Sermon: "Haggai"

Fourth in the "Major Issues in Minor Prophets" series.
Delivered July 3, 2005 by Andy Gathman.
Other sermons in this series - 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5

The audio file of this sermon is available for download and listening in MP3 format.

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(Note: this transcript is from Andy Gathman's speaking notes, edited somewhat to match the MP3.)

Good morning. My name is Andy Gathman. I direct Young Adult Ministry at Central Presbyterian Church. We are going to be continuing our series on major issues in the Minor Prophets, and we'll be getting to the scripture lesson in just a moment. First I ask that you would pray with me.

Father, I ask that you would open our ears to hear your Word, that you would open our hearts to do your will, and God may the words that come from my mouth be yours. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Now some of you may have heard that my wife, Eileen, and I are in the process of adopting a son from Guatemala. Not long ago we had the privilege to be able to travel there and visit with him for a few days, and also visit the country, We had an absolutely wonderful time, and if it's OK, I would like to show you a few of those pictures. Would that be OK with you, thought I would ask! If we can just get to the first one.

1. Well, there he is with Mom. He's just, I gotta brag a little bit, he is a delightful guy,he didn't fuss at all the entire time which is really important for me, and I was very blessed by that. We had a really hard tine coming home without him.
2. Our process has been somewhat delayed, but these pictures have really helped us in the meantime. This second one you can see, there he is, a really close up-he is just delightful. We are hoping to be able to bring him home in August or September, and we would appreciate your prayers as we continue this process.
3. Before we visited Juan Carlos, we spent about a week touring around the country. In this picture you can see the the old capital, Antigua, And the beautiful Spanish architecture, and in the back was a volcano, just a gorgeous place We were absolutely impressed with the hospitality and beauty we enjoyed there.
4. This next picture you can see Lago de Atitlan, a beautiful volcanic lake, with volcanoes all around.
5. One of the most fascinating parts of our trip was our visit to the Mayan ruins of Tikal. Now 1300 years ago, Tikal was the heart of the Mayan world . It was the center for learning and culture and home to 100,000 people.
6. Tikal's temples are each 1200 feet high. Archeologists say that in their glory days, the sides were plastered and painted bright red. It must have been magnificent to behold.
7. It was amazing to be standing in the same place where this magnificent culture, these advanced people once lived. To be walking through the jungle and then just to happen upon, as the jungle clears, one of these beautiful temples. It was truly amazing.

But at the same time it was also sad. The fact that we were touring these ruins meant that there was no longer any civilization left. Around 900 AD, due to severe drought and civil war, the Mayan culture at Tikal just collapsed, in the span of only a few decades.

Our scripture today picks up in a similar situation: At one time, the nation of Israel had been the height of culture in the Middle East. Her leaders walked with God, and as a result, the Bible says the nation was blessed. Now, under King David and his son Solomon, the nation was both powerful and prosperous. Powerful enough to attract leaders from all over the known world to seek the treaty and counsel of her King. And prosperous enough to build a magnificent temple. In 1 Kings, chapter 6, we get the description of the temple as being 30 feet wide, 90 feet long, and 4 stories high. On the inside of the temple, every stone wall and the whole ceiling was paneled with cedar, pine planks were laid on the floor , and there were carvings of angels and palm trees and flowers all around the temple. And the entire inside of the temple from the ceiling to the walls of every room, both inside and out and the floor was overlaid with pure gold. It too must have been magnificent to behold.

But over time Israel fell to ruin. They turned away from God, and Israel's prosperity vanished and due to drought and war first through the Assyrians, and then the Babylonians, Israel was destroyed. The temple lay in ruins, and their inhabitants were deported and exiled to far away lands. I imagine that the captives may have felt, similar to how Eileen and I felt, as they walked past the ruins of the temple, wondering if their city was left only as a tourist destination, with only ruins to tell the story of their once great civilization.

Well, in His grace and mercy God orchestrated world events so that only one generation later, the Jews were permitted to return to their homeland. Where we pick up in our text, a remnant has returned with the charge of rebuilding the temple, but in the time that they've been back, no work has yet begun. Needing to rebuild their own homes and in fearing other nations around them, they decided it it just wasn't a good time to build the temple. So, if you will turn with me to page 667 in your red pew Bibles, the first chapter of Haggai.

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 [a] son of Jehozadak, the high priest: 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?" 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." This is what the LORD Almighty says: "Give careful thought to your ways. 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. "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." 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. Then Haggai, the LORD's messenger, gave this message of the LORD to the people: "I am with you," declares the LORD. 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 to work on the house of the LORD Almighty, their God, on the twenty-fourth day of the sixth month in the second year of King Darius.

The major issue in this minor prophet is the problem of misplaced priorities. The people of Israel have come back to their city and have made the decision to establish their lives is rebuild their homes before anything else. Now on the surface of things, this would seem to be the logical choice. Their approach was, first, let me get my own affairs in order, and then I'll attend to the affairs of the community and of God. It seems sensible.

Many of us take the same approach in life, right? There are certain things that we hold as priorities, usually for very logical, well thought-out reasons, that just happens to displace the priorities of other people. A simple illustration of this comes in marriage How many husbands of you out there have a honey-do list? Now, those of us who are wise and experienced know that the proper answer to the honey-do list is a "yes, dear." Those two words are one of the keys to a happy marriage. But those of us who are still learning often reply, "I'll get around to it" And then the trouble begins.

This is how many of us handle a clash in priorities. "I'll get around to it---I'm not saying that your priority is unimportant; I'm just saying that. it's just not important enough right now. I'll get around to it. . . someday."

This is the way the people of Israel had been responding to God. Not for a month, not six months, not a year, not ten years; but for seventeen years, the people of Israel had been telling God, basically we'll get around to it. We'll rebuild your temple; it's just that now is not the best time for us.

But God has a different perspective on the exiles' choice of priorities. One commentator calls their apathy "practical atheism." And so the first time that God speaks to the communities since they've come back is in the form of a rebuke Verse 2 says:

This is what the LORD Almighty says: "These people say, 'The time has not yet come for the LORD's house to be built.'"

To which God responds:

Is it a time for you yourselves to be living in your paneled houses, while this house (meaning the Temple) remains a ruin?"

God is saying, "What time is it for then? Apparently, it's a time for you to live luxuriously while my dwelling place, is in a shambles.

Most commentators take God's remark about the people living in paneled houses to mean that they have gone beyond simply repairing their houses to finishing the outer walls luxuriously with paneling of wood. Wood is a very rare commodity in middle east, who you see they haven't simply done the basics; they've undertaken a full-scale home remodeling project.

One of the problems with the approach of putting our own priorities first is that every time we complete one , another one seems to take its place. And there tends to be an escalation of how much of our lives these personal priorities consume. You can imagine with the exiles, the progression might have gone something like this:

"God, first let us clear the debris from around our house. Then we'll rebuild your temple." But after they cleared the debris, they noticed they had no place to sleep and they may have said, "Well, at least let us clear out a place inside the house for us to sleep." And after that, they thought, "I probably should rebuild the roof so we're not exposed to the elements."

But before long, it became, "God, I know you want me to do this temple thing, but I'm kind of in the middle of things. I'll totally do what you want, but first I've got to paint all the rooms; I'm meeting with the decorator tomorrow, and the the next day I've got to run over to Ethan Allen and pick out some end tables; and then I've got a few pictures to hang; and build the addition; and well, everyone else is putting up paneling, so I'll totally help you after I put mine up."

And so seventeen years later, the entire community has re-built their homes, re-established their careers, started their families, and still they were putting God off. Through the prophet Haggai, God calls the people to task, and He exposes this attitude for what it really is: self-centeredness.

And it all started with just that little thought "I'll get around to it.". But as Jesus says, a little yeast works its way through the whole batch-and in the same way, a life of misplaced priorities may only show at first in small ways, but it eventually leads to a life that is totally apart from God.

And this is why God sends the prophet Haggai to give them a wake-up call, and after rebuking them, He gives them this command:

"Give careful thought to your ways."

Now, you'd think that after his stinging rebuke, he would say something like, "Now go rebuild my temple, or else"! But he doesn't. He commands them to give careful thought to their ways. And this is a command that he repeats four more times throughout the book of Haggai. Because he first wants them to stop and reflect on what life has been like when they've put their own priorities first. God's saying to them, "You've been going about your lives for the last seventeen years, you haven't even been thinking about what you are doing.

Many of us don't set out to carelessly live for ourselves. But we find ourselves doing exactly that when we fail to think about how we are living. Because like a fish that isn't conscious of the water it's swimming in, we absorb the assumptions of our culture, uncritically accepting what it tells us hat should and should not be part of our lives. And because we live in a fast-paced and high-pressure world, we are often left saying to everything else "I'll get around to it."

How much of your life is formed by the "assumptions" of our culture-things that we have to accept as part of life: two jobs, two cars, a bigger house, extra- curricular for every child in every season, multiple degrees, upward mobility in our careers. And pretty soon we have a life that doesn't have any room for anything else; we've used all of our time, all of our emotion, all of our energy, all of our money, for ourselves.

In verse 6, God shows the people the results of a lifestyle that puts personal priorities ahead of God's:

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."

Again in verses 9-11, he shines the light on the results of misplaced priorities:

"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.

God is showing the people a spiritual truth: When we neglect God's priorities, when we fail to put him first, everything else around us, no matter how hard we try or how good we are, turns to ruin.

The truth is, for many of us, the results of living a self-seeking life are right before our eyes: stress-filled jobs, unhappy families, few if any real friendships, and the nagging sense that none of what we do is making a difference. And there are times when can sense it, but for the most part we live life virtually oblivious to the fruitlessness of that way of life. And we need to hear the word of God today and "Give careful thought to our ways."When was the last time that you took a close look at your life, and really examined your priorities in the light of what God might be calling you to do? Maybe you need to take a serious appraisal of your efforts and your motivations: Are you spending your time, energy, and money on things that benefit only you or your family? What assumptions of our culture are your holding on to that prevent you from living out God's priorities? Are the results of your life ultimately empty, or is their lasting value in the things that your life is producing?

For many of us it isn't callous unwillingness or indifference to the things of God that prevents us from following Him. We want to but we just keep saying, I'll get around to it.

I think our text today is showing us that the "I'll get around to it" mentality is really an illusion. We have only one day to follow God and it's not yesterday because that day is gone. It's not tomorrow, because we can't be certain that it will come. All we have is today. As the writer of Hebrews says: "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts" (Hebrews 3:7-8)

My question for you is, what is keeping you from being able to put God's priorities first TODAY?

Jesus himself encountered people who had the "I'll get around to it" attitude. God had come to earth, He was standing right in front of them, and still people said to him, I'd like to follow you, but just not today. Right now I've got a more important priority.

In the Gospels we can see some of the reasons that people gave Jesus for not following Him that day and I'd like to take a look at a few of them. One of the misplaced priorities that keeps people from following Jesus is the love of money- and today I think we probably experience that a little more closely as the love for an affluent lifestyle. We see this when a passionate young adult comes to Jesus. Wanting to experience the fullness of God, he asked, " What must I do to inherit eternal life?" In Mark 4:21 we see:

Mark 4:21-23 Jesus looked at him and loved him. "One thing you lack," he said. "Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me." At this the man's face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth. Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, "How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!"

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is very straightforward about money. In saying that money and wealth vie for our allegiance before God: Jesus says, in Matthew 6:24

Matthew 6:24 "No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.

God asks that when we order our priorities we give him everything, and that includes our wealth. Surely, Andy, you're not saying we should sell all our possessions and live in poverty. Well, of courts not, but you might want to ask yourself if Jesus asked you to do that would you? No, I think for most of us instead we need to take much more seriously the responsibility of stewardship, remembering that we have nothing that didn't first come from God. What we really need to do is to reconsider how wealthy we really are, and ask ourselves whether or not we are using that wealth for God.

One of the most profound parts of our experience in Guatemala was the realization of how rich Eileen and I are. And I'm not just saying we're rich in blessings, but truly monetarily rich. In our marriage, we've often felt like we were scraping to get by-trying to squirrel away some savings here, treat ourselves to something special every once in a while. But when we went to Guatemala, we realized that "scraping-by" in middle-class America resembles the wealth of royalty in the rest of the world:

We have a beautiful three -floor home in a safe, clean neighborhood; two cars in good working condition; furnishings, wall hangings, and draperies in every room, all that have been hand-selected to fit our home; telephone service; central heat and air-conditioning; running water and hot showers; a refrigerator and pantry that always have food; a bachelor's degree from a reputable institution of higher learning-and let me tell you that is a credential , that most of the rest of the world would give almost anything for; we have some money in the bank that lets us go out to eat when we don't feel like cooking. And many of us, not all of us, but many of us need to realize that we have wealth that the rest of the world only dreams about, and we don't even know it. We are incredibly wealthy.

Just like the people in Haggai's day, it doesn't take long for us to slip from necessity into luxury. So we must constantly ask ourselves, are we using our wealth for us or for God? Jesus warns us that this wealth sucks us into serving a lifestyle rather than God. Are there things that you're not willing to give up? Your car? Your cable? Your house? Your neighborhood? Don't let love of a lifestyle be your reason for saying " I'll get around to it" to God.

Another misplaced priority that kept people from following Jesus is the need for security. When an eager teacher who is very established came to him, and said "Lord, I'll follow you anywhere." Matthew 8, verse 20 says:

Matthew 8:20 Jesus replied, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head."

Jesus says, 'I have no home; I have no safe place; I have nowhere comfortable. Are you willing to risk your life, your career; your reputation on my account? Because if your priority is to play it safe, you won't be able to follow me.

For some of us, we care nothing about the lifestyle that we have. We could care less about the car we drive, how big our house is, or having a kickin' home theater system. But what gets us is this need for security. We'd do just about anything to keep our family from experiencing difficulty, suffering, or harm. And in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus teaches us in Matthew 6:25:

Matthew 6:25-27 "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? ... Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?

Jesus is telling us that following him wholly will fly in the face of our priority of security. Now of course it is important to think about our family's safety, to try to live responsibly and stay out of harm's way. But when that priority takes precedence over following Jesus, we need to reevaluate. Don't let your worries or your need for security be your reason for saying "I'll get around to it.

The last misplaced priority that I'll mention is loyalty to previous obligations. Now, after Jesus encounters the eager teacher, another disciple comes up to him and says, Lord, I want to follow you, but first let me bury my father. And in Matthew 8:22 Jesus replied:

Matthew 8:22 But Jesus told him, "Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead."

Now that reply seems rather harsh, it is. And I think that's because our allegiance to prior obligations is the easiest one to feel self-righteous about, and I think it's the hardest one to come to terms with. But Jesus says, if your allegiance is to anyone else but me, it is misplaced.

Are you waiting for a certain obligation to pass before you follow through with a call God has placed on your life? Maybe it's waiting for your children to leave the house; maybe you're in a job or ministry position that you feel is too important for you to leave right now; or maybe, like the man in this verse, you're waiting until you no longer have to care for a sick member of your family. Jesus is saying don't let your duties and commitments to other people be your reason for saying " I'll get around to it" to God.

Now, the sacrifices involved in putting God's priorities first are high: it means putting everything on the table, and putting aside our desire for a life of affluence, putting aside our need for safety and security first, putting aside all our previous obligations. But what we often forget and what God wants to show is us that the rewards of putting God's priorities first far outweigh the sacrifices.

At the end of our passage today, we can see what happens when God's people put his priorities first because in response to God's call, the entire nation reconsiders their priorities and begins to rebuild the temple. And in verse 13 we read:

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 to work on the house of the LORD Almighty, their God...

When we take the risk, and cast aside all other priorities, God comes among us! And we experience his presence with us, and we can hear his voice say, "I am with you." As we yield ourselves to his leading, God stirs his spirit among our leaders. In fact, he stirs up his spirit among all of us. And when it is all said and done we are witnesses of a great work that is truly of God, and not of us. The amazing thing is that God is not asking us to do anything that he himself did not do first. In Jesus Christ, before we ever thought of doing anything for God, he gave up everything for us. Paul says,

Romans 8:32 He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all-how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?

And now, as we move into our time of Communion to celebrate God's sacrifice for us, I invite you to lay down your priorities. And as you think about his body, which was broken for you, and his blood which was shed for you, think also about what you might sacrifice for him so you will be able to make his priority your own.

Please pray with me.

© 2005, Andy Gathman
Central Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD 21204 410/823-6145
www.centralpc.org