Refocus: God Controls the Outcome
Refocus: A Study in Haggai • Sermon • Submitted
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· 9 viewsAt the root of a heart of complacency is a misunderstanding of who is in control. We become complacent with our circumstances because either we believe that nothing can change our circumstance or that we have done our part in addressing our circumstances. With both of these misunderstandings God’s rule and reign is missing. God is in control. He controls every outcome. Our role is to worship Him and trust Him to work in and through us even when the outcome is not what we have planned.
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The Wandering Heart
The Wandering Heart
on the twenty-first day of the seventh month, the word of the Lord came through the prophet Haggai: “Speak to Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, to Joshua son of Jozadak, the high priest, and to the remnant of the people. Ask them, ‘Who of you is left who saw this house in its former glory? How does it look to you now? Does it not seem to you like nothing?
Haggai 1:
on the twenty-fourth day of the sixth month.
In the second year of King Darius,
on the twenty-first day of the seventh month, the word of the Lord came through the prophet Haggai: “Speak to Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, to Joshua son of Jozadak, the high priest, and to the remnant of the people. Ask them, ‘Who of you is left who saw this house in its former glory? How does it look to you now? Does it not seem to you like nothing?
So we left the people of Israel about 27 days earlier having repented of their lack of priority on what truly mattered, the Lord, and energized to reprioritize and go to work on the house of the Lord. They were stirred up by the Spirit and their reverence for the Lord renewed. They set out to obey their God and to be reminded that the Lord was with them and that He was greater than their enemies.
Now 27 days later, the work on the House of the Lord has halted and the people of God are dismayed and discouraged. What happened in 27 days that would quench the fire of the Spirit and turn the people away from the Lord again?
It was their own people that queched the fire of the Spirit. The older generation became the “wet blanket” to the nation. The older generation looked at the work going on and compared it to the glory of the house that Solomon had built, the house of their youth and they became discouraged.
When our perspective is askew, our hearts will follow. We are prone to see the temporary and to use our limited perspective to gauge worth and value. We begin to undertake destructive cycles of broken emptiness and we miss what our true aim is, the Lord.
The Lord’s Perspective
The Lord’s Perspective
But now be strong, Zerubbabel,’ declares the Lord. ‘Be strong, Joshua son of Jozadak, the high priest. Be strong, all you people of the land,’ declares the Lord, ‘and work. For I am with you,’ declares the Lord Almighty. ‘This is what I covenanted with you when you came out of Egypt. And my Spirit remains among you. Do not fear.’
The Lord flips the script on the nation of Israel. He points them to the One whose opinion truly matters, Himself.
They were not accomplishing the work of the temple on their own. It was not even their skills that were needed to complete the temple. The reality was that if God wanted to create the perfect temple, with all of the splendor of Solomon’s temple and more, He could have just dropped to from the sky in perfect fullness.
When our focus is not on God, it is so easy to lose perspective and become discouraged. We will never know enough, have enough, be enough to be worthy and ready for what God has placed before us. And that truth has been put there on purpose so that we would be reminded of our need for God and of the turth that it is in God alone that His work is completed. Paul puts it this way that we would recognize that our only boast is Christ.
God Controls the Outcome
God Controls the Outcome
“This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘In a little while I will once more shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land. I will shake all nations, and what is desired by all nations will come, and I will fill this house with glory,’ says the Lord Almighty. ‘The silver is mine and the gold is mine,’ declares the Lord Almighty. ‘The glory of this present house will be greater than the glory of the former house,’ says the Lord Almighty. ‘And in this place I will grant peace,’ declares the Lord Almighty.”
The perspective that was most lost by the nation concerning the temple was that the only thing that made it the temple was the presence of the Lord. If God dwelt in the temple, then the temple was everything that it was supposed to be.
God turned to the nation and reminded their hearts of this truth. No matter the grandeur, the level of excitement, how close it was or was not to our plan, how much it did or did not excite us, none of these things matter because God controls the outcome. If God is pleased and if God is supporting it, it will be and do far more than we can ever hope for or imagine.