"Houston We Have a Priorites Problem"
Notes
Transcript
Intro:
We’re going to be in the book of Haggai. It’s that tiny book in your Old Testament, a small prophet and clean pages that probably haven’t ever been read.
This prophetical book was written 2600 years ago, but I would argue with you that 2600 years later, it is just as applicable to where we’re at today in our society.
So I hope this will be a redemptive time here these next few weeks just going through this and seeing what the Lord had to say to Israel 2600 years ago and what He would say to us today.
This is going to require you and I to listen intently, because I don't know about you, but when the pressure is on, I want to try and look the other way.
The book of Haggai is so different from the other books of prophecy. When you look at the other prophetic books you don't find the people of God listening and responding with obedience.
Typically, we find a people who brush off God's warnings and just continue in their sin. This is what is different in Haggai.
The message from God, through the prophet Haggai, get out to the people and in cuts through their hearts and they respond.
They don't respond in dismissal of the message though; they respond in repentance and then follow with obedience.
This book is only two chapters long, lasting a total of 38 verses, yet there is so much we can learn from it.
Today, we are going to begin to dig into this rich story and ask God to bless the efforts of this message this morning as well as bring us all to a place of focus to His incredible word.
Read Passage Haggai 1:1-11
1 In the second year of Darius the king, in the sixth month, on the first day of the month, the word of the Lord came by the hand of Haggai the prophet to Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest:
2 “Thus says the Lord of hosts: These people say the time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the Lord.”
3 Then the word of the Lord came by the hand of Haggai the prophet,
4 “Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, while this house lies in ruins?
5 Now, therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider your ways.
6 You have sown much, and harvested little. You eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm. And he who earns wages does so to put them into a bag with holes.
7 “Thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider your ways.
8 Go up to the hills and bring wood and build the house, that I may take pleasure in it and that I may be glorified, says the Lord.
9 You looked for much, and behold, it came to little. And when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why? declares the Lord of hosts. Because of my house that lies in ruins, while each of you busies himself with his own house.
10 Therefore the heavens above you have withheld the dew, and the earth has withheld its produce.
11 And I have called for a drought on the land and the hills, on the grain, the new wine, the oil, on what the ground brings forth, on man and beast, and on all their labors.”
First, we will look at the history of Israel at this time and this prophet Haggai, and then we will move into the problem and the solution sitting before Israel.
So, let's begin with looking at the history at the time and the prophet Haggai. This time frame was around 586 B.C. and Israel was already a kingdom divided.
The southern part of Israel had been defeated by the Assyrians 100 years prior, and now the northern part had been conquered by the Babylonians.
This was a broken nation which had fallen into Idolatry. They had come to a place where they quit worshipping God.
God had promised them if they failed to properly worship, they would fall into the hands of other captors, the temple of worship was destroyed, and they were no longer able to freely worship.
Fast forward 50 years, things begin to change. With the people of Israel under Babylonian rule, God allows the Persian army to come in and overtake the Babylonians.
Under Persian rule, about 50,000 Israelites felt the urgency to rebuild the temple that had prior been torn down.
The Persians were more liberal in allowing the Israelites to freely worship. In fact, the King issues a decree that allows them to go back home to Jerusalem if they choose.
About 50,000 of them take the 900-mile journey back to Jerusalem. But there was a large portion who stayed there with a thought process being, “We’re doing fine. We’ve been here for 50 years.
This is home now. The Persians aren’t so bad. We can hang here.” So, they stayed, and you can actually learn more about them in the OT book Esther.
Those who did return began this process of rebuilding. Some focused on rebuilding the city, others focused on the temple, and some focused on rebuilding the people.
The people who began working on the temple saw the foundation go up quickly and celebrated their progress. But as we often see, with progress can come frustration.
The project itself ends up kind of coming to a halt here. For 16 years it just kind of sat in this dormant phase.
The people became dormant. Their worship became dormant. They just kind of existed, focused on themselves and nothing else.
At this point the prophet Haggai steps in to give words from God and a spur in the right direction.
Essentially Haggai is going to tell them, "Look, God did not allow you to be freed from the Babylonian rule to just come back here and focus on yourselves and neglect Him."
He will plead with them to get over their apathy and get back to being an obedient Kingdom of God people.
This story of Haggai is rich, and it is a story that seems to be the story of God's people we see throughout all of scripture.
When the people of God do not stay connected, when we are disobedient, when we don't truly worship Him, we in our humanity will fail to flourish.
This book will teach us that our lack of flourishing can be made right. We must be people who repent and obey. So, the first issues we will discover Israel is suffering is one of ...
1. Misplaced priorities
1. Misplaced priorities
The people of Israel were inconsistent in their journey with God, and to be honest, it is not much different from us.
They became apathetic in their walks, and we become apathetic in our walks, and in turn our obedience to His word suffers greatly.
Overall, the priorities became misplaced. After pressure from the Samaritans, who feared the power of the Israelites and their God, the people of Israel just kind of stopped building.
They not only stopped, but they stopped for more than 16 years. But I want you to take note, they did not just stop building altogether. They just stopped with the temple of God.
In the interim, however, they moved forward with the rebuilding of the rest of the city. They built homes and businesses, among other things. They established the city once again.
While on the outset life seemed to be buzzing and exciting, they had abandoned the most important part of who they were. They had forgotten the worship of God.
The Israelite people were busy, but they were ultimately busy with their own things and apathetic to the worship of God. Into this picture comes the voice of Haggai.
Read: Haggai 1:2-4
2 “Thus says the Lord of hosts: These people say the time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the Lord.”
3 Then the word of the Lord came by the hand of Haggai the prophet,
4 “Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, while this house lies in ruins?
Now, you can look back over the history of Israel and see this is nothing new, but bring it a little closer to home, it’s not much different with us either.
Overlooking God in favor of our own things is more common than not my friends.
The willingness to step outside obedience or put it off to the side for a while is a marker of humanity clear back to Adam and Eve. The root of all this is truly pride.
What Haggai desired for the people of Israel was a changed heart that would lead to changed behavior.
He desired to see them prioritize God and His commands over and above all other concerns.
While Haggai is not condemning their comfortable living, he is condemning this living at the expense of obedience to God’s commands.
He specifically contrasts their “paneled houses” with the temple, which “lies in ruins.”
The issue that Israel suffered was an issue of the heart. If they were to warm their hearts to God, then their behavior would follow.
Their disobedience was because they chose to love themselves more than God Himself. This is what idol worship looks like.
We all worship something, all of us. The only choice really is what we worship. What this world has taught me is the more I worship things that are not God, the more those things eat me alive.
Read: Haggai 1:5-6
5 Now, therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider your ways.
6 You have sown much, and harvested little. You eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm. And he who earns wages does so to put them into a bag with holes.
If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never feel you have enough. It’s the truth.
Worship your own body and beauty and you will always find something wrong. Worship power, and you live in the fear of losing it. Worship your intellect, and you fear people will find you a fraud.
Look, the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they are evil or sinful, but they never satisfy.
The danger for Israel was not they had abandoned the building, but they had abandoned their desire and worship for God.
Haggai’s point in these verses is that our actions have consequences. For Israel, they we simply not flourishing. There was only going to be one solution to all of this.
The solution we find sitting before Israel is one of ...
2. Reflecting and repenting
2. Reflecting and repenting
And as you see God speaking now to Israel, the question becomes this. What’s the answer? What do you do when you’re in that situation?
What do you do when you find yourself untethered from the Lord and empty, hungry and famished? What do you do?
The answer is in verses 7-8. This is what God tells the nation of Israel. Read: Haggai 1:7-8
7 “Thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider your ways.
8 Go up to the hills and bring wood and build the house, that I may take pleasure in it and that I may be glorified, says the Lord.
Here is what God is saying. "I want you to go to the same place you used to go to supply the goods for your own kingdom, but I want you to take the same energy and change your direction.
Now you need to take that same energy and those same resources and I want you to take it back and pour it into My house, so that I may take pleasure in it.
Because when you were pursuing your own self, I was not pleased with what you were doing. Instead of building into your own kingdom, Seek first My kingdom.
All the other stuff I will take care of. But seek first Me." Read: Haggai 1:9-11
9 You looked for much, and behold, it came to little. And when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why? declares the Lord of hosts. Because of my house that lies in ruins, while each of you busies himself with his own house.
10 Therefore the heavens above you have withheld the dew, and the earth has withheld its produce.
11 And I have called for a drought on the land and the hills, on the grain, the new wine, the oil, on what the ground brings forth, on man and beast, and on all their labors.”
What is this response that Haggai is calling them to? Repentance. Repentance, as you are aware, is defined in several different ways by several different people.
For our purposes here we will define it as a turning of the heart that leads to a turning of the behavior. Haggai is calling the Israelite people to decisively turn their hearts Godward.
When their hearts have turned away from their sin, and turned toward God, their behavior would also be pleasing to God. Our repentance must be the same.
Sadly, too often we find it easy to simply acknowledge wrongdoing and hope that we can just behave our way out of a situation. This is sad because to those around us it can appear to work.
We can conform our behavior, pleasing those around us, yet still be far from God. Our hearts must be the starting place, or our behavior is essentially meaningless action.
The choice is simple, then. They can repent, follow God’s way, and flourish as they find themselves in harmony with the world as God intended it; or they can reject repentance and risk their joy.
The same is said for us today as well. And let’s pursue His kingdom first, trusting Him in the radical call of discipleship and obedience so that we might penetrate this culture with the gospel of Jesus.
