difficult, oh, I know it's right, but oh, this is so difficult. One simple thought of you're taking notes is this.

With God's help, choose the hard right over the easy wrong. Over and over and over again, just tell yourself, God, with your help, enable, empower me to choose the hard right over the easy wrong. It would be so easy to quit focusing on God and start focusing on myself. It would be hard and right to continue building the temple. Choose the hard right over the easy wrong. It would be so easy when someone hurts your feelings to hold a grudge, to be angry at them. But it's hard and right to forgive others as Christ has forgiven you.

It's easy to continue to spend more than you have and just buy whatever you want and to go into debt. It's hard and it's right to begin to climb out. of debt, live beneath your means, and live in such a way you can be massively generous with other people. It's so easy to give up. It's so easy to not make a difference, but we, as followers of Jesus, with the help of God, will choose the hard right over the easy wrong. And this is what the prophet is going to help empower the people to do. He essentially tells them the time is now. Now, for many of you, I want you to think just for a moment and ask yourself, is there some unfinished assignment in your life. I want you to think and then I want you to experience the rest

of this message through the lens of what might be an unfinished assignment for you. So just think back. It could have been yesterday. It could have been a month ago. It could have been 14 years ago where you believe God put something on your heart. Okay. I'm supposed to reach out to this person and share my faith with him. Oh, but that would be hard and difficult. Okay? So you chose the easy way out. I am supposed to really work on honoring God with my body and getting in shape.

But it was hard, and so you didn't do it. I felt like I was supposed to serve somewhere in church. I was supposed to start a ministry. I was supposed to ask her out, okay? You know, I chicken out. I was supposed to give something away to somebody. There was something that I felt like I was supposed to do. I was supposed to start journaling.

I was supposed to start, I felt like I was supposed to start writing a book. I don't know what it is. I felt like I was supposed to start some ministry. There's something on your heart that you really felt like it was a burden, most likely from God, but you didn't do it. Think about that for a moment. And if God shows you something, I want to listen to the rest of the message through what might be that unfinished assignment.

And for many of you, God may speak to you in the very same way. he spoke to the people in the time of Haggai. He's going to say, the time is now. The time is now. So let's read on in verses 3 through 5. This is what God said. Then the word of the Lord came through the prophet Haggai, and God asked, is it a time for you yourselves to be living in your paneled houses while this house,

God says while my house remains a ruin? Now, this is what the Lord Almighty says. And we're going to see God say this phrase again and again. God says, give careful thought to your ways. Give careful thought. Think about how you're living. Is it time for you to live in these paneled houses when my house is left in ruins?

Now, you may say, what in the world is a paneled house? Well, according to some commentaries that I read, basically this was high in living. This was kind of like, you know, now you've got granite countertops, you've got the crown molding, you got the four, you know, the best, TV in the house, you've got all this kind of stuff. And God is not against us having nice things.

He's against us putting nice things ahead of him. He's not against us having nice things. He doesn't want nice things to have us. And at this point, the people are putting their own comfort ahead of God's house and God's priority. And he says, give careful thought to your ways. And so I would just raise the question right now as you look at maybe an unfinished assignment. ask yourself, are you putting your own comfort ahead of his calling? Are you trying to make a name more than you're trying to make a difference? Are you putting your house before his house? Are you consumed with yourself instead of being consumed with God and showing his love to other people?

Is there something that you're putting ahead of God? give careful thought to your ways. God wants us to choose the hard right over the easy wrong. And I give you an example from my life that's kind of embarrassing to talk about, but it's true. For years and years, I've been married for almost 25 years to my best friend, Amy, who's out of town this weekend, so I've complete freedom to tell this story the way I want to. So she always said, hey, let's pray together every day, let's pray together every day.

And most of you probably thought, well, Pastor Craig of course, like, they probably pray for two hours a day. And my deal kind of was for years, like, I don't really like to pray with her. Because all day long, I'm doing, like, Jesus, Bible, God's stuff at work for like eight hours. And I kind of just want to come home and just be regular guy, you know. And so she said, let's pray. And we would pray for big things and such. But she'd like, she'd want to pray, like, let's pray, pray, pray, pray, pray, pray. Don't tell her this, but she pray is way too long, okay?

I mean, I'm telling you, like, I can pray for every one of you. at every campus by name before she's just warmed up telling God how much she loves them, okay? You know, like, on and on and on and on, okay? And so I knew it was right. I knew it was right. I mean, what Christian couple would not want to daily pray for their children together, to pray for the blessings of God on their church, to pray for people that don't know Christ?

Well, who would not want? I just didn't do it. Why? Because it made me a little uncomfortable. It just took so long, so I just didn't do it. Some of you right now, there will be something in your life where you know you're supposed to do it. God's called you to do it. And like me, you're taking the easy wrong when God says, hey, choose the hard right. The time is now.

And I want to show you some verses that to me these are like haunting. to imagine that things have changed so little from 500 years before Christ. This is what God says, and I guarantee you there are many of you, you're going to say, I feel exactly like this. God says to them, verse 6, you've planted much, but harvested little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm.

You earn wages only to put them in a purse with holes in it. Wow. Does that strike you like it does me? Let me give you the modern translation. Okay, modern translation. You're working your tail off, and you still don't feel like you have anything. You're pouring your life into some career, and it just feels empty and hollow.

You have more than you've ever had before, and you still don't feel satisfied. You entertain yourself, you go to games, you go to movies, you eat out, and yet there's still a longing for something more. Dr. Phil may look at you and say, now how's that working for you? Right? I mean, dead serious.

Dead serious. give careful thought to your ways think about it are you putting your house ahead of god's house is there is there some unfinished business god led you to do something and you did not do it so so eight this is so cool to me god is so loving and he's so good so they're looking we've got to build this temple we don't feel good enough to do it it's not going well there's opposition this is difficult, this is difficult, this is so hard, this is so hard. Watch how loving God is. This is what the Lord Almighty says, verse 7.

Give careful thought to your ways. He says it again. Then basically what he's going to do is he's going to break it down into three simple steps. Okay, build the temple. Here's what I want you do. Number one, go up into the mountains. Number two, bring down the timber, and number three, build my house. Let me say it again in case you missed that.

This is what God said to do. Go up to the mountains, bring down the timber, and build my house. I know that was overwhelming, and you probably didn't have time to take it in. So let me just say it again, okay? I want you to want you to under. This is how much I love you. I'm going to make it this simple. Okay, ready?

Here's what I want you to do. Go up to the mountain, bring down the timber, and build my house. do I need to say it again because I will I'm doing this all weekend long and I'm having fun whether you are or not go up to the mountain and wait a minute going up to the mountain that's kind of hard

have you seen that mountain that's hard, choose a hard ride over the easy wrong bring down the timber oh no that's hard again choose a hard ride over the easy wrong come down and build the temple step by step God says step by step God says step by step here's one two three here's a problem

so many of us are going God what about steps four, five, and six. I need the details. But who's going to pay for this and how's it going to happen and where we're going to go and what's going to go on and who's going to be there? Am I going to get a tax write off for this? And I need to know details, God, how much time's it going to take and how long do I have to do this? And how's it going to work out? Am I going to get my name on the little temple? Because if I know my name on the temple, then I'm not going to feel good about it. I need steps four or five and six. And God says, don't worry about steps four, five, and six. Just do one, two, and three. My word is a lamp

unto your feet, a light unto your path. If his word is a lamp unto our feet, he may show us steps one, two, and three. And we won't see four, five, and six until we take one, two, and three. I think I'm preaching better than you're responding. You see, you have to do what God showed you first before he reveals more to you. Sometimes you say, I want the details. God says you can't handle the details. I'll give you what you need when you get there, but you need to take the first step. So what do you do? Well, go up to the mountain, bring down the timber, start building my house. Well, you know, I really want to get in better shape,

but I mean, I don't even know where to start. Okay, well, start eating healthy, get eight hours of sleep, and start exercising. Well, I want to get out of debt, but I don't even know where to start. Well, get some help from someone who knows what they're doing, spend less than you earn, and start paying down your debt. Well, my marriage isn't really very good,

and I'm not quite sure what to do about it. I mean, I'm not sure what to do, God. What do I do about it? God, I know you want me to work on it. But, well, humble yourself, apologize for what you've done wrong, and do what you used to do, date, right, love notes, buy flowers, kiss, blah, blah, blah, blah, do whatever, you know, do what you used to. What do I do?

Go up to the mountain, bring down the temper, and build my house. Step by step. Step by step. You see, this is what it means to walk by the spirit. That's what we're commanded to do as followers of Jesus. We want to walk by sight. I want to know details.

I want God to show me everything. God's not going to show you step four, five, and six until you take steps one, two, and three. So there's an unfinished assignment. What do I do? If you're taking notes very simply, the way to get started is to quit talking and start doing.

That's it. Just quit thinking about it, quit talking about it, and go up to the mountain today. Do something today. Do the next thing that God has showed you and do it today. Be faithful to God today. Be faithful to God today.

And so this is what I did with Amy. I mean, this is embarrassing today. I'm Pastor Craig. We look up to you, a great man of God. And I don't want to pray every single day with my wife. So you know what? It's easy not to do that. It's easy just to say, hey, you know,

I'm great in all these other ways, so you should be happy with me, right? I mean, you know, look, you know, you got that, you know? How stupid is that, okay? It'd be easy. But you know what's right? It is right as a spiritual leader of my house to grab my wife's hands every single day and to go before God on behalf of our children, asking for his provision, his protection, and he'd draw their hearts near to him.

It's right to pray for God's work. in the lives of the people in our church. It's right to pray by name for people that we love that do not know Christ personally. It's right to pray for so many of you that we pray for daily who are hurting, who have burdens, whose marriages are in trouble,

who got bad news from the doctors. And let me see what happens is when I started doing the hard ride over the easy wrong, oh, man, it's amazing what happened to our marriage. I mean, it was kind of like good before, but, ooh, talk about good now, okay? because it's really difficult to fight when you're praying together, right? It's really difficult to be self-centered when you're other-centered.

It's really amazing how you spiritually bond, and when you spiritually bond, you emotionally bond, and when you emotionally bond, sometimes you physically bond a lot. And everybody said? Don't miss it. You had an opportunity there. It was sitting there. It was there. It was there for you if you were ready for it. Don't miss those opportunities, all right? And here's the deal. I had no idea what the blessings of God were on the other side of obedience. I had no idea how amazing the blessings of God would be on the other side of obedience. And ultimately, you do what God calls. you to do. So you're supposed to reach out to someone that hurt you. Well, what if they don't respond well? Listen, you're not responsible for the outcome. You're just responsible for the obedience. That's it. You just do what God called you to do. You are not responsible for the

outcome. Outcome is God's responsibility. Obedience is yours. So what is it? Let's call it what is. We all have something like this. Maybe you've got a sin that has been plaguing you and plaguing you, and you're keeping it a secret. It's easy to keep it a secret. It's hard and right to confess and ask for help. Maybe you're playing fake, happy marriage, and you've got everybody around you fooled, and you're not there. And it's easy to do that. It's easy to lie. It's hard and right to say, you know what, we really need help. We really need counseling. Maybe God prompted you at something. point to, you know, serve in the church. Like, I really, I should make a difference. And you're like, is that, is that God or is that Satan tempting me to serve? You know, keep behind me, Satan.

Don't make, don't use me to make a difference, okay? Of course, that's God, okay? So what are you going to do? Yeah, choose the hard right and go, go, don't leave the building today without saying, sign me up. Some of you, you know, you need Christian community. You need it. You need it. You need it. You will not do well alone. And you kind of thought it, thought about, about it. We'll do a life group. No, no, no, no, no. God leading me to be in a life group. Of course, that's God leading you to be in an Acts 2 fellowship,

because life is better together when we celebrate around God's work. So if there is some unfinished assignment, don't make God raise up a hag-eye in your life to call you back. And don't make God say that person because you're his child. My child is going to be obedient. The time is now. The time is now. The time is now.

So whenever God gives us an assignment, We're going to be obedient. Outcome is God's responsibility. Obedience is ours. So we're going to choose the hard right over the easy wrong, and maybe God's going to speak to some of you today and tell you, time is now. The time is now.

Father, we thank you that you are present with us, that your word is living. We think that is active. We thank you that a story that happened 500 years before the birth of Christ is as true today as it was true then. we thank you for your presence, God, that you want to minister to us, your church, that we would be different, God, because we are here with you. And all of our churches, as you take a moment to reflect today, I just want to ask, and don't raise your hand yet, but think about it, is there kind of an unfinished assignment? If there's something, someone you're supposed to reach out to, something you're supposed to do, something you're supposed to give, something you're supposed to start, something you're supposed to write, appreciation you're supposed to reach. appreciation you're supposed to show

an apology you're supposed to give. Something that's unfinished. What's going to happen? What are steps four, five, and six? No, no. We'll trust God when we get there. You're going to take one, two, and three. Go up to the mountain.

Cut down the timber and come down and do what God showed you to do. If there's something like that in your life, I want to just pray for you as you would pray for me because there's something like that in my life as well. And I would ask you to all of our churches, All of our churches, if that's you. Just lift up your hands right now.

Lift them up high if you would. And fantastic. God, I thank you so much. For so many people who come to church expecting to hear from you, God, being sensitive to the voice of your spirit. And I pray, God, for the faith that they would act, taking the first step, whatever that is, trusting you, God, with the outcome. And they would simply be obedient. And God, I know for some people, it will be difficult, it will be challenging. I thank you, God, that with the help of the Holy Spirit,

they will choose the hard right over the easy wrong. And now, God, I pray for those that did not raise their hands. I pray that your Holy Spirit would continue to work in their hearts. Maybe later on today you would show them something. God, I pray that every time we walk into church, we would come in with a heart of expectancy, believing, God, that we're going to hear from you that day. God, even if I don't preach well, God, use whatever happens.

speak to people that our hearts would be different in your presence. God, we thank you in advance that as we take the first step, we're going to see your provision, we're going to see your power. God, we will be obedient and trust you with the outcome. As we keep praying at all of our different churches, there are many of you right now that the time is now for you to take a step toward Jesus. I grew up kind of around the church and believing in God, but the reality is I had never truly trusted Christ. Some of you right now, you know, you look at your life and I say, is there something

you're putting ahead of God? You're like, well, that would be probably just about a lot of things. I'm putting almost everything ahead of God. And we need to understand is that God has something way better for us than that. He truly wants to be first, and he deserves to be first, because he is the king of kings and he is the Lord of Lords. In fact, that's why he sent Jesus was to reveal to us just how good he is to show us his heart and his love. Jesus was perfect in every way without sin, and Jesus hung around and loved the worst sinners. He loved them as they were. But Jesus died for our sins and rose again so that anybody, listen to me, that includes you, doesn't matter how dirty you feel. Doesn't matter how far away you feel from God at this moment. It doesn't matter

who you are when you call on Jesus. He hears your prayer, forgives all of your sins, every single one of them, and he makes you completely brand new. What does God want? He simply wants us to love him with all of our hearts, all of our minds, all of our soul, all of our strength. He wants us to love people. That's it. If you find yourself waking up, going, but I'm still empty, I've tried so much, I've planted a lot,

but I've harvested little. I eat, but I'm still hungry. I drink, but I'm still thirsty. There's got to be something more. It's because there's a Christ-shaped void in your life that nothing else will fill in all of our churches. There are those of you recognize it. Guess what? The time is now.

The time is now. Today is the day. this is the moment where you say, Jesus, be first, Lord of my life, save me, I surrender to you. All of our churches, there are those of you? You know it. The time is now. This is the day. Say yes, to give your whole life to Jesus. That's your prayer. Would you lift your hands high right now? All of our churches and say, yes, I surrender to you. Right back over here. God bless you. Others of you say, yes, Jesus, I surrender. Over here, lift up your hands and say, yes, Jesus, right back over here as well. here in this middle section. Praise God for you. Others of you, I surrender. Both hands up on this side.

I surrender to you, Jesus. Take all of my life. Church online, you click right below me. All of our churches, would you join your hearts with those around you? Pray Heavenly Father, today I give you my life. Jesus be first. My Savior and my Lord, forgive me of all of my sins. Make me brand new. fill me with your spirit so I could serve you and follow you with all of my heart

for the rest of my life Jesus, my life is not my own today I give it to you thank you for new life in Jesus name I pray would you all worship big worship loud welcome those born into God's family today