In Chapter 1 Haggai rebukes them and tells them to consider their ways. They get right, they get to work. These are good people who are the children of God, they seem pliable. This is one of the few places that the children of Israel actually obeyed God when He corrected them. They get to work on God’s House. God asks 3 rhetorical questions—He already knows the answer because he already knows their heart. He can hear what they are saying in their head, He can see what their heart is believing and saying…

Have you ever been ignored? How did it make you feel? Have you ever been cut-off? Has anyone ever told you something, or promised something and forgot? Life can be cruel. Life can be mean. Life can be unkind and brutal on human emotion.

It is one thing to experience these emotions with people, it’s another to feel them with God. This will require you to be completely honest with yourself internally. Has there ever been time, a place or are you in a place, where you feel like things with God has changed. Communion with Him is different, His Presence feels like it’s been relocated to a far away place and you just can’t reach it. Cant grasp it. I submit to you that this is a typical struggle in the Christian life. The feeling that God is not favorable. That his lovingkindness has ceased. That his promise is somehow not reliable. You are not ALONE!

Psalm 77:1-9

What is an Epistle?—One of the letters, written openly, adopted as books of the New Testament. Paul authored 7 canonized letters. These are the letters or epistles to Rome, Corinth, Galatia, Ephesus, Philippi, Colosse, and Thessalonica. 

What is an Apostle?—Apostle (Gk. Apostolos). Envoy, ambassador, or messenger commissioned to carry out the instructions of the commissioning agent.

Who is Paul?—This is the former Saul of Tarsus, a Jewish Rabbi of the Jewish sect of law-keeping, brilliant-minded, hard-hearted Pharisees of which we read so much of in the gospels. We learn of this man called Saul in Acts chapter 7, a man filled with rage and hate for the Christians. He hated what was being preached, so much so that he consents to the death of the first Christian martyr, a young man named Stephen.

In our first message here from the beatitudes we explored the setting and the context of the Word blessed. Makarios=happy, satisfied, inwardly content. The first beatitude was poor in spirit! Thank God that’s the starting point! We are destitute, unable to provide for ourselves. We are in complete need of everything from God spiritually. We must recognize that we do not have what we need within ourselves, our humanity is corrupt. But the story doesn’t end with our corruption as we will see. There is an escape. 

We started at the ground level with our ladder of The Beatitudes—

Rung 1- Poor In Spirit

Rung 2- Pressed In Soul

Rung 3- Patient In Strife