Vision Service 2011
January 30th, 2011 (AM). By: Rod Earnshaw
Rod Earnshaw brings a message from Haggai 1.1-15 for the first of four HTG vision services.
This morning I’ve been tasked with giving you a swift kick in the pants. We’re looking at a passage in which God disciplines his people. And as Hebrews says no discipline seems pleasant at the time. But God’s discipline is administered for our good. So this morning is like a hit of old fashioned medicine – missing the spoon full of sugar. It may feel a little unpleasant, but if we’re prepared to listen and obey, then it’ll be good for us.
In this passage we see five ways that God moves his people to serve him. And we’re left with a challenge – to love him more than things, and to trust him to provide when we do. So those will be our five points this morning:
1) God Rebukes: They’ve been ignoring God and serving themselves
2) God Disciplines: Because they’ve been slack towards God, God has been working against them
3) God Commands: God says now work for my Glory
4) God Promises: When they repent and obey God says I am with you.
5) God Challenges: To love him more than ourselves, and to trust him to look after us.
So let’s get into the first point:
1) God Rebukes: They’ve been ignoring God and serving themselves
Have a look at the passage with me:
NIV Haggai 1:1 In the second year of King Darius, on the first day of the sixth month, the word of the LORD came through the prophet Haggai to Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua son of Jehozadak, the high priest:
Notice that Haggai is very careful about giving us the exact dates of his prophecies – why? Well this tells us that his first prophecy came during August 520 BC. That’s after the Israelites returned from Exile, almost 18 years after they returned from Exile. That tells us two things:
1) God hadn’t given up on Israel. They were exiled in Babylon but God didn’t give up on his project to make Israel a blessing to all the nations. The fact that they are hearing prophecy at all means that God is still interested in them, he still cares for them and they still have a place in his plans. After all that’s happened to them this is great news, it must have been very exciting to the people to have a real live prophet to speak new revelation from God to them. And
2) The people had been living back in Jerusalem for almost 20 years, plenty of time to build a temple, but they still hadn’t done it. Ezra chapter 1 tells us that Cyrus, King of Persia, sent the people back to Jerusalem (in 537BC) with instructions to re-build the temple – he even organised the materials for the reconstruction. Now things had gone bad between the Jews and their Northern neighbours (the proto – Samaritans) and they’d been stymied in their building, and ordered to stop, so it wasn’t all due to laziness. But the ‘no building’ order had now been lifted for around 18 months.
So the context is the people have been back in Jerusalem for long enough to build their own houses, and long enough to build the temple as well.
And to these returned exiles God speaks through Haggai, and his message is a rebuke – a kick up the pants we might say. Have a look at verse 2 with me:
NIV Haggai 1:2 This is what the LORD Almighty says: “These people say,`The time has not yet come for the LORD’s house to be built.’” 3 Then the word of the LORD came through the prophet Haggai: 4 “Is it a time for you yourselves to be living in your panelled houses, while this house remains a ruin?”
In the last 20 odd years there’s been time enough for a decent building project in Jerusalem. And the people have been very productive. They’ve built themselves houses, and verse 4 suggests that they’ve had time to do a bit of a Grand Designs job, not just building the house, but panelling it, decorating, knocking out a wall or two and extending it. They’ve done well for themselves.
But meanwhile the temple remains unfinished. The work was stopped with only the foundation laid (and possibly one wall). And it has remained like that for nearly 20 years.
It’s become like the old Get Carter car park was to Gateshead – a monument to failure that everybody walks past, but no one does anything about. After a while you just get used to it being there and you don’t even see it anymore.
The people said ‘it’s time hasn’t come yet – we’ll get around to it some day’. They’re like me and DIY. I’ll put the stair gate up soon, I just want to have a bit of a relax first. Meanwhile the baby’s heading off up the stairs …
But God says how can you be so unconcerned for my glory? How can you be so self focused – you sure haven’t left your own houses in a state like the temple. You didn’t need to be told to put the roof on your own house, you’ve even had time to decorate it. Exactly when will be the time to build the temple?
It’s a bit like St James Village. I’m told that the original plans included all kinds of public amenities – things like green space and shops. But those things weren’t as profitable as houses, so the builders just built the things that would make the most money. And can you blame them? If they’re in it to make a profit, why should they care if there’s no where to park your car, walk your dog or play with your kids?
And doesn’t that just highlight the problem – the people of Jerusalem were supposed to be motivated, not by profit margins, but by God’s glory. That was why they were so desperate to get back to Jerusalem, to get back to the city where he had put his name, to get back to the temple, the symbol of God’s presence with them – that was their glory, their great boast as a nation. That marked them out as different from everyone else.
And now here they were back in the land, back in the city, so pre-occupied with their own houses that they had no time, no money, no resources for God. In exile their hearts pined for the temple. Now that it was so close they were distracted by the rest of life.
So God has sent Haggai with a good hearty kick up the back side to wake them up and get them focused on the main game – Haggai’s message is you’ve been slack towards God, but diligent about your own affairs. Like a soldier who turns back from the battle you’ve put your own interests above the common good, you’re like an athlete who qualifies for the games and then can’t be bothered to train. You need to buck your ideas up right quickly.
That’s the first thing God does here: He rebukes their self interest.
But there’s more, Haggai gives them a second word from the Lord and that’s my second point:
2) God Disciplines: Because they’ve been slack towards God, God has been working against them
Look at verse 5:
NIV Haggai 1:5 Now this is what the LORD Almighty says: “Give careful thought to your ways. 6 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.”
NIV Haggai 1:9 “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. 10 Therefore, because of you the heavens have withheld their dew and the earth its crops. 11 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 labour of your hands.”
God’s disciplining them, and the punishment fits the crime – God says ‘you want to go chasing material comfort, well chase you will – and chase and chase and chase, but you’ll never get there’. Like the parent who’s kids won’t eat their dinner – ‘well you can go to bed hungry’.
This is a punishment designed to correct their behaviour: it’s designed to teach them the folly, the sheer stupidity of chasing material comfort. There is no security in having enough, or in having things laid up for the future. No matter how much you gather, God is able to make it run out. No matter how hard you work, God is able to bring your work to nothing.
Verse six says they planted much, but God retarded the harvest, so that it only produced a little. Verse 10-11 elaborates – God held back the rain when it was needed, he spoilt the harvest, undermined all their best efforts so that their labour was in vain. The second half of verse six suggests that even what they took in the harvest was still further undermined by God, so that all their eating and drinking was unsatisfying, however well they dressed they couldn’t get warm. What they earned seemed to slip through their fingers.
It sounds familiar doesn’t it? The global credit crunch, the collapse of the housing market, the near collapse of the banks, the double dip recession, the failure of the pension pots… I don’t have a direct word from God like Haggai did. So I won’t tell you this is direct judgement from God, but it might well be.
Either way the lesson is the same. There is still no security in wealth. It’s only as safe as houses – houses which can be devalued in an instant, flooded, burned down, robbed and ruined. Markets loose billions like that! The pension pot can be raided or just devalued by inflation; the money we saved just disappear as if the ground swallowed it up. Even the material things that we put away for ourselves decay and diminish and turn out to be less satifying than we’d planned.
The papers are full of stories of people who’ve lost everything when the bubble burst. And isn’t that a telling description – their wealth looked secure, people made millions; but it was just a bubble, a lot of hot air expanding inside a fragile skin, and all it takes is pin prick to burst the whole thing.
Amassing wealth, collecting material possessions, hard work, diligent saving – none of those things are wrong in and of them selves. But none of them will save you, and none of them will provide any security. Only God can give security. God gives and God can take away, and no amount of money can make us secure.
God has been disciplining his people by making their efforts futile. God disciplines his people for their good, to lead them to repentance. So we come to our third point.
3) God Commands: God says now work for my Glory
This is in verse 7 and 8:
NIV Haggai 1:7 This is what the LORD Almighty says: “Give careful thought to your ways. 8 Go up into the mountains and bring down timber and build the house, so that I may take pleasure in it and be honoured,” says the LORD.
Get the job done – put me first by building my temple.
Notice what it doesn’t say. God doesn’t say – now pay attention to me and I’ll give you everything you want. He simply says now pay attention to me. Do now what you should have been doing all along. Get to work and build the temple. God should be honoured among them, glorified. The temple should be a grand monument to him, representing his presence among them.
Their efforts, their labour, their work and their material possessions were all required in a project that wouldn’t in itself increase the yield of the harvest; a project that had no profit motive attached to it at all. But a project that was far more significant that building their own houses, or filling their own stomachs. They should have been putting their energies and labours, even their money, into honouring God – that is a project that would outlast any of them; a project far more rewarding than lining their own pockets.
This is the other side of God’s discipline – correction. God has been working to get their attention so that they will stop living for their own concerns first and foremost and give attention to his glory.
Now the remarkable thing in this passage is the response of the people. They obey. They’re stirred up into action. And that gives rise to the forth point:
4) God Promises: When they repent and obey God says I am with you.
Have a look down at verse 12:
NIV Haggai 1:12 Then Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, Joshua son of Jehozadak, 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. 13 Then Haggai, the LORD’s messenger, gave this message of the LORD to the people: “I am with you,” declares the LORD. 14 So the LORD stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and the spirit of Joshua son of Jehozadak, the high priest, and the spirit of the whole remnant of the people. They came and began work on the house of the LORD Almighty, their God, 15 on the twenty-fourth day of the sixth month in the second year of King Darius.
God didn’t promise anything would change when he rebuked his people. He simply said you’ve been doing the wrong thing and it has to stop. Now start doing the right thing.
But God is merciful and here we see him acting like a parent who see’s his discipline taking effect. He shows his kindness and re-assures them that he is with them. He won’t ask them to do this and then leave them to their own devises. As they experienced what it was like to have God work against them, so now he promises to be with them in their work.
This isn’t a promise of riches – it’s not like a heavenly Ponzi scheme – invest in God and God will reward you with wealth and comfort. Later on God will give them material blessings. And Jesus promised that no one who makes sacrifices for him will end up out of pocket (look up Mark 10:29-30 when you get home). But there is no straight equation between our efforts for God and material blessings.
There’s no promise of material gain, but there’s a better promise. Because while money and houses and investments can fail. God never fails. The things they looked to let them down. But if God is with us, who can be against us?
And so God works through them to enable their efforts for him. See verse 14 God stirs their spirits up, their leaders first, then the whole people and they get to work. They muck in and get the work done.
So finally we’re left with a very clear challenge from God. And this will be my last point:
5) God Challenges: He calls us to love him more than ourselves, and to trust him to look after us.
Two things stand out from this episode in the life of God’s people. God calls his people to love him more than our own comfort and security – ultimately more than we love ourselves. And God calls us to trust him to look after us. Those same challenges are re-iterated time and time again in the New Testament.
When Jesus saw the greed of the Pharisees he was appalled – their religion never touched their wallets, however much they tithed they never gave their hearts to God, their hearts belonged to money. But he praised the poor widow who put into the offering all she had to live on.
In that reading we heard from Revelation 3:14-22 Jesus confronted a rich church. A rich church that was complacent and comfortable. They said to themselves ‘we’re rich, we don’t need a thing’. And Jesus says ‘I’m about to spit you out of my mouth! You’re not rich at all, you’re wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked’.
So as the prophet says let’s consider our ways. We’re a rich nation. Standards of living keep on rising. We enjoy comforts that were far beyond the most staggeringly rich of Jesus’ day.
So let me make the challenge clear. As Haggai said: Consider your ways – Have you become complacent, giving yourself to collecting wealth instead of growing God’s kingdom, working for things that will let you down rather than God’s glory? Are you waiting till you’re comfortable before your start to serve God, are you waiting till you hit some amount of savings or security before you give to God? That is to say: Do you love things more than God? Do you love yourself more than God?
What you do with your money isn’t the only indicator of your relationship with God, but it’s one of the clearest. If you’re rich towards yourself, but poor towards God, then you probably don’t love God as much as you should.
And the thing is that when we love ourselves first and chase things we will always be let down by them. So consider if you need to change, to start loving God more than things.
The second challenge is to trust God. See if I spend all my time and money chasing material wealth, that shows that I think my wealth is ultimately going to give me security, and significance, meaning and purpose. I think that’s what will me happy. But it won’t.
On the other hand if I invest myself, my time, my efforts and even my money for God’s glory, then he will satisfy me. This is a promise that calls for trust. Can I trust God that if I stop holding on to my own comfort, that he will provide better things for me than I can provide for myself? He will, but don’t we struggle to trust that promise?
But listen to these words from Jesus to a rich church:
NIV Revelation 3:18 I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so that you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so that you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so that you can see. 19 Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest, and repent. 20 Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me. 21 To him who overcomes, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne.
So consider your ways this morning. Do you need to stop chasing things and start chasing God’s glory, either for the first time, or to make a fresh start?
Let’s pray.