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 Haggaii to inspire the people to get back to work saying the time is now.

Well, I am very, very blessed to have heard really a lot of stories about how this little Old Testament book is impacting so many lives.

So today, we are actually going to wrap up our study through the book of Haggaii.

If you missed previous weeks, I kind of want to give you a little bit of backstory just so it will make sense to you.

And I do want to say that this is really the challenging week as we deal with some really difficult texts.

My dad, who always speaks in baseball talk, was a son, bring the heat.

Bring the heat. So we are going to bring the heat today. If that is okay with you, say bring the heat.

I just remember you asked for the heat. So you asked for it. We are going to get it.

So anyway, if you missed previous weeks, let me kind of tell you the backstory.

We talked about what happened back in 587 BC when the Babylonians under the reign of King Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Judah, crushing the temple, the Solomon had built.

And this was more than just a physical blow. This was a spiritual blow to God's people saying not only did you destroy everything that we love, but you destroyed the house for our God.

And for five decades, the Jewish people were held in bondage and captivity.

And so when they were allowed to actually go back and start to rebuild, you can only imagine the thrill after 50 years of being held captive, they were able to go back and start to rebuild not only their own lives.

But also to rebuild God's temple, the house, the dwelling place for God.

If you remember in week number one, they started strong, they built the foundation, they built the altar.

And then when the Samaritans opposed them, they panic, we can't do this. And they quit.

Well, God raised up the Prophet Haggai and said the time is now. The time is now to build by temple. And so they started again. And then they became incredibly discouraged.

As we pick up the story this week, kind of reading between the lines, if you look at their attitude, you can find that many of them really battle the same battle that many of us feel when we think we're trying to do what you asked us to do, God, but things just aren't going well.

We're trying to do what you told us to do and yet we're not making progress. We're trying to obey you, God. And yet our life still is not working very well.

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