Building the House of God

Haggai 1:1-15

Today, we’re going to look at the Book of Haggai. It’s the third-to-the-last book of
the Old Testament, just in front of Zechariah. Haggai was a prophet—someone who told
people what God wanted—and the Book of Haggai records his prophesies. The last part
of the Old Testament contains all these books of prophesy. Before that, there are books of
poetry and wise sayings, and then before that there are histories.
The reason we read these prophesies is because they show us how the relationship
between God and His people works.
It’s important to know the story behind Haggai’s prophesies. Basically, the Bible
records how God had a relationship with Abraham because he was a man of faith. God
promised Abraham that He would bless His descendents, and that the whole world would
be blessed through them—God already had a plan to send Jesus, whose ancestor was
Abraham.
So the Old Testament records God’s relationship with the descendents of
Abraham, the Israelites, the Jewish people. They are His people and live in a covenant
relationship with Him. He led them out of Egypt, where they were slaves, into the land of
Canaan. He helped them fight their enemies. Eventually, they became two kingdoms,
Israel and Judah. The people became more and more wicked, worshipping idols and
killing the prophets that God sent to warn them. Finally, God sent the Babylonians to
destroy their cities and bring them far away to Babylon.
There was a prophesy that after 70 years, the Israelites would return to Jerusalem.
God made this happen, and moved the heart of Cyrus, the king of Persia, to allow the
Jews to return and rebuild their temple. While many Jews stayed in Babylon, the families
that believed in God’s promise returned to Jerusalem. They began rebuilding the temple
under the direction of Zerubabbel the governor and Joshua the high priest. However, the
Jews who had remained in the land during the 70 years had mixed with other people that
the king of Babylon had brought there. Because the Jews did not want to mix with them
and would not allow them to join in building the temple, these people—who are called
Samaritans in the New Testament—plotted against the rebuilding of the temple. A
combination of threats, force, and political pressure finally made the Jews stop rebuilding
the temple.
Now, skip forward 15 years. The people who relocated to Jerusalem were settled
down and getting on with life. They said to each other, “Now is not the time to build the
temple.”

v. 1-4
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:
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 paneled houses, while this
house remains a ruin?"
The Israelites had an uncanny ability to deceive themselves. It’s human nature—
it’s easy to trick yourself into being self-centered and proud, but difficult to trick yourself
into loving others and being thankful to God—those things take some consideration and
willful decision-making.
God spoke through Haggai using the facts: The Israelites who had taken such
pride in rebuilding the temple 15 years earlier were now eager to build and adorn their
own houses, but were perfectly happy about letting God’s house lay in ruins.

v. 5-6
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."
God reminded the Israelites of His covenant—a solemn agreement—with them.
Way back when He brought the Israelites out of Egypt, He made an agreement with them
that if they respected Him and lived according to His laws, that He would bless them.
The problem was that the Israelites had let other things distract them from their
covenant with God. They allowed fear and discouragement to seep in. The Bible says that
when they laid the foundation of the temple, some of the older people who had seen the
first temple that King Solomon built wept because the new one was so small in
comparison. Add to that the pressure they had from their enemies. In the end, they choose
the easy route and had become quite happy with that.
But God knows that the path of least resistance is not the best for us. Although
God created us good, we have to deal with sin and the results of our bad choices. God
wants us to use our free will to choose Him above other things.
That’s why God asked the Israelites to carefully consider their situation: They
were in a covenant with God, but they weren’t being blessed. In fact, they were being
cursed because they had chosen to give into fear, doubt, and discouragement—and had
eventually settled into complacency.

v. 7-8
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 honored," says the LORD.
Here God gives the Israelites a clear way forward. Instead of mindlessly slipping
further away from God’s will, He wants them to wake up and make a calculated decision
to obey God. They need to make a determination to serve Him, purposefully planning
how to please God.

v. 9-11
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 labor of your hands."
Just to make sure they get the message, God repeats Himself. The key sentence
here comes after “Why?” “Because of my house, which remains a ruin, while each of you
is busy with his own house.” In the KJV, it reads, “Because of mine house that is waste,
and ye run every man unto his own house.”

v. 12-15
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 to 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.
The Israelites wisely decide to obey God. There are a couple things here will help
us understand about obedience.
First, the Israelites obeyed God because they feared Him. That means that they
believed He was who He said He was, and believed in His promises and warnings. They
took Him seriously enough to look past their own fears, doubts, and discouragement.
They took Him seriously enough to overcome the inertia of human nature—moving out
of a rut is very difficult! That first step was theirs to take.
The second thing was that God stirred their spirits once they decided to obey.
Things may not have changed on the outside, but they were beginning to change on the
inside once the Israelites decided to obey God.

Application
So, I’ve tried to reserve application of these verses until now. Actually, these
Israelites are a lot like us in that they are the people of a promise—so are we. They have a
covenant with God—so do we. When they returned from exile in Babylon to rebuild
Jerusalem, they made a step of faith—so did we, when we decided to become a Christian
and follow Jesus.
Unfortunately, our natural inclinations also bring us further away from God. Just
like with the Israelites, everything seems to conspire to draw us away from God’s will—it
becomes very, very difficult to do what God wants. We feel pressure from the outside
because of our jobs, what people say, our family situations. We also feel pressure from
the inside because of the burden of our responsibilities, discouragement, and tiredness.
It’s just so easy to give excuses for doing our own thing instead of God’s—and we
believe it, too.
 But God loves you too much to let you slip away. In fact, in our relationship with
Him, He’s the one who’s really the initiator. In His mercy, He called to us while we were
still following our own way completely and did not recognize Him. He speaks to us
through His Holy Spirit, through His word, and through other Christians. He will pursue
you and even jealously desire you. Like the Israelites, we are His people, and He will
shake us out of our complacency.
God will remind us that we need to make a conscious decision always to please
Him. If we’re going to live our lives to bring Him honor and glorify Him, we need to
think about it because it doesn’t come naturally. We need to make God’s work a priority
in our lives. Think of how Jesus said, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent me and
to finish His work.” This should be our attitude. I tell you, there will enough rest and
reward in heaven—now is the time to do our best for Him.
I used to run long-distances races when I was younger. You spend so much time
preparing for the race, and you may be running for half and hour or so during the race.
You get extremely tired and your body tells you it’s time to take a rest. But you don’t,
because you know that there will be rest enough once you cross the finish line—now is
the time to run. You need to make sure you give it your absolute all during the race
because if you have extra energy left over once you’ve finished, you’ll always think, “I
didn’t do the best I could.”
Brothers and sisters, let us be like the Apostle Paul, who at the end of his life said,
“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” Don’t be
disappointed when you get to heaven, realizing you could have done so much better.
Don’t be afraid to go for broke here, step out in faith, and lose some security.
Finally, we need to remember that they key to making a decision for God is the
fear of God. We need to take God seriously, and realize He is bigger than our fears,
inadequacies, and challenges. When God was calling Jeremiah to be a prophet, He told
Him, “Do not be terrified of the kings and people I command you to prophesy against. If
you are terrified by them, I will terrify you before them.” We need to fear God more than
man.
Once we take that step, God will start to stir our spirits the same way He stirred
the Israelites spirits. Remember what God said to the Israelites: “I am with you.”