We’re starting
to get close to the end of our sermon series on the Minor Prophets, a sermon
series we call “Who Are These Guys?”
Today we look at the prophet Haggai.
And as we read from Haggai, you may have noticed
something that makes him different from the other Minor Prophets we’ve looked
at. Haggai does not have a message of
doom and destruction. He is not here to
tell everyone that if they don’t change their ways and ask God’s forgiveness
God’s going to wipe them out. Haggai has
a more specific message for a more specific situation. But the reason Haggai’s message is in the
Bible is that his specific message is one we can also apply in our lives.
To do that, though, we need to know a little about the
specific situation that influenced Haggai’s message. Haggai gave his message in 520 B. C. That’s another difference with
Haggai—scholars are pretty sure they know right about when it was that Haggai
spoke. At this time, there was very
little territory left in the nation of Israel.
All there was, was Judah, which included Jerusalem and a little
territory around it. That was about it.
Judah was a part of the Persian Empire, but it had a
certain amount of independence. As often
happened in Old Testament times, the kings and rulers, whoever they happened to
be, did not care much what the people of Israel did as long as they kept paying
taxes and did not cause any trouble. And
in fact, about fifteen or twenty years earlier, the king, King Cyrus had explicitly
given permission to the Israelites, who had been in exile, to go back to
Jerusalem and rebuild the temple, the house of God, which had been torn down
and destroyed about forty or fifty years before that.
So, the people of Israel went back to Jerusalem to
rebuild the temple. And they got
started, and things went okay for a while.
But then, the people thought, “You know, we need to have places to live
ourselves.” And so they started building
houses. And then the people thought,
“You know, we need to make sure we have enough to eat.” And so they started planting crops. And then the people thought, “You know, we
need to make some money so we can buy the stuff we cannot make or build for
ourselves.” And so they started getting
jobs. And the rebuilding of the temple
got delayed, and then it got delayed again, and then it got delayed some more,
and pretty soon everybody just forgot about rebuilding the temple and went
about their daily lives.
Now, notice something about that. No one ever made a decision that they were
not going to rebuild the temple. In
fact, if you’d asked them, most of the people probably would’ve said, “You
know, we do need to get back to that. We
really do need to get back to rebuilding the temple. We should do that.” And then, they’d have gone back to going
about their business.
Now, it’s not that the people were lying. They really meant what they said. They knew, on some level, that they really
should rebuild the temple. They knew
that was what God wanted them to do. They
knew that was the whole reason they’d been sent back to Jerusalem in the first
place. But they did not let that
knowledge impact their lives in any significant way. They knew rebuilding the temple was the right
thing to do. But they had no intention of
actually doing it.
Any of that sound familiar? I suspect it does. How many times do we know what the right
thing to do is, but have no intention of actually doing it? How many times do we know what we should do,
what God wants us to do, but just not let that knowledge impact our lives in
any significant way?
There are a lot of times in our lives where we do exactly
what the people of Israel did. We don’t
make a conscious decision to disobey God.
We just think, “You know, I really need to do this first.” Then we think, “You know, I really need to
get that taken care of first.” Then we
think, “You know, I need to take care of myself and my family first.”
A lot of the time, at least, we don’t make a conscious
decision to go away from God. In fact,
if we were asked, we’d say, “You know, I do need to get back to God. I really do need to get back to church and
taking time for prayer and all that stuff.
I really should do that.” And then,
we go about our business. Again, we know
what we should do. We just have no
intention of actually doing it.
That’s pretty much where the people of Israel were. And then Haggai comes along. And God, speaking through Haggai, basically
asks the people of Israel the Dr. Phil question. “How’s that workin’ for you?” And the answer, apparently, is “Not very
well.” Listen to what God, speaking
through Haggai, says, “Give careful thought to your ways. You have planted much, but have harvested
little. You eat, but you 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 expected much, but see, it turned out to be
little. What you brought home, I blew
away. Why? Because of my house, which remains a ruin,
while each of you is busy with his own house.”
The people of Israel did exactly what you and I do so
often. They believed in God. But they did not trust God. They believed in God, but they believed they
had to take care of themselves. They
believed in God, but they did not put doing God’s work first. They put themselves first. They took care of themselves first, and they
only gave God any time, money, or ability they had left over.
It’s such an easy trap to fall into. We don’t disobey God, at least not
intentionally. We just say, “Not now,
God.” Not now. First I need to get my schooling taken care
of. Then I need to get a job. Then I need to get some stuff, a car, a
house, that sort of thing. Then I need
to meet someone and get married. Then I
need to start a family and make sure that family is provided for. Oh, and I need to make sure I take care of
myself in retirement, too. I’m going to
do what you want, God, really I am. Just
not right now. I have to take care of
all these other things first. You know
how it is, God. You understand, right?
And God does understand.
What God understands is that we’re putting ourselves in first place, and
we’re putting God in second place. In
fact, sometimes we put God in third or fourth or fifth place. And it works out for us about the way it
worked out for the people of Israel. Not
very well. We keep thinking that after
we’re done with all these other things we’ll serve God, but somehow all these
other things never get done. There’s
always something else to do, something else we need to take care of, something
else we need to finish first. When we
try to take care of our needs and our wants by ourselves, we never get it
done. We always have more needs and more
wants. “Not now” becomes “not ever”. That may not be a conscious decision we make,
but that’s how it works out.
So what do we do?
Well, first we have to decide whether we really want to do
anything. And again, that comes down to
a question of trust. Do we trust that,
if we put God first, God will take care of us?
Or do we think we have to take care of ourselves?
That’s the first step.
And it’s the most important step.
Because if we’re not willing to trust God enough to put God first, none
of the rest of it matters. As long as we
keep thinking that we’ll get around to serving God later, as long as we keep
thinking we have to take care of ourselves first, nothing else is going to
matter. Any other steps are going to be
irrelevant if we don’t take that first one.
If we’re not willing to trust God enough to put God first, we’ll never
take any of the other steps.
How do we trust God enough to take that first step? Well, I don’t have the whole answer. All I can tell you, really, is what I try to
do. And in saying this, please understand
that I am NOT trying to put myself forward as the role model that everyone
should follow. There are plenty of times
I don’t trust God enough. There are
plenty of times I don’t put God first.
This is not me saying I have it all figured out and you don’t, not by
any stretch. I struggle with this as
much as anyone.
But this is the best way I’ve found to try to overcome
it. Pray. Pray about this consistently. Pray about it every day. Pray that God will put God’s spirit in your
heart, in your soul, in your mind, and in your life.
And the thing is that, even as I pray this, I know that
I’m going to resist it. If God starts to
put God’s spirit in my heart, in my soul, in my mind, in my life, I’m going to
resist. I’m going to throw up
roadblocks. But I pray it anyway. I pray for God to overcome my resistance and
put God’s spirit in my heart and in my soul and in my mind and in my life
anyway.
I’ve been doing that for some time now. Has it worked? Not perfectly, that’s for sure. You all know that. You know there are still plenty of times I put
myself first. You know there are plenty
of times I go my own way. And if you
don’t know it, ask Wanda. She can give
you plenty of examples of me doing that.
But I think I’m better than I used to be. I’m still a long way from where I should be,
but I’m better than I used to be. And I
think if you pray for God to put God’s spirit in your heart, in your soul, in
your mind, in your life, it’ll help you, too.
You’ll find that you do trust God more.
You’ll find that, sometimes at least, you don’t say, “Not now, God” and
instead put God first.
God wants to take care of us. And if we’ll just get out of our own way and
put God first in our lives, God will take care of us. Let’s stop saying, “Not now, God.” Let’s trust God now.
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