Busy With Our Own Houses

Haggai 1

This week as I was preparing to preach, I realized that I only have seven weeks left to preach. In deciding what to preach on, I was looking through my sermon archives, and I realized that I had never preached from Haggai. In fact, I don’t remember ever hearing a sermon series on Haggai. As I read through the book – it’s just a short little two-chapter prophecy – I thought that God could use it for us.

So you are being the pilot congregation for my first foray into Haggai. Have you ever been in the pilot program? Haggai knew how this felt – Haggai was the first post-exilic prophet. In 520 BC, the word of the Lord came to the people through Haggai.

I wonder what it felt like – for so many years, God was silent. Now the people are back home, and God finally speaks again. Now, for a little perspective, God’s people did not triumphantly ride back into Jerusalem. They were allowed to go back, and there is a huge difference. They are still a conquered people, disappointed, maybe even questioning God. Their theology included prosperity as a sign of God’s favor, and they were poor. They were a defeated people.

And it was to these people, defeated, disappointed, and frustrated as they were, that God speaks. I don’t know about all of you, but I know what it is like to be defeated, disappointed, and frustrated. Sometimes that’s what it takes to hear the word of the Lord.

We don’t know who Haggai was other than the first post-exilic prophet (he’s not mentioned anywhere else), but we know he had an important audience: Zerubbabel, governor of Judah, and Joshua, the high priest. We also know that Haggai came with an important word, one from God.

A few weeks ago, I preached from Nehemiah, and we looked at the situation in Jerusalem where the city was unprotected; the walls were destroyed and in ruins. In Haggai’s time, the debate raged: is now the time to rebuild the Temple?

(Haggai 1:2-4) This is what the LORD Almighty says: “These people say, ‘The time has not yet come for the LORD’s house to be built.’” Then the word of the LORD came through the prophet Haggai: “Is it a time for you yourselves to be living in your paneled houses, while this house remains a ruin?”

The first thing that I thought of when I read this had to do with our financial stewardship – that the average American Christian doesn’t come near to a tithe – it’s more like 1.5%, and that the problem isn’t from people who don’t have; it’s those who do. One problem we have is that we are so busy that we live largely unexamined lives. Most people I know are just getting by, but the methods we use to “just get by” are not necessarily helpful or healthy.

What would our lives look like if we put God first? Some of you already do this, but what might your day look like if the absolute first thing you did each day was spend time in prayer? Not just on the “prayer list” kind of prayer, but enjoying God’s presence.

Things are tough for many people. Though most of us put on our good faces when we go out in public, we struggle internally. Haggai spoke to a people who were disappointed and frustrated. Yes, things are tough for them. And they had been content to hear “the time hasn’t come for the Lord’s house to be built.” That let them off the hook. But I’ve heard the same excuse given too many times. You can substitute any age or station in life here – well, I need to wait until… maybe you think you have to wait until you’re older… until you can drive… until you can vote… until you graduate from high school or college or graduate school… Maybe it’s when you’re married, or when you have children, or when the children reach a certain age, or even when the children have left the nest or after you’ve retired. Then I can… and fill in the blank with the things you can finally do for the Lord.

We are so busy with our own homes that we don’t even realize how we’ve neglected the Lord’s house.

Financial stewardship is an easy target, because, to some extent, this is what Haggai is talking about: (Haggai 1:5-6) Now this is what the LORD Almighty says: “Give careful thought to your ways. You have planted much, but have harvested little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it.”

You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it… That is such a fitting image. Have you ever felt like that? God is speaking to any of us who can’t hold on to money. But this prophecy isn’t about money. Talking about money would only be treating the symptom. The prophecy is about hearts, and the way we deal with our money is only an indication of the state of our hearts. In Matthew 6:21, Jesus says, “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

One problem is that we are so stubbornly independent. What’s mine is mine, and I’ve got to do what I’ve got to do.

This is what the LORD Almighty says: “Give careful thought to your ways. (Haggai 1:7) Last Sunday I was finishing up the intensive personal leadership training in Dallas, and the most important aspect of it was that not only did I get to give careful thought to my ways, I got some expert outside Christian insight into my ways. Why was this important? Because it will help me to be the person God made me to be. Many of us default to just getting by – we do what we have to do, and we never work out our issues. I personally developed my defense mechanisms when I was just a little guy, and that’s just not healthy. But I had never examined those ways, because I wasn’t even aware of them. There are some people in this congregation who need to get into counseling, and I’m not just talking about meeting with me, because I’m not a trained counselor, and besides, I count myself in that “some people.”

When we give careful thought to our ways, where do we stand with God? The Lord tells his people to give first to His house, which is not to be confused with church buildings, because, as we read in Acts 7:48, “the Most High does not live in houses made by men.” Indeed, as Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 6:19: your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God…

Ephesians 2:19-22 Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

Very quickly, when reading the Bible, remember that the Bible was written to specific audiences in specific times. It always means what it meant. That’s why context is important. When God spoke through Haggai, he was speaking to the post-exilic community in Judah, and he was speaking about a bricks-and-mortar building. But the scripture is living and active and has applications for us today. So when we read Haggai, don’t just think about a building, because God is not talking to us about a building. God commanded, “Go up into the mountains and bring down timber and build the house, so that I may take pleasure in it and be honored,” says the LORD. (Haggai 1:8), and this applies to us this way:

It takes work to build up the Body of Christ. It takes work to build up the church. It’s not one person’s job or the job of a committee; it is every Christian’s job. I don’t say this to guilt you into working harder for God or to doing more in the church. This isn’t a “stewardship” message or a “get volunteers for programs” message. It just follows after what we did a couple of weeks ago, when we started rebuilding the walls and ruins.

“You expected much, but see, it turned out to be little. What you brought home, I blew away. Why?” declares the LORD Almighty. “Because of my house, which remains a ruin, while each of you is busy with his own house. Therefore, because of you the heavens have withheld their dew and the earth its crops.  I called for a drought on the fields and the mountains, on the grain, the new wine, the oil and whatever the ground produces, on men and cattle, and on the labor of your hands.” (Haggai 1:9-11)

There are times when things just happen. God created humanity in perfect union with Him, living in the paradise of the Garden of Eden. But when Adam and Eve sinned, they were banished from the garden, but did you ever think about the curse God proclaimed to Adam? Cursed is the ground because of you… (Genesis 3:17) We live in a world that is not the Garden of Eden. It is a fallen world, one characterized by Paul as “groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time” (Romans 8:22). Not every natural disaster is a direct curse from God. But there are certainly times when God uses natural disasters, sicknesses, difficulties, and so forth to point his people toward him. In this case, God takes direct blame (or credit, depending on your point of view) for the drought.

Why would God do that?  God wants only the best for us, which is himself. God doesn’t want us to settle for less, which is what we do when we live by our own strength. Our culture values the “self-made man” who “pulls himself up by his bootstraps.” This just doesn’t work in God’s economy. The honest truth is we can’t do it on our own. If we try to do it without God, we are saying that we don’t need God, and if we don’t need God, then we’ve set ourselves up as God. So God disciplines us.

Hebrews 12 (shortly after the Great Cloud of Witnesses part and the call to run the race with perseverance) quotes Proverbs 3:11-12, saying, “My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son.” (Hebrews 12:5-6) The author continues by saying: Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father? If you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate children and not true sons. (Hebrews 12:7-8)

Accept hardship in your life, and allow it to bring you closer to God. Allow Him to shape you into His likeness, because that’s what He wants for you. Sometimes we forget that we don’t live in the Garden of Eden, where everything is supposed to be perfect. We’re not there! And things are not perfect here, and that’s the point. We’re living in a world cursed by God – and to ignore that is to not face that we need God desperately!

As the author of the letter to the Hebrews continues: No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. (Hebrews 12:11)

If you read ahead, you can find out how this post-exilic community responds to the word of God, but the question today is how will you respond? Is God first, or does He get the left-overs? This isn’t meant to guilt anyone into action; that’s never a good way to approach God – hey, God, I’m feeling guilty because I haven’t given you my best, so for the next day or so I’m really going to try, because then I won’t feel so guilty anymore. When we do that, we’re actually just doing it for ourselves, not for God.

So the challenge this week is to seek God, not out of mere obedience or to assuage guilty feelings, but to seek God for God’s sake. Spend the first part of each day with God. For those of us who are morning people, take time early in the morning to praise God and enjoy his presence. If you’re a night owl and your best time is at night, give that to God and enjoy Him then. And let’s experience God together as we rebuild His house.