Thru the Bible

Steve Schwetz: Jeremiah said that the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? Well, I'll tell you who can, only God. You picked a good day to study God's Word on Thru the Bible. Our teacher Dr. J. Vernon McGee explains that the antidote to our wicked hearts is knowing Jesus.

I'm Steve Schwetz and we're in the book of Haggai on our five-year journey through the whole Word of God. Now, before we begin, here's the last of Dr. McGee's introductions on the judgments in scripture.

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: Before we finish the little book of Haggai, I'd like very much to conclude the series that we've been giving for some time in our introductions on the subject of the judgments that are mentioned in the Bible. We've had, for instance, the judgment of the cross, that is where Christ bore your sin and my sin. That is called a plenary substitutionary death of Christ. He died a judgment death.

Then the second judgment we saw is self-judgment. If we would judge ourselves, we'd not be judged. A Christian is permitted to judge himself. And if he does not, then God will judge, and then you have the chastening judgments of God.

And then the fourth one was the judgment of believers' works. That is to see whether we receive a reward or not. Then we had the judgment of angels, and then the judgment of the nation Israel, and then the judgment of the nations, the Gentile nations of the world.

Now today we want to see the judgment of the great white throne. And this is the judgment that is conceived by the average person or the average Christian as being the one judgment that's out there in the future and that it's the only one.

The interesting thing is the subjects of the judgment of the great white throne are not saved people at all; it's the unsaved. They're going to be judged according to their works. They wanted it that way. How many people you meet today that will tell you that they're working for their salvation? They believe it's doing good. A man told me, "I am doing good, God couldn't judge against me."

The interesting thing is that we find out that those that are not in the Lamb's Book of Life are present for this judgment, but those that are in the Lamb's Book of Life are not present at this judgment. Now I'm going to turn to the 20th chapter of the book of Revelation. We've yet to come to this but we will later on.

I read, "And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them." That's Revelation 20:11. There is no more solemn scene in the entire Word of God than this right here.

And it says, "And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works."

The unsaved man says he wants to be judged according to his works. He's willing to stand before God. The interesting thing is God's going to be very fair to him. He is going to stand before God and he'll be judged according to his works, but nobody gets saved there because works cannot save you. God has made that so clear. You cannot get a clean thing out of an unclean thing, and mankind is unclean.

Now we read, "And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works." It's repeated again. Here is the judgment for works. If you want it, brother, you're going to get it, if you feel like you're good enough to stand before God.

And we're told, "And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death." Nobody's saved here. "And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire."

How do you get in the book of life? Well, just like you got in the book when you were first born. A record is made of your birth at the hospital. If your family's a Christian family, they generally have a family Bible, and it's recorded in that family Bible that you were born on this date.

You can get a birth certificate today by just presenting an old family Bible showing where you were born 40, 50, 60, 70 years ago, and they give you a birth certificate because your name is in the book. How do you get in the family Bible? You were born; you were part of the family.

And that's the way you get into the family of God is by a birth, the new birth. The Lord Jesus said to a very religious man, Nicodemus, "You must be born from above." You've got to get your name in the Lamb's Book of Life. The judgment here is a judgment of works, which reveals works cannot save lost man. This is a very solemn scene and a very solemn judgment.

Steve Schwetz: Let's pray as we dive into God's Word together. Lord, thank you for the new birth that puts us in your family. Would you draw those who have yet to respond to your invitation to come to you by faith? Speak to us now through your Word, Lord, and fill our hearts with understanding and wisdom so that we glorify your name in our lives. We ask this now in the beautiful name of Jesus, amen. Here's Dr. McGee with our study of Haggai 2 on Thru the Bible.

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: Now we are in the fourth message that Haggai delivered, and it was on December 24th, 520 BC. He went into the priest to ask concerning a law, not the law but a law. As we've suggested, the Mosaic law did not cover all the details of life in Israel. When a matter arose that was not covered, they were to appeal to the priest, as we have seen in Deuteronomy 17:8-11. There God says when a matter is too hard for you, you take it to the priest.

So he went up and asked the priest two questions. The two questions were simply this: when holiness contacts unholiness, does the unholiness become holy? And the answer's no. Holiness is not communicated then. But suppose the clean touches the unclean, will the clean become unclean? And of course the answer is yes, that is what will happen.

The major deduction is holiness is not communicated, but unholiness is communicated. Therefore, when the holy and the unholy come into contact, both are unholy. We saw that that worked out in every realm of life. It worked out in the physical realm and the material.

You can take two beakers—I've done that from the pulpit many times—fill one with clear clean water and the other one with water but put in it some black ink, and it'll make it very black. Then you can take that clean water and attempt to pour it in the beaker that's half-filled, and the clean water will never make the unclean water clean. The holy can never make the unholy holy by contact.

That's true in the physical realm, but you put one drop of that black ink in the clean water and it'll change all of it. That works out not only in the material realm but in the medical world. When little Willie has measles, you don't bring a well boy in there and let him contact your little Willie. If he does, little Willie won't be healed, but I tell you that neighbor boy will sure get the measles.

And that's true in the moral realm. You can't attempt to deal with that which is dirty and filthy and expect to come out clean. If you're going to play in mud, you're going to get dirty because this law works. Now we get down to the religious realm, and it works in the religious realm also.

This is a great principle that we need to recognize because a great many people think religion is a ritual. They think if you go through it, somehow that actually is the thing that makes you acceptable to God because you've been through a ceremony.

I have here something that an Episcopal bishop and a Roman Catholic bishop over in Colorado said back in 1964. They met together and they made this statement: "Christian baptism is the basis of a union already existing which must be developed to its natural conclusion. And the work of reuniting Christians is the work of God and it will be accomplished through the grace of God no matter how difficult it may seem from a human standpoint, but baptism is the basis of a brotherhood which is truly Christian."

May I say to you, as anyone knows, their mode of baptism is by sprinkling. Just think, you'd leave out the greatest number of Christians today, the Baptists and others who practice immersion. You'd exclude most of the fundamentalists on that kind of a basis.

Even the Baptists and the fundamentalists agree that baptism does not save you because they recognize this great principle that the condition of man is such that going through a ceremony or anything that he attempts to do externally will not meet the conditions that God has put down for man.

After all, man's condition is a sad condition. We read in Jeremiah 17:9, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?" What a picture this is of the human heart. No one can know how bad that it is. If you and I could see ourselves as God sees us, we couldn't stand ourselves. We don't realize how bad we really are.

The Lord Jesus made this abundantly clear in the 15th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew and verse 18. He said this, "But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies: these are the things which defile a man: but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man."

Just because you wash your hands or have been through a ceremony or performed a ritual, that can never make you right with God. I think I've told you about the man that I played golf with several years ago over in Tulsa. He told me, "I was a church hypocrite for years. I was a member of a big downtown liberal church, I'd been through the ceremonies, and I'd been on every committee."

He says, "To tell the truth, I was not saved, I was not a Christian. During the week I was practicing things that no Christian should." He said he was a typical hypocrite until one day he found out he was a sinner and he needed a Savior. He says that's what transformed his life.

The heart must be changed. The Lord Jesus again, listen to him as he talks along this line now in Matthew 7:16: "Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit."

This is the principle at work. He goes on in verse 18: "A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them." Out of the heart proceed the issues of life.

The heart must be changed. Shakespeare had it right in Macbeth. He asks Lady Macbeth while she's walking in her sleep. As she looks at her little hand, she says, "Out, damned spot! All the perfumes of Arabia cannot make this little hand white."

How true. All the perfumes of Arabia cannot make the heart right with God either. To try to go through these ceremonies is like taking a gallon of Chanel No. 5 perfume and putting it on a fertilizer pile out in the barnyard. You can't make it right and sweet by doing that sort of a thing.

You remember Simon the apostle told Simon the sorcerer, "Thy heart is not right in the sight of God." God demands a clean heart. In Ephesians 6:6 he says, "doing the will of God from the heart." And in Hebrews 10:22, "let us draw near with a true heart."

How can a man's heart be made clean that is by nature a heart that is unclean? By doing something? No. It is sort of like the sign that a dry cleaner had up in a certain city back east. It said, "We clean everything but your reputation." Well, believe me, you can't get that cleaned up down here.

Proverbs 20:9 asks the question, "Who can say, I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin?" Well, God has a formula, God has a prescription. He says in Isaiah 1:18, "Come now, let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool."

Peter wrote in 1 Peter 1:18-19, "Forasmuch as ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot." What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

Here is stated one of the greatest principles. God says the reason that you haven't been blessed is because of the fact that you have been coming to me with unclean hands and hearts. You thought that if you began to do something, that would make what you did acceptable to me.

Verse 14 says, "Then answered Haggai, and said, So is this people, and so is this nation before me, saith the LORD; and so is every work of their hands; and that which they offer there is unclean." Why? They thought that with an unclean heart they could do something for God and that would make everything right. No, it did not. It really meant that what they did was unclean.

That's the reason that an unsaved person can do nothing that is acceptable to God. Now verse 15 says, "And now, I pray you, consider from this day and upward, from before a stone was laid upon a stone in the temple of the LORD." In other words, he says from this day on I'm going to bless you, but up to this time I haven't been able to.

He says since those days were, when one came to a heap of twenty measures, there were but ten. When one came to the wine press to draw out fifty vessels, there were but twenty. God said, "I smote you with blasting and with mildew and with hail in all the labors of your hands; yet ye turned not to me."

Their heart hadn't turned to God. Now they've turned to God. And God says, "Consider now from this day and upward, from the four and twentieth day of the ninth month, even from the day that the foundation of the LORD's temple was laid, consider it. Is the seed yet in the barn? yea, as yet the vine, and the fig tree, and the pomegranate, and the olive tree, hath not brought forth: but from this day will I bless you."

God said, "Now that your heart is right before me, I'll bless you." The reason you haven't been blessed, even though you've been doing things, is because they rebuilt the temple and are now going through all the services of the temple, but God says that doesn't change you at all. When I sent you into captivity, you were going through all the services of the temple, but your heart was not right.

One of the ways that you can make your church a good church, if you have a Bible-teaching preacher, is if when you go there on Sunday morning, you are prayed up and confessed up and repented up and cleaned up. Then you won't block any blessing that might come in the church that day because when the unclean touches the clean, the clean becomes unclean. So your heart has to be right before God.

Now note as we come to verse 20. Here is the expectation for the future. "And again the word of the LORD came unto Haggai in the four and twentieth day of the month." This is the same day, December 24th. I said at the beginning that the reason probably that we had two messages on December 24th was because Haggai wanted to go home for Christmas and he just gave two messages.

Some people took me seriously on that. I had somebody write me about a 10-page letter explaining that they weren't celebrating Christmas at that time. My friend, when I don't have an answer for anything, I generally become a little facetious. I don't know why we have two messages given on this particular day, but here we have them.

"And again the word of the LORD came unto Haggai in the four and twentieth day of the month." Verse 21 says, "Speak to Zerubbabel." This is a message to the civil ruler, the man in the line of David. This is a promise made to him.

"Speak to Zerubbabel, governor of Judah, saying, I will shake the heavens and the earth; and I will overthrow the throne of kingdoms, and I will destroy the strength of the kingdoms of the heathen; and I will overthrow the chariots, and those that ride in them; and the horses and their riders shall come down, every one by the sword of his brother." God will shake all nations. He's going to overthrow everything they've trusted in.