Haggai 2v10-23

We expect our achievements to be recognised, if we have done something good or worthy we expect at least a pat on the back if not better. And if we don’t receive it we tend to be a bit miffed, to wonder what was the point.

Did you see the surprise in these verses? God has called these returned exiles to rebuild the temple (ch1), to put him first and start rebuilding rather than building for their own comfort. And they have (1:12-15). Now twelve weeks after they began rebuilding Haggai comes to them with another message from God. But it’s not a well done, it’s not a thank you for all your efforts. God doesn’t give his Oscar acceptance speech thanking all those who worked behind the scenes on his temple. No, God’s message is a warning that the problem of sin still remains, building the temple hasn’t solved the problem of sin but the great news is that he will deal with sin.

See the seriousness of sin

God through Haggai gives the people questions to ask the priest about the law.

Q1. (11) If holy meat is carried in the fold of a garment, as they often did, and it touches some bread, stew, wine, olive oil, or other food does the thing touched become holy? In other words is holiness contagious? The answer is no.

Q2. (13) If someone who is defiled, made unclean, by touching a dead body touches those items of food does the food become defiled? Is defilement, sin, contagious? The answer is yes.

God applies that lesson to the people (14) “So it is with this people and this nation in my sight,” declares the LORD, “whatever they do and whatever they offer there is defiled.”

Sin defiles, sin is serious, sin and its effects linger. That must have been devastating to these Israelites. Ch1 opens with Israel in rebellion against God, with them putting other things before him. Living for their comfort and ease and ignoring God and his discipline, but they have repented, they have changed and begun rebuilding. But the danger for them now was in thinking that building the temple had atoned for their sin. But it doesn’t and God graciously wants them to be clear about that. He loves his people so much that he is not prepared for them to have false comfort, to wrongly think they are right with him.

A good deed, even a great deed, doesn’t cancel out sin. God isn’t a divine auditor balancing the books. Haggai shows us that God is not how our society so often thinks of him. One of the jobs I had growing up on the farm was to help riddle, weigh and bag potatoes. We had a brilliant set of great big wooden scales, big enough that as children we could stand on them. On one side you’d put a 25kg weight, on the other you would put the potatoes and then put more in or take a few out to get the scales to balance. That is the way our society tragically thinks of God. That as he weighs up our life the big question is are there more good deeds than bad? At funerals you hear that when people say the deceased was a good man he did this or that or the other, they are weighing the deeds, almost trying to convince themselves the good outweighs the bad, believing or hoping that God thinks like that. It’s an idea popular in films like Saving Private Ryan and Seven Pounds and others.

But God won’t let Israel fool themselves with that thinking, and we mustn’t let people fall into that same muddled thinking. We can never make ourselves right with God.

And God doesn’t want us to be fooled either, because that’s also a danger for us. When we sin we don’t need to do penance, to try and make it up to God. Tragically it’s one of the places our Catholic friends go wrong isn’t it, thinking Jesus sacrifice alone isn’t enough. In fact it’s dangerous if we try, because we are effectively cut ourselves off from forgiveness because we’re trying to do it by our own efforts. And that means we will never run to Jesus and the forgiveness we find at the cross.

I wonder if there’s another warning here about the danger of living off past actions. Our faith has to be growing and going. If it is static or backward looking there is a problem. Repentance isn’t a one off it’s a lifestyle.

Similarly we mustn’t content ourselves that our acts of discipleship are in the past. We look back to the days we carried our cross. But I once... great but that doesn’t atone for your sin. We must never take the approach.

Israel cannot atone for their sin. Sin is too serious, too contagious, too damaging for us to ever make it right. Atonement is all by God’s mercy, that is what the sacrifices at the temple pointed to even as they pointed forward to Jesus.

God wants Israel to be clear so that they will run to him for mercy, not rely on inadequate attempts at self atonement. We must make sure we and our friends and family are clear on that. Sin is serious only Jesus can atone for it.

See the richness of Grace(15-19)

But that’s not the only thing about God Israel need to learn. Three times in v15-19 God calls Israel to “consider”, or think carefully about the events of the past and present. It’s a word that focuses on the heart – weighing the heart, motives, emotions, and reactions, as well as actions and events. First of all he asks them to think back to the events of chapter 1when there was no harvest because of their sin and God’s discipline(15-17). Then in (18-19) he calls on them to think about the present, has the situation changed? Do they have a harvest? The answer is no – there’s still no seed in the barn. The vine, fig tree, pomegranates and olive tree haven’t produced a harvest. It’s 12 weeks since they started rebuilding the temple but still there is no harvest. Why?

After all they are now obeying God, they’re doing what he asked them, so surely blessing should follow shouldn’t it? On the day they started rebuilding they should have seen harvest shouldn’t they? Why hasn’t there been a harvest in the last 12 weeks? God’s people have obeyed so they should be being blessed now shouldn’t they?

It isn’t just Israel who are tempted to think about God like that is it? God as divine vending machine, we put our spiritual pound in and expect to get out what we ask for. Sometimes we pray like that. Pray for something and expect the exact immediate answer we want, and if not start wondering what we’ve done that’s causing the divine logjam. Sometimes we do it in thinking we can make a deal with God, God if you do this I’ll do that.

Is God testing the genuineness of their repentance? Maybe, after all sometimes we follow God and obey because we want something out of it, building our own kingdom even as we give the impression of building God’s.

But I think God is showing Israel and us something far bigger. That he doesn’t owe us, we can never put him in our debt. Just as we can’t earn his mercy we can’t earn his grace and blessing. Obedience doesn’t obligate God to bless.

God provides everything by his grace, it’s not deserved and earned. One of our big issues as a society is that we think we are entitled; entitled to an education, entitled to health, entitled to food, to comfort, to ease, to wealth. As Christians we’ve assumed we are entitled to live persecution free, to be protected by law, to be free to proclaim the gospel. The problem with entitlement is that we expect those things, forgetting that they are God’s blessings. We have not earned them they are all of God’s grace.

We need to be careful here that we don’t take and twist this so that God becomes an ogre, a divine monster or scrooge who we have to wring blessing from unwillingly. No look at v19, “From this day on I will bless you.” Here’s the question do Israel deserve God’s blessing? No. Yes, they have started work on the temple. Yes, they are rebuilding, but they are still sinners, they are still in debt, they are still spiritually bankrupt. They haven’t done anything to deserve blessing. They are totally dependent on God’s grace.

We desperately need to learn this lesson. God is a good gracious loving God who loves to give. We see that around us every day, when we wake up and draw breath, every moment when we experience good health, or even ill health but medical care. But we never earn it, we haven’t done anything to deserve it, it is purely because of the gracious loving character of God.

And that ought to humble us, it ought to shake us from our complacency. We haven’t provided it for ourselves, even if it may look on the surface like we have. We have been given it, blessed by a loving heavenly father. And that ought to make us profoundly thankful as we experience God’s everyday undeserved grace to us. Can you imagine how counter cultural that would make the church? A humble, thankful people in a grumbling, grabbing world.

Set your hope on the kingdom that God builds(20-23)

(19)Ends with a promise of present blessing, undeserved but graciously given. But God’s not finished yet, he wants them to also have hope for the future. (20-23)Lift the people’s eyes and hopes up from present blessing to future blessing and calls them to live now looking and longing for God’s future. A day when that sin, which infected everything, is dealt with when God’s kingdom will come because his king will come.

Turn to 2 Samuel 7v12-16. Here David wants to build God a house. But amazingly God says that instead he’ll build David a house. A house and kingdom which never ends. Where a new king of David’s line will rule forever over everything in a new way.

That promise looked in doubt when the Babylonians swept into Judah and carried the people into exile. When the Davidic line was swept from the throne. In Jeremiah 22:24 God is pictured tearing his signet ring off his finger and giving it to Babylon. The signet ring is the king from the line of David who is taken into exile. Now the exiles are back but that promise still looks so tenuous, so fragile – like the petals on a rose in the burning heat of the sun, or a family heirloom in the hands of a toddler.

But look here at the promise(22-23), God is going to shake the heavens and the earth and re-order the world. And God will take Zerubbabel who he will make his signet ring and God’s servant, chosen by God. All language used of David and of the Davidic dynasty and king. Zerubabbel is of the line of David and God is saying that he is not finished with the Davidic line and promises yet.

Zerubbabel is God’s signet ring, he has been God’s representative, God’s leader, he has brought Israel back to God, led them to rebuild the temple, against the wishes of their opponents, re-establishing God’s shadow kingdom on earth. But Zerubbabel is just a type, a sign, a foreshadowing of a greater Davidic king, one who will be the Messiah, the king who will bring God’s kingdom.

In Matthew 1v12-13 we see Zerubbabel in the line that leads to Jesus the one who would deal with sin once for all, grace personified. Turn on to Hebrews 12v26-29, the pastor helps us see that this is pointing to Jesus second coming. Jesus is the one who will shake the heavens and the earth, overturning rulers, throne and powers(22). A shaking which happens once at the cross, when the powers are defeated and finally when he returns and his reign which begins at the cross is established fully. When every opponent will be forced to confess him as the king they refused to bow the knee to. But when God’s people whose sin has been atoned for by grace will know God’s presence, God’s rule, God’s kingdom which is unshakeable and finally seen as the only unshakeable kingdom.

We need to fix our hope on the coming kingdom, to listen to his voice and not reject his warnings, to live lives of worship.

God’s present blessing is never deserved, God’s grace and mercy are not earned they’re a gift from God. Just as salvation and his kingdom aren’t earned they are a gift from God in Jesus. And that ought to make us profoundly grateful. But that is not all we have, we have the promise of an unshakeable kingdom to come. And we are to live now looking and longing for the kingdom, hopeful and grateful for what God is doing and what he certainly will do. Even as we enjoy living at peace with God as we were made to be.

Don’t despair, don’t drift, don’t give up or give in. Put your hope in God, in his coming king, in the kingdom he will bring. A kingdom we cannot earn our way into but which is given by God’s grace and mercy shown to us in the king who will die for his people, and rise again guaranteeing our new life.

Can you eat for the Glory of God?

Last night I was speaking at Leeds University Christian Union on Genesis 1 at the start of their series on Meals with Jesus.  Here are my notes:

We live in a society that’s confused about food. Just think about all the conflicted messages you’ve heard about food this week; what’s good for you, what isn’t; you need to diet, why not go large; Britain faces an epidemic of obesity, anorexia and bulimia are on the rise. Our society is schizophrenic when it comes to food and the messages we hear.

And it’s not just in the area of food, but in the area of relationships too. We’re encouraged to live as independent individuals who rely on nobody and manage on our own and yet society mourns the loss of community and the rise of loneliness and isolation. We create things like Facebook and Twitter to enable us to connect but they end up making us less connected than ever as we each sit at home or in our rooms on our own and ‘cyber-connect’ rather than really connecting and being known.

We live in a world that’s screwed up, but it’s screwed up and doesn’t know it, and the very things it thinks will solve the problem so often only end up making it worse. Why? Because the virus of sin has got into our DNA and deleted chunks of our operating system and replaced other bits with defective code. And it isn’t out there, the problem is in here – it’s in our thinking about relationships, body image, and food.

Grab your bibles and turn to Genesis 1v26-31. We’re going to see God’s original plan for food and relationship and how the two are intertwined.

We are made for relationship
(26)ought to amaze us. God – the almighty creator of the universe, who has just created with a word, the Father, Son and Spirit, the holy blindingly glorious awesome God – said “Let us make human beings in our image, in our likeness...”

Don’t rush over that, just think about it. God makes us in his image. Unlike every other creature God makes this marks us out as unique, as different. We’re made in the image of God. But what does that mean?

That doesn’t mean physically you look like God, or for the more image obsessed among you that God looks like you. It can’t be can it? Just look round the room at all the noses on display, big ones, small ones, rounded ones, pointed ones. It’s not that God looks like us physically. But it does mean for example that God sees, hears and speaks as we do. But there are lots of others things God does which we don’t.

Think of it like this I have 4 boys at home, people often say that you can tell who their dad is. It’s not that they all look the same, or that they all look like me, luckily for them. But that they bear the family likeness. We reflect something of God’s nature in a way nothing else does – some of that we see here, for example we’re made to rule, as regents mediating God’s rule.

Part of that image bearing, that likeness is that we are designed for relationship. (26) “Let us... in our image, in our likeness”. God is Triune; Father, Son and Spirit, from eternity delighting in and enjoying relationship with one another. And Genesis 1 flows out of that joy in relationship within the Trinity. They create not because they need worshippers, or were bored or lonely but so that their joy and relationship can be shared with others.

And because they create out of this joy in relationship they create us in their image – designed to find joy in relationship, both with Father, Son and Spirit but also with others. (27)God made not a lone man but when he declares it very good, there’s a man and woman in relationship with one another. In the image of God. And notice the command that they are given – they’re to (28)”Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it...” Making lots more God-image bearers, fill the earth with them.

We mustn’t shrink this passage to being about marriage, (28)expands this picture – God made us to relate to a multitude of people in a multitude of different ways. God’s plan is a community of image bearers knowing and enjoying him and knowing and enjoying one another. The picture isn’t just of Adam and Eve at home on their own with a Dominoes take away, a DVD and one another for company to the exclusion of everything else. Marriage is given as a way to create community.

God is good and in his goodness he made us for relationship with him and for community.

God gifts us food to facilitate relationship
It’s no accident that having created humanity for relationship, to image God to the world, that (29)God gifts us food. “I give you every seed bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.” Do you see the generosity of God there? All the seed bearing plants, all the seed bearing fruit trees, on the whole earth! Wow! Did you know there are over 2000 known types of fruit. Adam and Eve look at the world it’s your larder, now go enjoy! Thousands of different tastes, textures, and smells to be enjoyed. There’s a sense in which as we enjoy food and new tastes and textures we should just praise God for his goodness and generosity – life isn’t about one pot noodle after another! God is better than that! God lays on lavish enjoyable eating. God designed food for our enjoyment as a celebration of his goodness, love and generosity.

That’s why in the rest of the Bible celebrations are tied in with food, with eating. That’s why in the Old Testament so much eating is tied in to blessings.

God provides food lavishly to facilitate relationship. Meals in the Bible are viewed as family and community time, as teaching opportunities, as chances to get to know people better. Just go away and read Luke, Jesus seems to eat more often that a London food critic!

In sharing a meal with someone we slow down, we prepare and have time to talk as we do so. Then we sit and eat, we take time out and give people the invitation to get to know us better. We invite them to share something of themselves with us, we show someone we value them. Food connects us with family, with friends, and provides the opportunity for strangers to become friends.

God designs food to facilitate the building of relationships.

But we need to recognise that sin has infected our view of food and our view of ourselves. How? It leads us to think of eating as just refuelling, or as a necessary inconvenience, as functional, as guilt inducing rather than enjoyable, or as a necessary evil or an idol. And from all this infected thinking come obesity, anorexia, bulimia, dieting, gorging ourselves, fast food, junk food and so on.

But God redeems food for us in Christ. It isn’t an accident that the means of remembering our salvation is a meal. And as Jesus sat down with his disciples it isn’t to a cube of bread or a wafer and a thimble or mouth full of wine. It’s part of a lavish celebration feast. The New Testament church carried on that tradition, a celebration meal at which communion was part. Why? Because it was part of a bigger picture of the wedding feast of Christ and his bride when he returns.

Eating is a sign of relationship and welcome in Jesus. It is a way of building community, reminding ourselves of God’s lavish provision and looking forward to our eternal home.

So What?
Some of you will have huge struggles with issues of food, guilt and body image. Can I say to you God knows and he loves you. You are his child and he longs to see you free and whole. He loves you and has given you a church family to help you, to demonstrate his love to you, and to apply the gospel to you if you will trust them. Ask them to pray for you, to care for you, to walk this hard path with you. Because Jesus alone can free you from that struggle, but he uses people in relationship to you who will help you. By all means share it with someone tonight, someone who will come with you to speak to a church leader and who will pray for you.

For all of us the implication of Genesis 1 is that God has made us for community, for relationships and he has given us food to facilitate that. And God didn’t create Pot Noodle trees he made a world much bigger and tastier than that. He gave us an astonishing variety of tastes, textures and smells in which to see his love. Buy a recipe book or get on line and download one, and try God’s goodness to you.

But don’t do it in isolation. Food is God’s good gift to facilitate relationship. So get others round cooking with you, talk as you prepare, talk as you enjoy, talk as you wash up together. Use it to deepen already existing relationships.

But also use it to build new ones – how many here are 2nd or 3rd years? How many are 1st years? Build new relationships, invite these guys round for a meal, prepare together, eat together, wash up together.

Use it to advance the kingdom. When you read the early chapters of Acts you notice something, they didn’t do big mission events, yet the church grew? How? Because people saw their love, people saw their relationships, their being in and out of others homes, and by implication they were invited in to share it. Why not have a 50:50 meal? 2 people from CU, 2 people from the sports team you play for or your course, or your house mates? Food is God’s good gift to facilitate relationships, to experience his goodness, and to point others to him.

Why not serve others in need, by together providing food for those around you who are struggling.  Showing God's love to them, and talking of him as they ask why you do it.

Do you see the goodness and love of God, do you see the gift food is to make Jesus love known.