“Called to Build”

A young man named Ethan checked his phone and saw that he’d missed five missed calls from his wife. He exhaled sharply, ignoring the guilt gnawing at his chest. After years of sacrifice, late nights, endless practice, right in front of him was everything he had worked for. Just one more step and the bull elk he’d been after for two years would be lined up in the scope of his rifle. He breathed in slowly and slowly began to squeeze on the trigger of his rifle, pulling back and pulling back until…BOOM…the rifle had been fired and his shot was perfectly placed. The thrill of taking a trophy elk seized him momentarily and then reality hit.

His phone began to ring again and his hands trembled as he went to answer it. It was his wife, who’d gone into labor hours ago. He answered it to hear her say, “You’re too late.”

I hope we each recognize that Ethan had set a personal agenda above ensuring his actions fell in line with what should have been a greater priority: his family. And by the way, that is a made up story, but in the event that it hits close to home, allow me to put this overhead as a disclaimer. But that little joke aside, it’s one thing to get priorities out of whack at home and it’s an altogether different thing for us to fall into getting our priorities out of whack with God’s. What we should be asking right now is,

What are God’s priorities for our church?

With that question floating in our minds, last week we concluded the first half of a series of messages that we said were purposed for us to become a healthier church in preparing for the journey before us to address needs around our facilities here at First Baptist Devine. And that was a study from a New Testament letter known as Titus. This morning, we’re still preparing for the journey before us as a church family, and we’re going to seek to hear from God through the word he spoke via the Old Testament prophet named Haggai.

Our messaged is titled, “Called to Build,” and as we’ve just seen from the opening verses of Haggai 1, God is calling his people to rebuild the place on earth where the glory of God was known to dwell in that time…the temple in Jerusalem. And what we have before us are three priorities for God’s people, the first of which sees God intending to

Make Us Uncomfortable

Now, as we begin to address this heading, I want to tell you that Haggai is a prophet of God. That means that he was a person who God had chosen to speak his word through. And we’ll also first recognize that God led Haggai to take note of when he was speaking and because of these points of information, we know that God’s speaking to his people in the second year of Darius the king and we know that God is speaking to his people some time after they’d been permitted to return to Jerusalem. If you’re accustomed to reading your Bible chronologically, Haggai comes in after God removed his hand of protection from the Jews due to their continued disobedience and God permitted them to be overtaken by the Babylonian and Assyrian empires. In the course of that, the temple in Jerusalem had been destroyed and God no longer dwelled with his people. The conquering armies weren’t satisfied with simply destroying buildings, they also tried to eliminate the practice of worshipping the One, true God, so they carried the best and brightest of Israel out of their lands and brought them to their own. We call that time the exile. And now, decades later, God has moved such that his people who were taken out of Israel have returned to the land of promise after decades in exile.

And in their return to their homeland, there’s a few things I want to point out that I’m going to draw some similarities for us from. The longest estimate of how long God’s people were in exile is seventy years, meaning that unless the people were returning were very young when they were taken out of Israel, chances are they’d never set foot there before. The place they were returning to would have been seen as a place of heritage for them, but when they got there, they were laying their eyes on the terrain for the very first time. And what they saw when they got there was complete and utter devastation. When the invading armies came through decades before, they laid waste to everything. So, when the people got back, they got to work…and they prioritized building their own homes.

I’ll come back to the text in a moment, but just to make some connections to our situation today, for some of us, First Baptist Devine may be a place of heritage. Some of us may have family who are among the cloud of Christ’s witnesses who had direct involvement in this church’s history and even raising the buildings we occupy today, and praise God for that. Those stories you heard from those who came before you are invaluable and need to be shared with the church family.

But it’s also likely more true for many of us, that while we call this church home, we have no direct connection to the effort to build this sanctuary or other buildings. For example… Me and my family have been members here for over a decade now and we have benefitted from the sacrifices of those who came before us to save and buy the bricks and mortar that line this structure. I didn’t buy a brick, but we’re one of many fruit God has bore in this sacred space because he laid it on the hearts of a generation to build it. And chances are, the same is true for you and your family.

Returning to our text, God had returned his people to Israel and we see the first sign of their priorities being off track. There had been attempts to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem and the people there squashed those attempts. “It’s not the right time,” they thought. Maybe for them, things like inflation and material shortages and who was king and governor discouraged them and led the conversation to die in committee like they can do in a church like this. So, the sentiment must have been growing because the Lord calls out his people in Haggai 1:2 “Thus says the Lord of hosts: These people say the time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the Lord.”

Let’s remember that our God is who establishes rulers and princes and presidents. Let’s remember that the ruler’s heart is in the hand of the Lord, like the rivers of water, God turns it wherever he wishes. It wasn’t up to the people then to decide when to rebuild God’s house in Jerusalem - God wanted it and it was up to God’s people to do what God wanted. And my friends, that’s why we’re fasting and praying as a congregation. We are submitting ourselves to hearing from God about what he wants done here and when he wants it done and what he’s wanting each of us to do to join in that work so that by the end of it all, “Yes,” will have been our only answer to it all.

Because, I wouldn’t want to find any one of us coming under God’s judgement like you see in Haggai 1:4. You see what God’s saying there? He’s saying that the people then were taking care of their own houses, living large, while the dwelling place of God remained in ruins. The people had gotten complacent. They’d put their own interests above God’s. They liked things just the way they were. And here’s something we need to understand… If the number one priority of God’s people isn’t God himself, God’s going to shake his people free from their comforts to align them with his will and purposes.

Are you complacent in your walk with Christ, my brother or sister? Is the Lord and his church that he’s called you to the first thing on your mind? With what we’re preparing for in this church, I will tell you, we cannot think to address what needs to be done around here if the Lord and his church are just an after thought for you. We’ve been in this season of praying and fasting with the hope that as we each James 4:8 “draw near to God” that he would “draw near to [us].”

If we have been, then God is already at work challenging us to

Consider Our Ways

With our Bibles still open, we can see plainly that God challenged the people in Jerusalem in Haggai 1:5 “Consider your ways.” In other words, take a moment and take a step back from the busyness of your lives and really evaluate things. Let’s look at what God is calling his people then to evaluate:

Haggai 1:6a “You have sown much, and harvested little.” For a people who would have been largely farming communities, they’d planted a whole bunch but only seen meager harvests.

Haggai 1:6b “You eat, but you never have enough;” Food supplies haven’t done anything to meet the hunger of the people.

Haggai 1:6c “you drink, but you never have your fill.” No one’s thirst is satisfied.

Haggai 1:6d “You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm.” The clothing people are wearing isn’t holding up to protect the people from the elements.

Haggai 1:6e “And he who earns wages does so to put them into a bag with holes.” And the money that the people are earning has very little purchase power, so they’re burning through currency.

You can imagine what must have been the outlook people had when it seems that you work and work and work for what seems like nothing. And there’s this guy named Haggai going around supposedly preaching the word of God that’s compelling the people to underwrite the financial costs and labor demands of an expensive project like the temple?

Now, there are some preachers that try to teach that if you do something like give a dollar that God will return to you ten dollars or something like that. That’s not truth. But what God is communicating here to his people is that his hand is not on them because they’re living apart from him. This is about the relationship of people to God. This is about living in a manner where he is first so that when you go to work to plant seeds, you’re doing it to the glory of God, trusting that he’s going to bring the rains and the sun and the nutrients to bless the fruits of our labors. Trusting that he will provide what we need for life because the birds of the air have food for the day, and because they do, and because you and I are his most precious creatures, he’s going to provide for our needs, too.

Imagine you planned a trip for your family on a cruise ship and it was scheduled to stop at ports that are locations you’d only ever dreamed of visiting. You board the ship, unload your things in your room, eat a fantastic dinner, only to awaken the next morning to an announcement coming from the overhead PA system. It’s the captain informing the passengers that the cruise won’t be making any of those ports. The ship is lost at sea. After an investigation was launched, it was discovered that the ship’s captain had become distracted by happenings on the ship. The captain had been inundated by reports from personnel and passengers and systems checks that the captain forgot to check the ship’s course signs, so it drifted miles off track. We may not recognize it, but we can find ourselves way off track in life because we get so absorbed in our daily tasks that we overlook vital check-ins with God. Haggai is prodding each of us to reassess our spiritual direction. The Holy Spirit is urging us to align our lives with God’s compass before we stray far from the straight and narrow path we’ve been called to follow Jesus along.

Do we have enough faith to believe that if God says that he wants new buildings here or that if God says he wants remodeled buildings here that it’s already a done deal because God said it? Or do we think that the Lord is waiting for a report from us about when the timing is right to do this work? Imagine the prayer… “Father, we think now’s the time to take care of your house. In case you didn’t know, the economic conditions suit us. Inflation is low and construction companies are just begging for work. Lord, hear our prayer. Amen.”

Is that when God chooses to do his most glorifying work? I seem to remember that when millions of his children had their backs to a sea with an army bearing down to destroy them, and the conditions seemed impossible, he parted the sea so they could cross! I seem to remember that he kept the mouths of ferocious, hungry lions shut when a child of his was tossed in their den! I seem to remember that he rolled away an otherwise immovable stone and defeated death in the resurrection of Jesus!

Each of us will need to consider our ways. This church needs to consider its ways. Are we really all in and following this great and mighty Lord? Do we take God at his word? Do we trust him? Is he first in everything?

Because if he is, we’d all agree that

God Calls His people to Build

Notice with me in Haggai 1:8a that God says to his people, “Go up to the hills and bring wood and build the house.” That’s the call, or more specifically, that’s the command from God. Go and build. God’s effectively telling them, “Stop being complacent and focused on yourselves. Instead, be spiritually renewed as you see me move through you and also know the blessing of lives that come from honoring me.” As we’re preparing for a similar effort here at First Baptist, we ought to be excited to think about what God wants to do and what God can do here. We ought to be longing to know the blessing of following our Lord with faithful obedience. It ought to excite us that we could align ourselves with God’s purposes for FBC Devine. And, if you’re curious about God’s purposes here, they’re the same for us as it was for the people in Jerusalem. We can see that there’s also a purpose for God’s command to go and build in that same verse. Haggai 1:8b “That I may take pleasure in it and that I may be glorified, says the Lord.”

God wants to take pleasure in this campus and God will be glorified in them. And a sense of God’s pleasure is what’s guiding our fundraising campaign that we’ve called Pressing Onward. We know that God will be pleased when we reach the potential of what he has entrusted to this congregation to steward. I want to outline for you a bit of the vision for Pressing Onward.

Let me say two things in summary things that many of us know. The first is that our existing facilities need either extensive repair or renovation. The second is that our worship space, parking spaces, classrooms, and fellowship capacities have little room for additional growth. On Sunday mornings, we’ve been averaging 400 people coming to church every week. In December and January it was a little higher than that and February it dipped just slightly, but y’all know there’s also been a bunch of respiratory stuff going around. We’ve been progressively climbing in attendance for five years and we’ve be at about 400 on Sundays for a year. On Wednesdays, we average about 160 people in our discipleship activities there, but when the school hasn’t scheduled a Wednesday event, that number is 190-200 people.

Now, when you hear me talk about those statistics, that’s who we are today in 2025. And we might also wonder then what other factors there are for us to consider. Well, something else to consider is that lots of people are figuring out what we already know - Texas is a great place to live. In fact, the population of Texas is forecasted to double by 2050. Not far from here, there’s so much growth expected north of us that demographers are referring to the corridor between Austin and San Antonio as Texas’ next metroplex, like how we already talk about Dallas and Fort Worth. The San Antonio Spurs already know this, that’s why they are playing some home games this season in Austin. Even closer to us are multiple subdivisions in our own backyard that in a few years, will see hundreds of new homes going up, all within fives miles of here. And maybe we wonder, aside from renovating and repairing, does God want us to grow to make room for those who aren’t here yet? I believe that answer is yes. I believe it’s yes because God has given this church a total of 6.5 acres right here in downtown Devine, which would allow for us to be a congregation of about 600 people in weekly attendance every Sunday. So, from 400 in 2025 to 600 in the future.

That means making room here in the sanctuary for 200 more brothers and sisters we haven’t met. Making room for 200 more brothers and sisters we haven’t met in Bible studies. Making room for 200 more brothers and sisters we haven’t met in our fellowship hall. Of course, we can choose not to. We can say the costs are too high. We can say the dollar is too weak. We can say we really only care about the people we can see, not the ones we haven’t met yet. We can say that we have kids who are in or will be in college and so our hands are tied. Or we just don’t say anything because truthfully, we would rather prioritize other personal pursuits. But all of that comes at the cost of rejecting the blessing of God. Whatever our justification for doing nothing, our text makes clear that if God’s will, if God’s purpose, if God’s presence, if the place where God’s people gather isn’t our priority, God will make sure we know the cost of rejecting him. That comes at the cost of burying what God has entrusted to us to put to use for his glory like the person who received one bag of gold in the passage we read from Matthew 25. Remember, one guy took what was given to him and buried it. And like him, we can just bury what God has given to us in the ground. We can be lazy servants and as a consequence, we can miss the blessing of knowing God’s presence just like the people in Jerusalem when God had no place to dwell among them.

We’ve been in a season of fasting and prayer for forty days as a church family. Whether you wrote your name down or not, I pray that you each have been genuinely seeking the Lord in the hopes of discerning what he specifically wants here for Devine. We know that he wants to be glorified in and through us, but what we’re discerning are the specific steps of how he’ll do that. Those steps will have to be outlined in a plan…I hope that makes sense. Nothing will be done over night, so we need a plan that will get us from step A to step Z. And I want you to know that we’ll be presenting a proposal for a plan in two weeks on Sunday, March 16th. That’ll be here, in the sanctuary at 4 pm. So, please mark your calendars for Sunday, March 16 at 4 pm for what will just be a presentation and time for questions. And please help me by telling your brothers and sisters who aren’t here today about it. I’m hopeful that no one says, “I didn’t know about that.” Sunday, March 16 at 4pm in this sanctuary is when there’ll be a presentation of a plan.

Eventually we’ll need to vote on a plan of where we’re headed and it’s my prayer that there’s an overwhelming majority in favor for whatever it is that we do. Because in renovating or even in new construction, we have the opportunity to reflect Christ’s work in the lives of his followers where Jesus takes something that is broken or worn or neglected and by his power, makes it something beautiful and purposeful. And Jesus will be glorified in that.

So, we started by asking, what are God’s priorities for this church? And we’ve seen from this passage that God is going to lead us to a place where we’re made uncomfortable and where we consider our ways as we see that God calls his people to build his house. My brothers and sisters, please hear this message and take to heart the need for each one of us to reflect on our priorities and following that, do whatever is necessary to make sure that God is truly your priority. Not your priority on paper. Not your priority by what you say. Your priority by your actions that follow your words. I’m going to tell you, a passage like this challenges me to consider how I’m doing at contributing to the work of the church and the kingdom of God. It’s challenging because any one of us can become distracted from seeking first the kingdom, right? Any one of us can fall into the rut of getting comfortable and complacent in our faith, trying to live off the crumbs of yesterday’s manna from heaven rather than receiving a fresh outpouring daily. If I can say it this way, I’ll leave you with a final exhortation:

Prioritize God’s house and trust He will provide

You and I can obediently follow God in whatever direction he’s leading us, because if he’s said First Baptist Devine is supposed to do it, it’s already done. Or, english teachers please cover your ears, when God says it, it’s done done, amen? It may be beyond what we think we can do and honestly, I pray that it is. I pray that God would show us all a vision of something that is bigger than we could imagine for Devine or this church because if it was something we thought we could do easily, then he wouldn’t be glorified. We could look at a situation and say, “We did that.” At the end of all this, I want to be able to look upon everything here and say, “Look at what God’s accomplished again. What is impossible with men is possible with God.”

My brothers and sisters, God calls his people to build his house. I exhort you, align the priorities of your respective homes to ensure that our Lord is the priority. It might take sacrifice. It might take some discomfort. Those are some words that describe the ministry of our Lord Jesus, aren’t they? Didn’t our Lord take upon himself a spirit of sacrifice and discomfort to bring about redemption for us? To offer forgiveness of sin to you and to me?

It might mean one more meal cooked at home or one less Starbucks. But let’s not run from doing what God wants us to do here. He wants to take pleasure in this place. He wants to take pleasure in us. Let’s prioritize God’s house and trust that he will provide. We’ll know the blessing of his presence and we’ll know fruitfulness in our labors.