Haggai Week 3

August 26, 2021

Haggai 1:2–11 ESV

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.”

What is the danger of spiritual apathy?

Mark 4:18–19 ESV

18 And others are the ones sown among thorns. They are those who hear the word, 19 but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful.

Opening Up Haggai The Wrong Sense of Priorities

If we are not careful, our lives can easily become so cluttered with secular interests and non-essentials that there is less and less time for the things that really matter, such as prayer, the reading of God’s word, and meditation and worship.

God challenges the Israelites to consider their ways and build a temple to honor God.

In what ways do we make excuses like the Israelites....like Adam and Eve?

Genesis 3:12–13 ESV

12 The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” 13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

God wanted the Israelites to connect his blessing with their obedience. How can we apply this today?

Opening Up Haggai A Word of Warning

What God is saying here may be applied in two ways:

First, it describes the feverish activity of our own age. People are living at a hectic pace without a thought for God, and are losing out as a result. There is an ugly itching discontent and covetousness at the heart of society. So many are obsessed with the pursuit of success and are working all hours to obtain it. Others are consumed with the glitzy life-style and the trinkets of modern consumerism. But is our society any happier? Is it not all a chasing after the wind?

Opening Up Haggai A Word of Warning

Second, we must apply what God is saying to the church today, because in some ways we are facing a crisis of faith.

Opening Up Haggai A Word of Warning

What is at stake is nothing less than the essential character of Christianity; is the Christian religion natural or supernatural? Various attempts are made to rid Christianity of its supernaturalism, to reconstruct it without its embarrassing miracles. But these efforts will be as fruitless as they are misguided. You cannot reconstruct something by first destroying it.

Authentic Christianity—the Christianity of Christ and his apostles—is supernatural Christianity. It is not a tame and harmless ethic, consisting of a few moral platitudes, spiced with a dash of religion. It is rather a resurrection religion, a life lived by the power of God.

(Authentic Christianity, Timothy Dudley-Smith, (ed.), IVP, p. 306)

Opening Up Haggai To Think about and Discuss

1. We live in a culture of blame-shifting. Would you agree with that statement? Are people today being encouraged to avoid responsibility for their actions? (Consider, for example, being able to sue the tobacco companies if one gets cancer through cigarette smoking.) What is the Christian view?

Opening Up Haggai To Think about and Discuss

2. We are living in the day of ‘small things’ where the church is concerned. We no longer see big congregations, many conversions, or large numbers of children attending our churches. Are we losing out in the sense that God has withdrawn his blessing because the church is no longer faithful to the authority of the word of Scripture?