Haggai - The God that Cheers you On

Automated transcript, lightly edited for readability. Scripture appears as spoken; the video is the authoritative teaching.

Shabbat shalom, everybody. Rick, are you ready to hit the arrow key if I need you to? We'll figure it out.

So we are continuing the series through the prophets, which was originally supposed to cover only pre-exilic prophets, but then we included post-exilic prophets as well. Isaiah, of course, was one of the first we started with—he showed us the highway home through his visions of how God's coming kingdom is going to impact the world. Jeremiah wept over the exile and promised a new covenant that was coming. Ezekiel performed his sacred street theater in Babylon. Daniel faced down the beasts of empire. Hosea married an unfaithful woman to show what it feels like to be God in a relationship with Israel—just how awful and entertaining that concept is. Amos exposed how religion becomes the empire's chaplain. Jonah ran from grace because he would rather die than see his enemies forgiven. And Micah hauled Israel into a divine courtroom and let the mountains themselves testify against them. Every single one of those prophets was either warning about exile or weeping during it.

The Prophet Who Speaks to Those Coming Home

And today I believe we meet the first prophet in the series who's speaking to people who actually came home from it. Babylon attacked, wiped out Judah, took many of them captive, and hauled them all the way back to Babylon. And now they get to go home.

Most people think that Haggai is a boring little book about building a building because, as we'll review in a moment, the exiles are coming home. They get to go back to their land. They get to go back to Jerusalem. They get to go back to the way things were. Except it's different now. It's been multiple generations since Babylon took over. And you don't have a prophet trying to get people to simply repent anymore. You have the prophet trying to get people to get on board with continuing the mission and continuing to figure out what put them in Babylon and how to get that out of them so they can continue. Exactly what Brian was speaking about.

Haggai is very small. It's two chapters, 38 verses. It sounds almost like a sermon on stewardship if I was to be so bold: "Stop being selfish and give to the building fund, guys. We got to build this thing." But that's not the book of Haggai.

Haggai is the prophet who diagnoses why your life isn't working even though it looks like it should. He named the thing we all feel but can't quite articulate: why we are busy all the time but feel empty sometimes. Why we feel like we're earning so much but we never have enough. Why we keep filling the bag and the bag keeps leaking. And his answer is not to try harder. His answer is that you've lost focus on where you're supposed to be. You've lost your center, and no amount of hustle will compensate for that.

Babylon's Captives Come Home

In 538 BC, Cyrus the Great came and conquered Babylon, which held the Judeans in exile, and decreed that the Jewish exiles could return to their land. This was the moment that every single prophet in the series was pointing to. About 50,000 people made the journey. They arrived in Jerusalem and laid the foundation for a new temple there. Ezra chapter 3 tells us that old men wept because they knew that it would not be the same. But you got to start rebuilding somewhere.

So they started rebuilding the house of God as it was before, with what they had. You know what they had? Nothing. And then they stopped for a lot of different reasons. Can you imagine returning home and there are people that have already settled there? The Samaritans now they're pushing back because you're kind of encroaching on their space. Now you have political pressure that's mounted. Resources are extremely thin. You don't belong to an empire anymore. You're just a people that gets to go home.

And so the people in this situation, coming back to nothing, made a perfectly reasonable decision: We will get back to God's house eventually, but right now survival comes first. You got to do what you got to do. That was 536 BC. And it's completely understandable why the people of Judah would come home and say, "You know what? We got to get our life back together a little bit before we build all this infrastructure for God."

Sixteen Years Later

Haggai shows up in 520 BC. It's 16 years later. And when he steps on the scene, that foundation that they built is still sitting exposed to the elements. Weeds are growing through the stones. Rain gets in the unfinished walls. And the people have moved on. They're busy now. They're productive. They're getting by. They have a routine.

Sound kind of familiar? I guarantee you this message is not going to pop you at the end and be like, "Oh, I didn't see that coming." This is it. Sometimes people just get busy.

Cedar Paneling While God's House Sits in Ruins

And we have chapter 1, verse 4: "Is it a time for you to dwell in your paneled houses while this house lies in ruins?" That's what's being asked.

And so it's neat because the word there for "paneled"—sufunim—means cedar paneling. It's the same type of interior finishing that Solomon put in his palace, okay? And if you remember that scene, when Solomon got a bit crazy with all of his wisdom, he built God's house using slave labor and then he built his house to be two, three times larger than God's house, just because, you know, "I built it," right?

So it's intentionally trying to get you to think back to how luxurious Solomon had it. Here we are 16 years later returning. And these returned exiles are not just surviving at this point. They're remodeling. They're renovating. They're adding in the paneling. It's a biblical equivalent to today's granite countertops. They're renovating their homes. They're doing the second mortgage thing because they want to make it nicer.

And God's house sat in rubble.

You know, we call it priorities. God kind of calls this a problem, right? And he says in verse 5, "Consider your ways. Set your heart upon your ways."

That's a phrase that appears five times in the book of Haggai. Set your heart upon your ways. It's the structural spine of the entire small book. And it's not a threat. It's an invitation to notice the pattern. Set your heart on your ways. Consider your ways. Look at what you're doing. Look at the pattern, the routine, the flow of your life.

The Leaky Bag

And he says in verse 6: "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 earns wages into a bag of holes."

Love that. A bag of holes. It's the word "zerorov"—I think it's a leather pouch. It's a leather pouch that you would carry your money in. You tie it up tightly, right?

Imagine you go to work all week long and you finally get paid and you put the money in your pouch and you tie it tight and you start walking home, but you have holes in your pouch, and so somehow it's just leaking your resources. Everything that you're putting your work and energy into just leaks away, and you walk to the market and reach to pay for bread, but it's empty.

It's the gap between earning and having, I guess.

And now, let me ask you something. How many of you know that feeling? The leaky bag. And it's not because you're not working right. It's not because you're not doing everything right. Sometimes it just leaks.

You're sewing plenty, but the harvest never matches the effort. You're always tired, but you can never point to what you're tired from.

We have a word for that here in 2026. Hustle culture, right?

We glamorize that 60-hour work week. Show off: "Yeah, I get out of bed at 4, every morning. Got my side gig, too."

We wonder why we're so anxious and medicated. But caffeine and cortisol keep us going.

So Haggai would look at all of that and he would say that looks like a bag of holes, beloved. There's no productivity hack for this.

A Prophet With Empathy

The one neat thing about Haggai is when you go into it, you're so used to the prophets not having empathy, just saying, "Yeah, you need to stop—just stop it or God's going to punish you or God's going to take away," or "Yeah, you are like that wife that keeps going." But Haggai, that guy, has a little more empathy because he's not sitting here calling them lazy. He's trying to empathize with how they're dealing with life.

Carol and Eric Meyers contributed to the Anchor Bible Commentary. They point out that Judah during the Persian period had real opposition from the Samaritans. They had real political opposition. I mean, again, you're going back to a place that was yours and your empire had it before, but now it's been colonized by others. Not only that, now you're trying to get your foot back up.

And what they point out—while they were still wrapped up in Persian bureaucracy—is that these people were not evil. They're not bad. He's not trying to call them to repentance because they're just so bad. But no, they're tired. This is a people that have been enslaved, had everything stripped from them, watched horrors occur.

They get to go home, there's nothing there for them. They start digging and working to build something, and they're surviving, but they're tired. People still make choices, but it's just part of their journey. This is part of the journey. They had decided God's work could wait until they were more comfortable. And God through the prophet, he says, "Notice that it's not working because, yeah, you need to survive. You need to build what you need to build, but you've come to a place where it's not working." And if you notice, the language in Haggai 1 echoes the language of Deuteronomy 28, right? The covenant curses. You will sow much but harvest less. No matter what you plant, you're never going to get it back out. His audience would have recognized that immediately. They're living inside the curse. Not because God is vindictive, but because the covenant has consequences for building your life around the wrong center.

The Threshold of Grace

We have verse nine: "because of my house that lies in ruins while each of you busies himself with his own house." See, there's a threshold of grace where sometimes we get stuck in a rut when our life is filled with anxiety. I have all these new things going on. I have big things going on, sad things going on, horrible things going on, great things going on. And God can wait just a little bit longer until I'm more comfortable. And you see what happens when we leave the threshold without realizing it—we just realize that we've actually been trying to build up something for ourselves this whole time, and we're not willing to stop and recognize that we didn't build at the right center.

When you lose your center, the bag gets holes. Augustine said it later. He said, "Our hearts are restless until they rest in you." But Haggai said it first. You are pouring your life into a container that was never designed to hold what you're trying to put into it. The bag has holes because it was never supposed to be your bag. And so we have Haggai giving this message to the people.

The Prophet's Message

And then verse 12: "Then Zerubbabel son of Shel, Joshua the son of Zedek the high priest, and the whole remnant of the people obeyed the voice of the Lord their God and the message of the prophet Haggai because the Lord their God had sent him and the people feared the Lord." The people heard the message of the prophet and they obeyed. How rare is that? They obeyed. Jeremiah preached 40 years and watched Jerusalem burn. Isaiah was sawn in half. Amos got thrown out of Bethl. Hosea's marriage became a sign that nobody really wanted to see. But Haggai preaches one sermon and they listen. He's one of the very few prophets that have a 100% success rate. And then 23 days later, they start building. And God responds immediately in verse 13.

I Am With You

And in verse 13 it says, "and if you do, if you have turned there, make sure you highlight this. He says, 'I am with you, declares Yahweh. I am with you.' Four words in Hebrew: ani Yahweh. There's no conditions that God gives. There's no probational period. There's no 'prove that you're serious first by building my house'—no 'I won't be with you until you finish.' God just says, I'm with you. I'm with you. And what's exciting about this little verse inside this little book that no one ever reads is that this is the verse that should be on our coffee mugs instead of the ones that we take out of Jeremiah and try to twist the context a little bit—no, this is it. Like this is the verse that should be in the crossstitched frames at grandma's house on the wall. The moment they turned back, God was already there. The moment they picked up the first stone, heaven moved. It was working. God did not wait for a ribbon cutting of the temple. He showed up for the groundbreaking of it because that's how God works in the Bible. That's how God works.

The people became complacent. They moved their eyes from where they were supposed to be for a little bit too long. They started focusing on their own patterns, their own routines, which isn't a bad thing, but they never stopped to say, "You know what? Are we centered? Are we building this around what we need to be building our lives around?" And as soon as the prophet speaks, everyone realizes, "You know what? We haven't been building around the center we've needed to be building around. Let's go ahead and finish this thing so that we can build our lives around it."

And if that's not a good enough part of the story yet, God makes this grand entrance from beside them. "I'm here. I've always been here. I'm always going to be here with you." You do not earn his presence by performing. You discover it by reorienting around where you're supposed to be. The temple was not finished, but the work had started. Right here we are—23 days. That is all they had put into it. But God didn't need it to be done. He just needed it to be started. And that's something that we forget from time to time. We always seem to think God is at the checkpoint or God is at the goal waiting for us. And those darn little cheesy things they used to give out at church during the 90s—the Footprints in the Sand one. Yeah. Haggai is the reminder of that.

The Lord of Hosts

Since we're here, Haggai uses the title Yahweh Zavote 14 times. So this is one of the nerd moments. This is when the Bible gets really cool on top of all the other reasons why it's super cool. 14 times in 38 verses—Yahweh. It averages out to once every three verses. "the Lord of hosts, the God who commands the armies of earth or heaven or cosmos, right?" But yeah, it means the one who rallies the armies. And a lot of debate over what that word actually means. There are scholars like Michael Heiser and others that debate what the hosts refer to. Some scholars believe it's Israel's armies. So the armies of Israel belong to God. Others say that they're the heavenly beings or the angelic council that we see in Job or in First Kings 22. Others say it's the stars. It's the heavens. In the ancient near east thinking, it was understood that the cosmic armies of God were the stars marching across the sky. And that's pretty epic. I like it. The best answer is probably all of that.

Yahweh Zavuot is the God who commands everything that exists. And so why does Haggai hammer that? Because this community had nothing. They had no army. They had no political leverage. They had no wealth, no substance. The temple looked pretty pathetic compared to what it was trying to replace. And into that smallness, God sends a prophet who keeps saying, "Hey, the commander of the cosmic army says, 'Hey, the one that directs the stars says, 'Hey, Yahweh Zavuote says, when you feel small, God does not say, lower your expectations of me. God says, 'Let me remind you who I am.'"

You are not building this thing alone. You are not alone. The God who commands the angel armies and holds galaxies in orbit is the one who just said, "I am with you." Amen. He's the one that's cheering you on. Like in this game that we're playing and we're constantly matching all these levels and we're always getting more coins and all this stuff—this video game of life that we've been given.

And I love how such a profound message, an impactful message is just hidden in Haggai. So that's the first part of the message of Haggai. Then there's the second part when God shows up at the festival.

The Festival of Tabernacles

Haggai's second message comes on the 21st of the seventh month. And if you know the Hebrew calendar, you know that date is significant. That's the final day of Sukkot, right? Hosana Hosana Raba, right? The great salvation. The seventh month of Tish, the 21st is the final day of Sukkot, the feast of tabernacles. On this day, worshippers circled the altar seven times chanting, "Hosana, save us. Hosanna, save us." And the priests would draw the water from the pool of Saleom in a golden pitcher and they would proceed through the water gate and they'd pour it on the altar and there would be a great prayer for rain that would occur.

And so I want you to picture the scene. It's October 520 BC. The returned exiles stand in a halfbuilt temple courtyard. They've been working about a month since Haggai got them moving again and they're going through the motions of Sukkot just like we do. They're just trying to do the best they can and they're waving branches and they're circling seven times and they're pouring water and they're crying save us. But their hearts are heavy. The harvest has been disappointing. Remember, it's a bag of holes. The temple is not even close to Solomon's temple. Ezra tells us that the elders who remembered the first temple wept out loud when they saw this one because it was nothing in comparison. Can you imagine? That would be an awkward moment. Yeah, we did it. We got it moving. This is so ugly. To the point of tears. This is the ugliest temple I've ever seen. Ain't no way God's gonna like this. This is ugly.

Joy and Grief Mixed Together

The young people were cheering, but the elders were crying. And the text says, "You could not distinguish the sound of the shouts of joy from the sound of weeping." Anyone ever been to a church like that? That's good. Where the young men are so excited, but the elders mourning, where joy and grief are so tangled you can't tell them apart.

That's the room that Haggai walks into. And on the day of the great salvation, God answers and what's he say? He says, "Who is left among you who saw this house in its former glory? How does it look to you now? Is it not as nothing in your eyes? Yet now be strong, O Zerubbabel. Be strong, O Joshua. Be strong, all you people of the land. Work, for I am with you, declares Yahweh of hosts. My spirit remains in your midst. Do not fear." Three times: "Hazak, be strong." Governor, priest, the people. No one's left out. Be strong.

And that line, "my spirit remains in your midst," is more significant than it looks. So if you are in jeopardy, you might find this interesting. In Jewish literature, the Talmud in Yoma 21b lists the five things that the rabbis recorded that the second temple—the ugly one that they built after the first—lacked that Solomon's had. And the list goes: the ark was not in this temple because Babylon taken it and never recovered it. The sacred fire that had come down from heaven wasn't here. The Shekinah glory that came from the temple was not here. The Urim and Thummim that the high priest used to help make decisions. And the holy spirit. These are the five things that the rabbis believed did not take place or were not here at this temple. They believed that the presence here was diminished because it wasn't as pretty as Solomon's.

But God says something interesting here. He says that his spirit never left. The building may be modest. The gold may be gone, but his presence is still there even if the aesthetics are not. And then the promise comes that he gives the people: "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." That once more, right? He's saying that this one will be greater than the first—the glory of it. Now, this temple, this modest temple, the one they rebuilt, it expanded over centuries. It was rebuilt by King Herod, and it was just made beautiful, of course, hundreds of years later. And then one day, a young rabbi from Nazareth walked in its courts. And he looked up at the walls and he said, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." We know who's speaking here. This is what Jesus said. This is Yeshua. And John tells us he was speaking about his body though, right?

The Living Water Flows

And so since we're talking about Hoshana Rabbah—the great day of salvation at Sukkot—we can't pass this. So in John chapter 7, Yeshua is in Jerusalem for Sukkot. The water ceremony is happening. There's a golden pitcher. There's the water gate that the priests are walking through. They're going to pour it on the altar. And on the last great day of the feast, Yeshua stood up and he cries, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water." And of course, John tells us he's speaking about the Holy Spirit.

But did you see that in Haggai 2, on the great day of the great salvation, God says, "My spirit remains in your midst"? And in John 7, it says, "On the same feast day, centuries later, Yeshua declares himself the source of living water, which John interprets as the Holy Spirit." We have the same day. It's the same ceremony. It's the same promise. It's just a little bit of a different temple that's being spoken about.

The water they poured on the altar was always pointing to this moment. The ceremony that was always a shadow, right? The spirit that Haggai promised was among them would one day be in them, flowing out of them like waters, like rivers. Haggai's message on this day was never just about the building. It was about the God who was coming to dwell with his people in a way that no temple could ever contain.

And remember the bag of holes—the people who could never get satisfied, who could never get full because it all leaks out. That's what Yeshua says. He says, "Come to me and drink." The living water does not leak. The bag has holes, but the spirit does not.

The Signet Ring

It's a stout little book of prophecy. And in Haggai's final message, he targets Zerubbabel, which is the governor. And it is one of the most stunning reversals in scripture, and I hope I'm able to give it as much time as it probably needs. But we have the governor as Zerubbabel, and it means—it means "the seed of Babylon." Okay, that's this governor that's been chosen. This is a man that was born in exile. His name carries the trauma: seed of Babylon. And yet this exile baby is in the line of David. He's the grandson of King Jehoiachin, the last legitimate king before the fall of Judah.

And what's he say? He says, "On that day, declares Yahweh of hosts, I will take you, Zerubbabel, my servant, and make you like a signet ring, for I have chosen you."

Now, what's significant about a signet ring? Why is that spoken in the language here? Well, the signet ring carried whose authority? The kings. We know from Esther, right? Yeah. You press it into wax or clay to seal official documents. And when you saw the signet was impressed, you knew that the king himself authorized this. It was the symbol of delegated royal power. So why is this so explosive? What's the big deal?

Well, in Jeremiah , God says to Zerubbabel's grandfather, who was the last remaining king of Judah, he says, "As surely as I live, declares the Lord, even if you, Jehoiachin, the son of Jehoiakim, the king of Judah, were a signet ring on my right hand, I would still pull you off." God ripped the ring off. The Davidic line was removed from power. It had gotten that bad. The dynasty appeared over. Babylon won. The exile happened. And for 70 years, the signet ring was gone.

And now God takes the grandson of the man that he removed and he says, "What? I'm putting the ring back on. We're going to continue. We're moving forward. I never left." It's a quiet messianic whisper. Of course, the line is not dead. The dynasty is not over. The promise to David still stands. And here's what most people miss—it's kind of neat. After Haggai, Zerubbabel disappears from the biblical record. Gone. We don't hear about him again for the rest of the story. There's no death, no removal of power, no explanation. Some people speculate that maybe on a secular level, the Persians had him quietly removed because he gained too much power. I just don't know what happened to this guy.

But the signet ring was never about his political career. It was about what God was doing through his line. And that's why in Matthew -13, it lists Zerubbabel in the genealogy of Yeshua. The seed of Babylon became the ancestor of the King of Kings. And I just think that's cool. That's really neat how the Holy Spirit works with the story.

Consider Your Heart

So, what do we do with this short, dense little book? Well, first we consider our hearts, put our ways in our heart. How do we—what do we—what are our patterns that we've come to fall back into? Not so that we can have clarity condemnation, but for clarity. Where is your bag full of holes? What keeps promising satisfaction but never delivers? What have you put off because the time never seems right? You just need to get a bit more comfortable. Maybe a calling you walked away from, or a relationship that needs repair, or a spiritual life that has been sitting like an exposed foundation for years while you renovate everything else. Because that never happens. Haggai is not saying you guys are terrible people. He's saying notice the pattern and then reconsider what would happen if you started building again around the right center, the right foundation.

Second, we hear God's response when we turn back to him. I am with you. Not "prove yourself." Not "earn my trust back because you've been such a bad sinner." Not "let me see six months of consistency and then I'll know that your heart was really in the right place and then I'll—" Come on, guys. That's what people say. That's what people say. This is not the God that wrote this story. I am Yahweh Sabaoth, the commander of the cosmic armies. And what's he say? I am with you. You are not alone. And you never were.

Third, we can choose to hear the encouragement for small beginnings. Maybe you look at your life, your family, or your walk with God and it seems maybe pathetic compared to what you would have imagined, right? Had to have that talk with my son today, realizing that I was no longer trying to think of things to be when I grew up because I've grown up and he's still there. And it's a very strange place to be on the other side of it. And sometimes I ask myself, this life is not nearly as pretty and polished as 10-year-old me really would have imagined. And that's okay, right? That's okay.

We need to be reminded that Haggai says the later glory will be greater than the former. Which means sometimes God's plans for your life are going to end a lot bigger and more fantastic than the plans that you originally had for yourself. And it's going to be amazing.

We could hear the signet ring when we read this story. You may be one of the people who feels like exile defines you. Maybe you carry it in your name like Zerubbabel did. Maybe you feel like the ring was torn off a long time ago and you're never going to be able to get it back. But I need you to hear me today if that's you. God specializes in taking the seed of Babylon and making it the seal of his authority where he's going to plant and work.

Opening About Restoration

He specializes in taking what is broken and restoring it to something greater. We could learn so many things from this little book. Haggai is the shortest book in this series, but its message is enormous. God sees your small faithful work. God shows up at the groundbreaking, not just the grand opening. And I want to close with Hagi's words here. Insert your name, receive these as if God is speaking to you today because I believe he is.

But here's what he says: "Yet now be strong, declares Yahweh. Be strong. Work, work, for I am with you, declares Yahweh of hosts. According to the covenant that I made with you. My spirit remains in your midst. Do not fear. Kazak. Kazak. Kazak. Be strong. Be strong. Be strong. Be strong, church.

God Is With You

God is with you. The spirit remains and the glory is coming. Guys, I don't know where you're at today, but I know where we are in 2026, and it's about getting off to as good of a start as 2025 did. So be strong.

Please stand with me as we close in worship, as there's a lot punched into this little book, but the main message is the message that's all over the story. It's that you're going to go through times that are hard and sometimes you're going to be in survival mode. Don't stay in survival mode. Just because you find yourself there in that rut doesn't mean you don't need to be planning how to get back up.

Don't be scared to re-evaluate whether you're building around the right center or not. Don't overinvest into a foundation just because you've invested so much into it. If it's at the wrong place, it's at the wrong place. It's okay to start over. Maybe that was always the plan.

An Invitation to Respond

And so I don't know where you're at today, but if you need prayer, guys, we have a prayer partner either side of the stage. There's also an altar here. If you brought something in today that you'd like to leave once and for all, you can do that. Symbolically, walk up and leave it here, or you can stay at your seat and worship with us or pray and meditate.

But if there's one thing I hope you leave with today, it is the message of the type of God that we serve and that he is still here with you and he's never left. Amen.

Alina Meno, our father, our king. Father, we thank you for this opportunity to come before you now. Dive into your word and thank you. Thank you for the message the Holy Spirit continues to give through the prophets.

Father, there might be some of us here today that have been building on the wrong foundation. Maybe it's time that we acknowledge what the Holy Spirit has already been telling us for so long. Maybe it's time to re-enter and build something solid. Maybe there's something today that we don't want to carry around anymore and we can leave that here as well.

But Father, we thank you for the reminder to be strong and to be encouraged because you, the Lord of hosts, are still with us. We thank you, Father. In the name of Yeshua, we pray. Amen.

Worship and Encouragement

You are the medicine. The only cure for everything I feel within. Redeeming what was lost and all that could have been. Oh, this is a healing kind of love. You are the truest friend, staying through the night when I was at my end, comforting my heart till it was light again. Oh, this is a faithful kind alone.

He everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, Emmanuel, God with us. You're here with me. Wonderful counselor. The government is resting on your shoulders. You are mine worth. Oh, you are the final word. You alone decide when every page will turn. So I will trust your timing. I will rest secure. Oh this is a steady kind of love.

Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Emmanuel, God with us. You're here with me. Wonderful counselor, the government is resting on your shoulders. Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, God with us. You're here with me. Counselor, the government is resting on your shoulders.

Upon you here with us. Your name. Say it all. They say it all. I stand in all of you. Your name. Say it all. They say it all. I stand in all of you. Your name. Say it all. They say it all. I stand in all of you. Your name. Say it all. They say it all. I stand in all of you. Your legs. Say it all. They say it all. I stand in all of all. I stand in all of you.

Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, God with us. You're here counselor, the government is resting on your shoulders. Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, God with us. You're here. Wonderful counselor, counselor, the government is resting on your shoulders. You're resting. It's resting on resting on you. Resting on your shoulders. You are with us. You sustain us.

The Father's Word of Encouragement

Thank you, Father. So encouraging, Father. That word didn't come as a word of condemnation over the people. Isn't that amazing?

The father brought that word and he said, "I'm with you. Here's what I want you to do. Here's what you need to get back to doing. Return to your first love. Reorder your priorities. And I will never leave you and I will never forsake you. I am with you. I will empower you. It will not be your own strength that you accomplish it in. In fact, it's in your weakness that it will be made strong. It's in your weakness that it will be made perfect. It will be my power, my strength. It depends on me, not you. Although you do need to do your part.

No condemnation for the place that you have found yourself where the holes are in the bag and the foundation is creeping with overgrowth. No condemnation. Just a quiet nudge to return to the place where the power is perfected. Such a different tone than what the enemy would have you hear."

Thank you, Father. Give him praise. Give him praise. Father, I thank you for a renewed vision in this place. I thank you for the restoration that you desire to do in this place. God, I thank you that you are the one who works in us and through us for your glory. And that is not hinged on a strength within ourselves.

Father, we will confess we're weary, but we'll also confess, Father, that we recognize that it is your strength. It is your presence. It is the secret place that brings the power. It's not our own. So I thank you for that. We bless you, Aba. We thank you. You are worthy. You're worthy. We worship you.

The Shema and Blessing

Sing the Shema with me. Isel ad.

Oh Shema, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one, and blessed is the name of his glorious kingdom for all eternity.

Now may the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord lift up his countenance toward you and grant you his shalom. In the name of our sar shalom, our prince of peace, Yeshua Hamashiach, we pray in Yeshua's name. Amen. And amen.

Shabbat shalom, family.