LSBC

Good morning everyone, today we are going to be looking at the book of Haggai together. Last week we looked at Nehemiah and how the walls of Jerusalem were built. Haggai takes place before Nehemiah, it is actually taking place during the book of Ezra. Now, if you’re asking yourself why we are going backwards, it’s because I didn’t want to skip over some of these minor prophets last minute and so I thought we would take a look at them.

But back in Ezra we are introduced to Haggai and we aren’t told a whole lot about him.

Ezra 5:1–2 NIV

1 Now Haggai the prophet and Zechariah the prophet, a descendant of Iddo, prophesied to the Jews in Judah and Jerusalem in the name of the God of Israel, who was over them. 2 Then Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel and Joshua son of Jozadak set to work to rebuild the house of God in Jerusalem. And the prophets of God were with them, supporting them.

Haggai, along with Zechariah, have been appointed by God as prophets to speak on God’s behalf to the people. So the people have just started to come back to Jerusalem out of exile, they had started to work on the temple but things weren’t going great, and so God sends Haggai to speak to them. And the message that Haggai is going to convey to the people is rather simple, but it is important for them and for us to hear. It is that the people should consider their ways, stop and think about what you are doing, the situation you are in, and ask yourself why you are doing it and how you ended up there. God wants the people to consider how they are living their lives. What decisions are they making in their lives and how are they arriving at those decisions? That is what we will see in the first chapter of Haggai.

Prayer

Engage / Tension

E.M. Gray an author who wrote about success and people who found success in life, searched for the one trait all successful people share. His essay entitled "The Common Denominator of Success" revealed successful people's common characteristic was not hard work, good luck, or good relationships, although these traits were important. The one factor that seemed to transcend all the rest was the habit of putting first things first. He observed, "The successful person has the habit of doing the things failures don't like to do. They don't like doing them either, necessarily. But their disliking is subordinated to the strength of their purpose."

Haggai really communicates this message that we should be putting the important things first, even when it is difficult to do so. Most of us here this morning would likely say that God needs to be first in our lives, but there are times where we, like the Israelites, drift away from that truth. Haggai is sent to the people to help them look at their priorities and to see where they are putting God in their lives.

Haggai 1:1–4 NIV

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 Jozadak, the high priest: This is what the Lord Almighty says: “These people say, ‘The time has not yet come to rebuild the Lord’s house.’ ” 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?”

The book open by telling us what the people were saying in Jerusalem. Essentially they are saying, “Hey, the time to work on the temple hasn’t come yet, it’s not the right time to rebuild.” They are saying this because during this time in the process, there has been some resistance to rebuilding. They started off well and were able to lay the foundation, but things have gotten more difficult. People are trying to work against them, trying to discourage them, even trying to frighten them away from rebuilding. They also have people in their own group, their own officials, who are being bribed to slow this process down. So it isn’t just like the people decided to stop working, they were facing some issues and that is why they stopped working.

So God begins his message to the people by asking them a question. Something Jesus does a lot of as well. He asks them, “Is it good for you to be living in a nice house while the temple is still destroyed?” God doesn’t answer this question for them right away. He wants them to think on it, he wants it to hang out there for a second so the people consider it. Imagine if God was asking you that same question in this situation. We would probably have an awkward pause. What has happened is that when faced with opposition, the people turned their focus inward and focused on what they needed. They worked on their own homes and what they needed for their families.

Now, doing these things isn’t necessarily wrong. It isn’t like God didn’t want them to build their own houses and not to have a place to live. But the people have changed their priorities. Remember why they came back in the first place. The whole reason they are there is because God used the Persian king to send them back to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple. But after they faced some hardships, they turned inward and worked on their own stuff. This is a bit of a gut punch for the people and I think it can be a bit of a gut punch for us as well. It’s like God examining our heart, seeing what is first in our lives, and asking us about it.

We can place a lot of different things before God in our lives without really meaning to. It can be easy to focus more on your family, relationships, you career, even money. Remember, it isn’t like the people have rejected God. They didn’t say, “We aren’t going to work on the temple because we are upset with God, we reject him as our king.” They had every intention of eventually finishing the temple, they just thought that their things needed to be taken care of first. They got discouraged and distracted and God is now calling them out on it.

So God goes on and speaks to them about the situation more.

Haggai 1:5–11 NIV

Now this is what the Lord Almighty says: “Give careful thought to your ways. You have planted much, but 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 my 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 your 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 olive oil and everything else the ground produces, on people and livestock, and on all the labor of your hands.”

The repeated phrase that God uses here is, “give careful thought to your ways.” Think about what you are doing. You’ve done all of this stuff, but it hasn’t really worked out. You keep working, but you don’t have a lot to show for it. And God points out to them, that this is because they keep putting other things ahead of him. God wants them to refocus, to evaluate their priorities. There are a host of wildly successful people, people who have more possessions and wealth than all of us combined will have throughout our whole life, but many of them still find life lacking. Why would they not be satisfied with all of this stuff? How many times have we thought to ourselves, “you know, if I just had this, or had that, or had this amount of money, or this house, then I would be satisfied.” I know I have! But once we get that thing, we end up back in the same place. It’s like it didn’t satisfy us at all.

And that is what God wants the people to see. They won’t be satisfied by these other things. Their satisfaction, their joy in life, will come when they place God first in their lives. (This isn’t prosperity gospel, God isn’t promising health and wealth to us, he is saying that we were created to have this relationship with him and we will miss out if that isn’t our priority.)

God wants them to look at their life, is it empty? Consider your ways. Working overtime and not feeling satisfied? Consider your ways.

Haggai 1:12–15 NIV

Then Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, Joshua son of Jozadak, 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 Jozadak, 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,

In verse 12 we read that the whole remnant of the people obeyed the voice of the Lord and the message from Haggai the prophet. Haggai encouraged the people, telling them that the Lord is with them (1:13). God had not abandoned them but was with them for this work. So the people were stirred by the Lord to do the work on God’s house (1:14). They considered their ways, they refocused their priorities, and immediately began to work on God’s house.

Application

An instructor at a time-management seminar told the participants to prepare for a quiz. He reached under the table and took out a wide-mouthed gallon jar and set it on the table. Next to the jar were a number of fist-sized rocks. He asked the group, "How many of these rocks do you think we can get inside this jar?" The participants made their guesses. The instructor said, "Let's find out." One by one he began to put as many fist-sized rocks as he could into the jar until the rocks inside were level with the top of the jar.

The instructor then asked, "Is the jar full?" All the participants looked at the jar filled with rocks and said it was.

But then he reached under the table and pulled out a bucket of gravel. Then he dumped some gravel in and shook the jar. The gravel filled the spaces between the big rocks. He grinned and asked again, "Is the jar full?"

The participants were not about to be fooled a second time. They said that the jar was probably not full.

The instructor nodded and said, "Good. You are catching on." He next took out a bucket of sand and poured it into the jar. Slowly the sand filled the gaps between the rocks and gravel. After the sand settled, the instructor once again asked, "Now, is the jar full?"

The audience roared, "No!"

He said, "Good." He was pleased that they understood an important principle. The instructor poured a pitcher of water into the jar. At this point he stopped and asked the group, "What's the point of this?"

Somebody said, "Well, there are always gaps, and if you work at it, you can always fit more into your life."

But the instructor said, "No, the point is this: If I hadn't put in those big rocks first, I would never have gotten them in at all."

What should be your big rocks?

Matthew 6:25–33 NIV

25 “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 than food, and the body more than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? 28 “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 31 So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

What are you seeking in life? What are those big rocks? Is it God and His kingdom?