Sermon Tone Analysis

Sermon

Nobody Wants to Work

“Nobody wants to work anymore!”

You heard people say that?

Have you said it?

Well, I still have the heart of a librarian and when a question gets into my head, I’ve gotta find an answer.

And hearing that phrase over and over lately, I asked myself, “Self, I wonder if generations in the past have been as critical of the work ethic of their current generations as today seems to be.”

So I got to digging.

2022, Forbes

2016, Ventura County Star

1999, St. Petersburg Times

1981, Miami Herald

1979, News Journal

1969, The Atlanta Constitution

1952, The Evergreen Courant

1940, Wisconsin State Journal

1937, York Daily Record

1922, The Mulberry News

1916, The Binghamton Press

1905, The Edgefield Advertiser

1894, Rooks County Record

We’re going to talk about work and vocation today.

You can go ahead and turn to the Book of Haggai in your Bibles.

That’s on page 538 of the white pew Bible — the whole thing is on that page.

It’s a really short book, another of the minor prophets.

While you’re turning let me just say this about work.

Let’s cut out that phrase, “Nobody wants to work anymore,” from our vocabulary.

It wasn’t true when your parents and grandparents were saying it about you, as we saw in all those news articles, and it’s not true now.

People do want to work — it’s just that work looks different than it did when you were younger.

Economies change, preferences change, expectations change — and with that work changes.

People do want to work, and people are working, just maybe not in the same spaces they used to.

But that doesn’t mean their work isn’t valuable.

The prophet Haggai talks to the people of Jerusalem about persistent, faithful work for the glory of God.

And God tells them to be courageous and diligent in their work of rebuilding the temple.

Big Idea

That brings us to our Big Idea from the Book of Haggai this morning.

Here it is:

Because God is with His people, and because He promises to build His Church, we can be courageous and diligent in the mission of the Church.

God promises the people of Jerusalem that His Spirit will be with them and that He is doing the work through them, so they can take heart and persist in their building, even when it looks discouraging.

Because God is with His people, and because He promises to build His Church, we can be courageous and diligent in the mission of the Church.

Let’s pray, then we’ll look at the text.

Father, make your Word a swift Word,

passing from the ear to the heart,

from the heart to the lip and conversation;

that, as the rain returns not empty,

so neither may your Word,

but accomplish that for which it is given.

Amen.

In 586 BC the Babylonians sacked Jerusalem, destroyed the temple, and took most of the Jews into exile.

About 50 years later the Persian Empire overthrew Babylon and the new king allowed the Jews to return to their homeland and rebuild the temple at Jerusalem.

All of this was owing to the sovereign hand of God fulfilling the prophecies of Jeremiah (Ezra 1:1).

When they return to Jerusalem, God raises up 2 prophets: Haggai and Zechariah.

Ezra 5:1-2 sums up for us what these two prophets accomplished:

So Haggai and Zechariah were sent by God to assist in the rebuilding of the temple.

Haggai 1:15 says the work began on the 24th day of the sixth month of the second year of the reign of Darius, which in our dating is September 21, 520 BC, which means that about 18 years went by between the return of the exiles and the rebuilding of the temple.

That delay is what prompts God to speak through Haggai.

The way Haggai motivates the Jews to build the temple of God has a powerful application to our own efforts to build the Kingdom of God, the Church.

Remember, we absolutely are Kingdom Builders, but we’re called to do that not through fighting, culture war, political power, but through self-sacrifice, tangible love of neighbor, and making disciples.

Haggai actually delivers 4 different messages to the people over the course of 5 months.

This morning, we’ll focus mainly on the message Haggai delivers in 2:1–9.

But it’s a short book, so I’ll summarize the 1st and 3rd as well, just for some context.

Neglecting the Temple of God

In chapter 1, the people are frustrated.

Things aren’t going well in Jerusalem.

And Haggai’s first message to the governor, the priest, and people is that the reason they are all frustrated is that they have tried to make their own lives comfortable while neglecting the temple of God.

Verses 4–6:

So they lived in perpetual frustration and discontentment.

Nothing satisfied.

And that’s a word for us today, too.

If you devote yourself to sowing and eating and drinking and clothing yourselves and earning wages, but neglect your ministry in the body of Christ — which is the temple of God according to Paul in 1 Corinthians — you will live in constant frustration.

If you spend your time and energy seeking comfort and security from worldly things — be that finances, politics, family relations, whatever — and do not spend yourself for the glory of God, every pleasure you pursue is going to leave an ashy aftertaste of depression and guilt and frustration.

It will not satisfy and it will not be secure.

But Haggai gives them a remedy for the frustration in verse 8:

Work for God’s glory.

Now, this is important: The real problem in Jerusalem is not that they are neglecting a building — that’s the symptom.

The disease is indifference to the glory of God.

The temple of the Old Testament existed for the glory of God.

And the Church today exists for the glory of God.

So, indifference to the spiritual growth of the Church and indifference toward its mission to make disciples is a sign of failure to love the glory of God.

And the sour fruit of this failure is a life of chronic frustration.

John Piper said paraphrased Jesus’ words this way:

He who seeks to save his life will lose it to continual frustrations; but he who loses his life for the glory of God and the good of his cause will find life, deep and fulfilling.

Verse 9 sums up the situation in Jerusalem:

Now, there is good news because the people respond in repentance and faith.

Verses 12-15 report that Zerubbabel and Joshua and the people obey and begin to work on the temple.

After 18 years of neglect and frustration, the people begin to learn their lesson: Seek first the Kingdom of God, and all the other things will be added.”

Half-hearted Obedience

Now, skip down 2:10–19, the third message.

Verse 10 dates it in the 24th day of the ninth month, three months after the work on the temple began.

Things have not gone well.

Evidently the attitude of the people is that mere contact with the temple makes them clean in God’s sight while, in fact, they are living in sin.

The holiness of the temple is not rubbing off on them.

On the contrary, their sin is desecrating the temple.

That’s the meaning of verses 11–14, a kind of parable applied in v. 14 to the people like this:

So, even though they have begun to obey the Lord by working on the temple, their work is unclean because of sin in their lives.

So what Haggai does in response to this imperfect obedience is point the people back to the great turning point in their experience when they began to work on the temple.

Verses 15–17 tell the people to consider what they should do now, in view of how life was for them before they started building the temple.

In other words, recall how miserable and frustrated you were in your disobedience before you began to lay stone on stone in the temple.

The implication is: surely it is utter folly to go on in sin now, if it cost so much then.

Verses 15–17 call the people to consider what they should do now, in view of how life was for them before they started building the temple.