Groups Live - THE CALL TO REBUILD - Week 2

hi there and welcome to week two of groups live and haggai the call to rebuild it's so great to have you with us as we always do we're gonna start with 15 minutes of worship we've got the amazing bee backery singer songwriter and worship leader and leading our worship today and before we begin let's just pray and it says in our passage today be strong all the all you people of the land and work for i am with you my spirit remains among you do not fear so lord we just thank you for who you are we thank you for what you have done and we thank you that you have made a way and for us to be with you and we just pray that we would encounter you afresh this evening in jesus name amen [Music] i was lost but he brought me [Music] [Applause] always free [Music] yes [Music] his [Music] sing grace died for me yes he died for me [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] there's a place [Music] my not against [Music] yes [Music] there is a place [Music] [Music] in my father's house there's a place for me when i'm a child of god who we are we are chosen not forsaken i am who he says i am he is for us not against us i am who he says i am i am chosen not forsaken [Music] you are for me not against me i am who you say i am [Music] me yes [Music] is [Music] yes [Music] [Applause] sir [Music] thank you for your love jesus thank you for your love jesus you're never ending you're never flowing you're ever chasing love [Music] [Applause] before [Music] jesus [Music] who will be [Music] leaves the night oh [Applause] oh thank you for you keep chasing me even when we run away you never stop coming after me thank you jesus [Music] when i felt no worth still your love for me [Music] thank you jesus [Music] steal your love for me jesus oh [Applause] you've been so so kind to me oh [Music] still about [Music] [Applause] [Music] yourself away is [Applause] thank you jesus [Music] [Music] we don't deserve it still you give yourself away holy [Music] there's no shadow you won't light [Music] coming [Music] there's nobody you haven't kicked down lie you haven't tore down come after me oh such pretty [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] love god [Music] and down there know how much it costs to see my sins upon that cross know how much it costs to see my sins upon their cross [Music] here i you're am god you're all together lovely all together worthy all together [Music] to me oh here i am to worship here i am to bow down here i am to save [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you jesus for your presence with us we ask that your presence stay with us as we continue in worship oh man [Music] ah men thank you so much b so good and welcome to everybody joining us groups live week two of this um series uh we're looking at the book of haggai and our theme is as it was on sunday it's time to rebuild time to rebuild our own lives time to rebuild the church community and time to rebuild in our nation in the world uh and um i'm thrilled that we've got the team that we've got tonight but i'm gonna hand over straight over now to to mark um and then i will introduce our first speaker hi everyone so great to see you um we are in haggai 2 and verses 1-9 and i'm just going to read this out for you now say haggai chapter 2 on the 21st day of the seventh month the word of the lord came through the prophet haggai speak to zerubbabel son of shieldier governor of judah to joshua son of joshua the high priest and to the remnant of the people ask them 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 does it not seem to you like nothing but now be strong as a rubber bell declares the lord be strong joshua son of jose dak 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 this is what the lord almighty says in a little while i will once more shake the heavens and the earth the sea and the dry land i will shake all nations and what is desired by all nations will come and i will fill this house with glory says the lord almighty the silver is mine and the gold is mine declares the lord almighty the glory of this present house will be greater than the glory of the former house says the lord almighty and in this place i will grant peace declares the lord almighty oh thanks thank you mom i want to add my welcome to everybody um it's wonderful to we're all joining together and particularly with our exciting speakers tonight i'm not going to say too much because i've got a really sore throat so i'm going to leave nikki to do all the talking he's very good at talking so i'm just going to conserve my throat well pepper is far better at it but also i do think she needs to just guard her voice at the moment uh our first speaker tonight is hannah kelly um hannah kelly studied art history at oxford university and then now she's doing her m.a in art history and theology she's a student worker at the sewers trust where she runs the discipleship around 100 over 150 students involved there and um she's part of the five o'clock service here at brompton road and she's been coming to hcb she came as a teenager and now i've been coming the last two years and she is a portrait painter she trained in florence and you can follow her on oh i can't find it um you can follow her on what's it called hannah it's what's it what's your your um your tag unveiled faces hk unveiled faces hk well worth i've just started following it some amazing portraits that she's she's done so she's trained in florence portrait painter also makes her own clothes and has a number of uh hobbies including playing football so um over to you hannah thank you so much that makes me sound a lot more exciting than i often am um uh yeah well i loved this passage and and have been so struck recently that the books of haggai nehemiah and ezra just seem to be cropping up everywhere um and just feel like this theme of rebuilding is so important at the moment and the verse for me that really stood out was verse 9 which says the glory of this present house will be greater than the glory of the former house says the lord almighty and in this place i will grant peace declares the lord almighty um and i was really struck actually by the disappointment that haggai is addressing that there's this people who had longed to see this temple built and they remember the old one and the glory of it and then this new one just does not seem to be matching up by comparison and that word glory is actually one which i've thought about a lot in my studies and there's an amazing theologian called bombarza and he writes really beautifully about glory as being the manifest presence of the spirit and what balthazar is really talking about is christ that christ is this full representation of god because he has both spirit in form and i was thinking about the way that this line that the glory of this present house will be greater than the glory of the former house points not just to this season in haggai but actually points to us and the fact that we now are living temples that we have the holy spirit in us and that is glorious and it's beautiful and the challenge i felt from this passage was to think about my own rebuilding uh to think about the community that i'm in uh particularly in hgb in my work in my masters in my local area that actually there's a community of people here who are awaiting baptism of the holy spirit and there's a prayer i really love it's a line inspired by psalm 90 and it says may the beauty of the lord our god establish the work of our hands and i can just feel haggai longing for the beauty of the lord his god to establish the work of the hands of zerubbabel and joshua and all the people building this temple and so i think the encouragement that i've been taking from this is to have high expectations of the way this is going to transform the communities we're in and that that will be a beautiful and glorious thing because the spirit is now in us um yeah so i don't know it's such a beautiful passage and just a really inspiring picture of what is to come brilliant uh thank you so much hannah well our next speaker is the bishop of kensington graham tomlin graham and i studied theology together uh at in oxford um and um graham went on to become a renowned theologian particularly for his work on luther and uh was actually on the staff of hdb for a number of years and together with the bishop of london we all were at the start of melitus he's now the president something of of symbolitis um or chair or something anyway he's a lot of things um and um uh and right now he's in westminster abbey but um graham i hope you were impressed by the quote from von balthazar um i know you will have studied von baltazar as well but um uh it shows the level of our of our members of our congregation of htb that they they just toss off a reference to von balthazar so um graham uh tomlin we're thrilled thank you so much for joining us in your busy life and we're thrilled to have you with us so over to you graham thank you nikki and pips it's great to see you and um uh thank you hannah for your fantastic reflection really really helpful and i shall be pondering my one of those thoughts as i go home tonight um yes as nikki says i'm i'm in westminster abbey at the moment i've just been at a reception for um anglican an orthodox clergy um so i may feel like i'm dressed up as a bishop but i tell you i was the most underdressed of the entire room as you can imagine all the elders had far far grander kind of you know robes and hats than i did so um so i'm you know i'm feeling rather kind of inadequate anyway there we go um but it's great to join you tonight and to just offer you want to see reflections on this um this wonderful passage in the book of haggai and i suppose this this chapter of haggai chapter 2 captures israel in in the jews in a really bad place of course they've gone into into exile from their own nation uh under the babylonians they've been taken away to babylon um but then in in the intermediate period the babylonian empire has crumbled and the persians have taken over and so and um when the persians took over about 50 60 years later after they kind of originally arrived in babylon cyrus becomes the new king of this new empire taken over from the babylonian empire and unlike the babylonians he's quite tolerant he's open to all the different gods and religions and um faiths of the world so he allows the jews to return to go back to jerusalem and they begin to tentatively rebuild the temple he dies and then darius the king becomes um the emperor he supports the jews in the task and haggai preached these sermons that are somewhere around 520 bc they they date back from a long period time ago and when he preaches them to the people in jerusalem and they are in the context of of the temple that was the great solomon's temple some of them uh who are now old men they kind of and women they remembered from their youth when they were taken away into exile and they kind of remembered this wonderful magnificent building that was there solomon's temple and now it's been destroyed and they're trying to rebuild it because haggai tells them that god tells them through haggai that now is the time to rebuild and and of course back when solomon built his temple he was phenomenally wealthy he was able to bring in the best craftsmen in the world he was able to bring people from lebanon from egypt he could basically choose whoever he wanted to come and build the great temple and now the jews don't have those kind of resources and they can't bring in the best craftsman they just got themselves and their own little tools which aren't very impressive at all and they're trying to build something and and yet they're kind of despairing about it because they're tempted to give up because what they're doing seems so insignificant so insubstantial and so kind of irrelevant when you think of all the world empires that are going on babylon and syria and and the persians and so on and here are a little the jews trying to rebuild their temple and they're making a rather bad job of it they haven't got the tools to do the job and so that's the kind of context in which this chapter comes to us this sense of of despair of disillusionment that you know what they're doing just doesn't seem worth it it seems so small so insignificant so insubstantial and in the middle of that passage you know how guy tells them in these sermons he preaches to the jews back in jerusalem he says he says work he says get on and do the job you you got to carry on working he says but the key thing is he puts that working in a context he tells them to work but in anticipation of something much more important than their work of something that god will do and so he says work for i am with you declares the lord almighty my spirit remains among you do not fear and in this passage what it tells us i think is that even though haggai is encouraging them to get on with the job and try and rebuild the temple whatever pathetic it seems the main actor in this passage is not actually israel it's god so what haggai does is he looks back to what god did in the past in verse five it's for you this is what i covenanted with you when you came out of egypt he looked back to the exodus that great act of deliverance against all odds when israel were bowed down by pharaoh and the egyptians and the enemies somehow god released them and he looks back to that and he says remember what i covenanted with you that i wanted to when i brought you out of egypt you i will be with you my spirit will be with you and then he looks forward to what he will do in the future and he talks about how god will shake the heavens he will shake the nations he will fill this house with splendor and he says their work is always bracketed between what god did in the past and what god will do in the future and so he says get on and do the job however insignificant it might be and he tells them to build a temple that is ready to receive the glory of the lord um because the temple of course is a sign of god's presence now that promise of the day when he will shake the heavens shake the nations fill this house with splendor we know as christians that promise was fulfilled on the day when jesus visited the temple but he visited this temple herod's temple which was a successor to this temple this is zerubbabel's temple but when jesus came in this was the glory of god in the person of jesus christ coming into the temple and that's what i think he means when he says the glory of this house will be greater than the old the old house not because it's got better jewels and stones but because god himself in the person of jesus will visit this temple and will be in it now what do we what does that say to us in our culture at the moment um maybe the cases we we look around at our society we look at the place of the church in our society it seems that you know we're working like crazy we're working hard we're running our alpha courses we're trying to plant churches we're doing what we can and yet it seems so small it seems so insignificant with the direction of culture that's going maybe a hundred years ago it seemed the church had a clear place in society now it feels that we're we're pushed to the margins and all our efforts to build the church to do the right things can sometimes seem so insignificant and yet the word of the lord to us today i think is the same as the word of the lord to haggai from haggai to the to the people in in jerusalem he says keep doing it keep working keep witnessing keep inviting people to alpha keep visiting the prisons keep doing you love your neighbor keep doing what god has called you to do in your workplace it may seem tiny it may seem small but we do it in anticipation of the day when god will again act decisively he will shake the heavens just as he did in the coming of christ he will do it again in the in the second coming of christ and it tells us the significance of what we do here and now is found not in itself but in its character as a sign of the coming kingdom the significance of what the jews would do in that building of the temple was not in the temple itself because it wasn't a very impressive building but significance was that it was going to be the place where jesus would come and god would fill the temple with his glory and now we do our work we're called to get on with the task that god has given us however small and insignificant it is but like the work of the temple builders our work is always bracketed with what god did in the past the coming of jesus the sending of the holy spirit to fill us as as um as asana has been reminding us already tonight but also in anticipation of the coming of christ one day when he will shake the heavens again now we don't know what that will look like just as the builders of the temple didn't know what it would look like when god would visit his temple they didn't imagine it would be an itinerant rabbi with 12 rugged followers coming into the temple and that was going to be the moment when the splendor of god appeared but whatever it will be like we do our work in the light of the fact that god will one day act as he's done in the past so we're called today we're not we're not called to build them the kingdom of heaven on earth but we do bear witness to the god who does build the kingdom and our job is to set up signs of the kingdom here and now if you like to build signs that will point to that day when god will act as decisively just as the israelites were called to build a temple that was ready to receive god when he came in the person of jesus we in our small actions whatever they are we are also preparing for the day when god will shake the heavens and the earth and he will come again in the person of jesus christ so i find this quite an encouragement to me it tells me that the little things that i do every day that i do in the name of jesus whether it's those emails of encouragement for people whether it's speaking at an event or visiting a church and confirming people or whatever is it might be the things that you do whatever they are have a small insignificant they mean something because they're signs of the day when one day god will come again in jesus christ and he will shake the heavens and the earth so we do our work always bracketed by what god has done in the past and what he will do in the future and that's what makes our worth our work worthwhile and worth doing wow graham that's an amazing exposition of the passage in a very short time but with um wonderful application to to all of us and hugely inspiring as as always um thank you so much i mean the bible is extraordinary book because it speaks it spoke to the people in haggai's day it speaks about as graham has been pointing out it points towards jesus and what he came to do but also it uh verses can be so relevant to a particular situation in our own lives and um i just dug out my old bible very old bible which i had back in 1981 where i wrote by these these verses about the glory of the um uh the glory of the present house will be greater than the glory of the former read by sandy miller in july 1981 on for the some paul's onslaught square site now um hdb also square confirmed by patrick whitworth who was one of the team there at the staff meeting and reconfirmed by phil lawson johnson who was the worship leader uh when the executive was praying about it and the situation was then that some paul's onset square was about to be sold to a property developer to be a block of flats with a car park underneath and it was in ruins and um those verses were read and as a result of that uh sandy fought to keep preserve the church just as so many people in the last 40 years since then have fought to save churches from peter's brighton and churches all over the country but the first one that was saved from becoming a um just a block of flats a church converted into a block of flats was on the square um and though these verses always mean whenever i hear these verses i think of um sandy phil lj patrick whitworth and all those who read this and it led to some pools uh on so square becoming the church that it is today where many of you will have worshiped and will continue to worship and um yes its glory may not be the same as it was in 1860 when it was built but as graham says we don't have necessarily the resources and all the rest of it but there's something amazing happening there and that is the outpouring of the holy spirit just as graham was referring to my spirit will not depart from you and in that place i will grant my spirit remains among you do not fear and in this place i will grant peace so this passage means a huge amount um and those those words in this place i will grant peace i think are particularly relevant to the situation that so many people find themselves in right now and um i'd love to pray because it's the holy spirit who brings peace my spirit remains among you um and uh do not fear in this place i will grant peace and i think that these words may be relevant to people on this school right now that you that you have many fears that you're facing uh this is uh a period that has been described um as a pandemic flux syndrome um because um it is totally the pandemic itself and change of routine going on to zoom was exhausting and then people thought when we go back to work and we're in normal that would be so nice but then actually people are finding pandemic flux syndrome it's it's more exhausting going back and being with people that we're not used to being with so um uh there's a huge amount that where people are feeling still i think with anxiety and fear and i want to pray now that the holy spirit will come because we do this as you know every service and um as graham was pointing to and um uh it's only jesus it all points to jesus um and only jesus brings his kingdom only jesus can can um change our lives only jesus can bring us that that peace and so grateful to hannah and graham for the words they brought to us but let's pray now lord that's our prayer that you will send your spirit thank you for this promise my spirit remains with you do not fear in this place i will grant peace and thank you that with the coming of jesus your glory rests on jesus and now on each of us through your holy spirit and we want to pray now invite your spirit to come and i encourage you in your home in your groups just to put out your hands and say lord come and fill me just as you filled the temple the first temple and the second temple with your glory come and fill us you fill jesus with your glory and you fill us with your glory and with your peace i think for some of you this this like just the quietness of waiting what you need more than anything to to receive god's peace in the quietness of this moment the busyness of life thank you lord so much for your peace but surpasses knowledge that we can receive that today wherever we are peace for whatever situation we're in for your peace is in every person's home room and we can be in their hearts too today and we receive your peace we sense your peace with us and we're so grateful that's what this world needs peace deep deep peace peace with god and peace with one another in jesus name amen back to you mark amazing thank you everybody um so much it's been such a powerful um evening as always we're gonna go out into our um groups now however you're meeting and their questions should have gone to your leaders if if you're not registered and you've not got them and they're just dropping in the chat right now and we'll be back next week um with some more brilliant speakers with nikki and pips and a very special announcement about an upcoming resource which we're really excited about and but yeah thank you so much for joining us thank you bishop graham and hannah and it has been so great and just i i've learned so much and we can't wait to see everybody again next week thank you thank you so much hannah thank you graeme thanks mark thanks b god bless everyone see you dropping in yes thanks graeme great to have the bishop with us and uh look forward to seeing you all on sunday if not before or alpha tomorrow night and then on sunday god bless much love to you all bye-bye [Music] love at creation love at the dawn loving the sun rise high overall loving the first breath love it [Music] there when we fall this is my song of redemption this is our story of hope [Music] jesus we call it [Music]

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Length: 43min 39sec (2619 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 05 2021