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.

Haggai 2v1-9 Tell me what you see?

When you look at the UK and the vast number of people who are unreached with the gospel how do you feel and why? What about when you look at the unreached with the gospel, how do you feel about that? What about when it comes to your family, friends and neighbours?  I think generally we feel a bit discouraged, the task seems a bit too much.

Psychologists talk about different sorts of people, but they use all sorts of technical terms. I think the Hundred Acre wood is more helpful when we think about personality types.  We are all like one of the characters from the Winnie the Pooh stories; Piglet – timid and fearful, Pooh – slightly oblivious but cheerfully bungling through, Tigger – full of energy and an I can attitude that doesn’t quite match his ability, Rabbit – knows it all but rarely wants to get involved, Eeyore – the epitome of can’t do and glass half full. I wonder which you are as you think about reaching your area for Jesus?

Sometimes the task feels a bit overwhelming and then we have the disappointments of invitations offered and rejected, or a great conversation but which goes no further, or just an apathy to the gospel that is so difficult to deal with. One of the biggest dangers to our taking the gospel to the world is discouragement, and here we see God confront that danger in his people and give the remedy to it.

The danger of discouragement

Chapter 1 of Haggai ended with the people responding to God’s word with repentance and faith, as they go up to the hills bring wood and work on building the temple. But as Haggai 2 opens(1) it is almost a month later and discouragement has set it. They have been working hard but the temple is not finished yet, there is still more to be done. And the work has been really slow, not because they don’t want to do it but because other things keep on interrupting.

The first day of the seventh month is the festival of trumpets, the 10th is the Day of Atonement, and the 15th-22nd is the feast of tabernacles. The work has been stop, start, stop, start. And all these celebrations have taken place amidst the rumble of a ruined temple that is still a building site. The feast of tabernacles would have contributed to the discouragement because it was a celebration of harvest, yet there is none, and because it looked back to God’s gift of the Promised Land, and yet the promise seems so distant to these returned exiles. Small in number, oppressed by enemies, short of resources, with a depressed economy, an uncompleted temple and the walls still in ruins.

To add to their discouragement the seventh month was the month in which Solomon dedicated his temple and as they think back to that they can’t help but compare and contrast this temple with that temple. (3)“Who is left among you who saw this house in its former glory? How do you see it now? Is it not as nothing in your eyes?”

Solomon’s temple was vast, 81 feet long, 27 feet wide, 40 feet high, made with quarried stone, panelled with cedar wood, and overlaid with gold. Compare that to the ruin being rebuilt by a rag tag bunch of economically impoverished returning exiles. Can’t you sense their discouragement. ‘We’re doing our best but look at it, it looks utterly insignificant!’ Ezra 3 tells us that many who had seen Solomon’s temple wept in despair at the foundation of this one.

If we are honest isn’t there a sense in which we are like these exiles standing in the ruins of the temple weeping? Discouragement is a very real danger for us. Maybe you feel a bit discouraged as a church, you’d hoped to storm the area for Christ, to see people come flocking in to hear the gospel, but it hasn’t happened. Or maybe you are discouraged personally; you’ve invited friends to church, to read the bible together and the answer’s been a ‘no’ or a fairly flimsy excuse. Or maybe it is children who are growing apathetic or have drifted away, or a spouse who is set hard against the gospel. Or someone you were close to who was so determined and deliberate in following Jesus has drifted and is now indifferent to Jesus.

Maybe it is with yourself. You are not where you thought you would be; spiritually, vocationally, physically. Perhaps you feel like a bit of a failure, and then you find yourself thinking but ‘I’m a Christian I shouldn’t feel like that?’

Notice here what causes the sense of discouragement, it is looking at events from a human perspective. But it’s also having a compare and contrast mentality. We compare now with the past, just as the people in Haggai’s day are doing, and feel discouraged. Maybe it’s having been in a bigger church.  There is a danger in compare and contrast. Especially when our evangelical culture apes the world in praising and lauding the big and the bold, rather than the small and gradual. Church planters feel that pressure to grow perhaps more than any other pastor.

Maybe you aren’t there yet, it will come, at some point. I love your bold vision for 2020, to double in size. But what if it doesn’t happen. When we first started I’d hoped we would be planting again within 10 years, but clearly that isn’t God’s plan. Over the 8 years we’ve been going we have seen key families move away for work or family reasons. We’ve sent students away to university knowing they are unlikely to return to us. We have seen others drift and abandon their faith, we’ve buried a young believer, seen another friend come to faith and then immigrate to New Zealand. Just this last summer we’ve seen 13 (1/6th) move away for work.  And sometimes people create pastoral, theological, and relational waves and then leave with pain and hurt in their wake. As churches we need to know how to deal with discouragement just as God’s people building the temple did.

How do you keep going when discouragement comes?

The antidote to discouragement(4-9)

I wonder what you tend to do with someone who is discouraged? What would you expect your leaders to do? I can’t help thinking we revert to doing what is effectively a half time team talk. Either a gentle gee up or the hair dryer with flying tea cups depending on who we’re dealing with, our temperament or how we are feeling on that particular day. Here we see God deal with his discouraged people and he does so by realigning their concept of their identity, and his glory.

Our God knows

Do you see the initially comfort(3)? God knows. God knows how they feel, God knows they are unfavourably comparing and contrasting, God knows how they feel and he does want to leave them in the bog of despair.

We don’t have to hide our discouragement from God. We can take it to him, he knows. We can confess to him our struggle with size and reach and rejection or just the sheer stoniness of the ground we are working. Discouragement is part of living in a broken world and God knows and wants us to come and share it with him because he cares.

But God doesn’t leave it there(4). God calls both the leaders and the people to be strong, he repeats the call three times. He isn’t telling them just to man up and to put a brave face on it, because God isn’t British. He is calling on them to find their strength in him and work and shows them why they can do that.

Our God is with us

“Work for I AM with you declares the LORD of Hosts.” God hasn’t left his people he is with them. God has called them to do this task and has been at work stirring them up to do so(1v13). He doesn’t give them a task and leave them to it. God is more concerned for his glory and his kingdom than we are. He is a covenant keeping God(5), the sin which drove them from the land and into exile isn’t still having lingering effects and keeping God from them. God has brought them back to the Promised Land in an echo of the very first exodus and just as he was with that generation after the sin and failure of the golden calf so he is with his people now. Sin does not mortgage God’s presence and help when we confess and repent of it. God is with them, his spirit remains with them.

How do you think of the mission Jesus leaves us to make disciples of all people? It isn’t our mission so much as we are invited to play our part in God’s mission. It has always been God’s mission. Matthew 28, how can they go and makes disciples all over the world? “behold I am with you always”. In John 14 to his future fearing disciples Jesus promises the Spirit “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another helper, to be with you for ever.” And just think of the church exploding across Jerusalem and then Judea and Samaria in Acts because God was with them.

As we take the gospel to a world in need, as we look to make disciples we are participating in God’s mission with God’s resources. He has not left us alone to get on with it, he is with us.

God’s glory will be displayed

(5-6)God lifts their eyes not just to him and his presence but to his ability to gain glory for himself. God is more concerned for his glory than they are and he will move heaven and earth to get it. To a people who are fearful that what they are doing is insignificant God promises that (9)the later glory of this house shall be greater than the former. And he shows them a glimpse of his plan to glorify himself. First in what they are building but in an even greater way in what it foreshadows.

(6)God is going to do something significant that will bring him global glory, that will lead the nations to fill this house with glory and bring gold and silver to the temple. Some of that we see fulfilled in Ezra’s day. Behind the scenes other key leaders of nations around about are trying to stop the building of the temple but God so works that their opposition leads king Darius to send items for the temple, money and other provisions and undertake to protect them from their enemies. God supplies what they need physically to rebuild because the gold and silver of the nations are his. We need to trust that God will provide for his work because he is concerned for his glory.

But there’s another key idea here; God’s glory is not in the splendour of the building. The key is(7, 9) God’s presence, that is what the temple symbolised, it was what the offerings made there were all about. God with his blood bought people at peace. Not peace and quiet but in reconciled, restored relationship which spills over into blessing – living life enjoying the favour of God, knowing and enjoying what and who we made for.

What happens when you use binoculars the wrong way round? What should be magnified is minimised. That is Israel’s problem, that’s our problem, when we find ourselves discouraged.

For Israel the nations and the past loom large and God is small. What God does through Haggai is reverse the binoculars so that God is big and the nations are small. Our God is the nation shaking God. Our God is the glory deserving God. Our God’s plans will come to pass, and our God is with us so that we know peace because of his presence even in the midst of the chaotic or the circumstantially difficult.

And where do we find our peace? Not in a temple but in the one who stood in the temple and declared “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” The one who pours out God’s Spirit not just on us but IN us, so that now the temple is not a building but the church. The one who is exalted and invites us to play our part in his mission to glorify the Father and is with us as we do so. The one who brings us peace with God.

I wonder how you see the church? It often doesn’t look like much does it, just as the temple didn’t look like much. It’s because we are looking at it wrongly. The church is the repository of the glory of God on earth, it gives a glimpse of the wonder of the gospel and the future kingdom God is leading us inexorably towards, when everyone will see his kingdom shaking glory and bow the knee.  Ephesians 3v10, the church declares God's glory to the watching world, it gives them a glimpse of the coming kingdom that is certain.

Haggai 1v1-15 - Mind the Gap

What does normal Christian life look like for you?  What do we just take for granted or assume is the norm?  Are there things which we assume are normal which really shouldn't be?

Haggai chapter 1 poses two big questions for us: 1. Is what we think of as normal really normal? 2. Do we have a glory gap?

Is what we think of as normal really normal?

When God’s word comes to Haggai Israel have been back in the land for how long? 18 years. In 538 B.C. about 50,000 Jews returned and enthusiastically began rebuilding the destroyed city. But – Ezra in his history tells us - the sheer scale of the job, opposition and hardship gradually slowed everything down, until final work on rebuilding the temple ground to a stop. As Haggai opens the temple remains a ruin. And gradually day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year that has just become normal for God’s people. It’s now 520 B.C. and they walk past the temple ruins everyday without batting an eyelid. They just don’t see it anymore, the house of God in ruins is normal, just part of the landscape.

It’s the way we work. When we see something for the first time we’re amazed by it. Then gradually as we see it everyday it becomes familiar, until we just don’t think of it as significant anymore. It’s happens with the new wallpaper, or a new car, or a building, or a ruin. Think about it in the UK, we are no different are we, we walk past ruined or boarded up or churches converted to carpet shops, clubs and Mosques and don’t even blink.

But God sends Haggai to wake up a complacent people, to show them that what they have begun to think of as normal must not be normality. Israel should not be in the land God gave them without a temple. They should not be able to walk down the road without stopping and praying and determining to do something about the temple. God’s presence is what set Israel apart from the nations around about them. The temple was the sign of God’s presence. It was a physical reminder that God hears prayer, brings grace, and forgives sin. It was the political and religious and social centre of life for God’s people. Or it should have been, but it had been left in ruins because they had gotten used to life without it. The abnormal had gradually become the new normal, and the temple and God was forgotten.

Is what we think of as normal really normal? When you think about the UK what have we complacently just accepted as the way it is? I can’t help thinking that we’ve just accepted the protected place of Christianity as normal. That’s seen in our shock at the increasing pressure we face as Christians living out our faith. Our freedom has quickly been eroded and it’s as if we’ve been caught by surprise. But what is biblical normality? John 15v20 “Remember the words that I said to you: A servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.” John 17v14 “I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.” That is biblically normal Christianity. Has living in this bubble of Christendom just lulled us into a false sense of security, a wrong headed idea of normality so that we are so shocked that we are in danger of failing to stand in the coming storm? So that when we experience opposition or rejection we find ourselves wondering what we did wrong rather than expecting the gospel to offend.

What about for you as a church? Where might you be settling for a normality that isn’t normal? Are we settling for comfort rather than stretching to reach the lost? Is our normal a cosiness that avoids speaking the truth in love to one another, avoids challenging sin? Or that settles for being thought well of as we engage in reaching our community rather than seeing the lost won and risking the offence of the gospel? Or that settles for middle class values rather than gospel values?

What about individually? What has become normal that just shouldn’t be? A prayerless life? Weeks without sitting down to listen to God speak to me in his word? A creeping cowardice that means we won’t dare to talk about Jesus with family or friends or colleagues? A defeatist acceptance of repeated failings with the same sin that means we just accept it as sad but inevitable and so no longer fight it?

Haggai asks us to stop and look at our normal, and ask is it really what God calls normal for his people? Where have we accepted things that just should not be? Where are we in denial of Biblical reality or all that God has made and calls us to enjoy as his people redeemed, adopted and blessed in Christ and empowered and filled with the Holy Spirit himself.

Do we have a glory gap?

God speaks to his people through Haggai, first to the leaders(2-3), “Thus says the LORD of hosts: These people say the time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the LORD.” God knows that they have stopped building the temple and won’t restart it again, and God wants the leaders to know and to lead. God knows the excuses the people have given. You can imagine the conversations ‘It wasn’t time to rebuild yet because of the opposition, when things quieten down’, ‘the time isn’t right we’re just too busy with the kids’, ‘there’s this and that that needs doing at home’, ‘Me, but I’m sure there’s someone more gifted at building than me’. Maybe the issue was disposable income, after all the economy has taken a downturn(6) and we never have enough. Perhaps they were waiting for a clear sign from God that this is what he wanted them to do?

Whatever the excuses were, God is dismissive of them in the contrast he makes. “Is it time for you yourselves to dwell in your panelled houses, while this house lies in ruins?” All your excuses and yet you’ve been able to find the time, energy and money to build ornate, fancy houses for yourself. God’s house is a ruin you’ve not got time for but your own home, well, that’s different. God shows them that their excuses are exactly that.

Because here’s the problem behind the problem, they have a glory gap. Well, gap is a bit of an understatement there’s a yawning chasm between how they think of God and what God deserves. Look at (8)what is it God wants them to do? To build the house so that he takes pleasure in it and is glorified. God deserves glory and they aren’t giving it to him, they’ll get to him once they finished the panelling and maybe an extension or two and the kids are through university. God is getting the left overs of their time and energy and there is little of that. Notice how God describes himself (5) “the LORD of hosts” literally Yahweh of heavens armies. He is the incomparable, the almighty, the one whose glory the temple could not contain, yet they aren’t concerned with his glory. God has brought them back, he is faithful to his promise, and yet they won’t rebuild.

Turn to 2 Samuel 7 do you see what David says (v1-3), the contrast? David wants to build a temple for God though God says he is not to. David desires to see God glorified, ‘how can I have a house like this when God is in a tent.’ What a contrast to Israel in Haggai’s time, a people content with God’s house lying in ruins whilst they panel their houses. David thinks of God rightly, he is concerned to see God glorified, but Israel in Haggai’s time have this glory chasm. Their view of God is too small.

Don’t we see that temptation in ourselves? To be so taken up with building our reputation, our home, our family, our comfort, our kingdom, our glory when we should be concerned with God’s. And the shift rarely happens all at once, we don’t wake up and think do you know what today I’m going to live for my glory. It’s so much more dangerous than that because it’s gradual, incremental, bit-by-bit that our priorities shift, that our sense of amazement at the glory of God wanes. And Haggai leaves us no room for excuses – look at your life and consider where your priorities are, whose glory are you seeking? Where have I, have we, just slipped into seeking my kingdom rather than God’s kingdom?

The faithfulness and grace of God

Haggai is one of God’s covenant watchdogs. He comes to call Israel away from danger and back to the covenant. Because God is faithful to his people and to his word. (6)Israel can’t find any fulfilment, there is little harvest, famine, drought, and don’t you love the picture of putting wages into a bag with a holes in – doesn’t that seem so true to how life so often is. There’s no satisfaction for Israel in material things, they just can’t get enough. And (9-11)God explains why; “I blew it away… I have called for drought…” Does that shock you? God withholding, God keeping stuff from his people.

But we need to realise that this is God loving his people. God is being faithful to his word in Deuteronomy 28, his promise that if his people turned from him, if they broke the covenant he would discipline them with famine and drought. Why? Because God loves them so much he won’t allow them to be satisfied with anything less than him, because nothing else will bring lasting satisfaction. “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.”

God is faithful to his covenant, so full of love that he won’t let them be satisfied without him. He’s been calling them in the drought and the withholding, but they haven’t listened. So God slow to anger now sends his prophet Haggai to call his people back to him. To consider their ways, to see what they have gradually fallen into; the complacency and half-heartedness.

And what is Israel’s response? (12-15)They repent. “They obeyed the voice of the LORD their God…” We see a great picture of what repentance is here, they recognise the glory gap they have been living with and stop building their own kingdom and start building the temple. They turn from what they were living for and turn to God and are taken up with a concern for his glory which is evidenced in practical works of worship.

And just look at what God does. (12-15)Even as the people respond God is poised waiting to help them at the moment of their repentance. It’s as if God has been poised ready and waiting to pour out his blessing on his people, longing to spur them on if they will just repent. (13)He comforts them that failure isn’t final, complacency, wrong priorities haven’t forfeited their relationship with God, when they repent he is with them. God is full of grace. And more than that God is active in stirring them up to work. God isn’t giving them the silent treatment, he isn’t waiting for them prove the genuineness of their repentance. Full of grace he stands ready to accept it and pour out his spirit to help his people know him and live for his glory.

Do you see the grace and love of God? He knows that we cannot find satisfaction in anything other than him, and he disciplines us to that end. Calling us by his word and his work to make him our greatest treasure. Proving it once for all at the cross where he gives his son so that he might be our treasure.

In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus calls us as his followers to “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” Why does he do that? Because it is what we were made for, it is not a hard task it is where joy is found. We are made to enjoy God and glorify him and we will not be content until we do, and God will let his people be satisfied with nothing less.

Do you see the call of Haggai, consider your ways? Where have we slipped from seeking to serve and seek him? Will we repent and seek him? And don’t you love that comforting image of God, just longing for us to find our satisfaction in him, ready, willing and waiting to enable and encourage us as we seek him and his kingdom and the joy to be found there.

Haggai 2:10-23

Here are the notes from LightHouse last night, with questions

Look at the passage, what surprises you?  What questions do you have?  What don't you understand?

We can’t earn mercy (10-19)

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.

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

Q1. (11) If consecrated 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 consecrated? In other words is holiness contagious? The answer is no.

Q2. (13) If someone who is defined by touching a dead body touches those items of food does the food become defiled? Is defilement, is 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. 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. 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. And as he weighs up our life the big question is are there more good deeds than bad? At funerals you hear that outlook when people say that the deceased was a good man he did this or that or the other, they are weighing the deeds, believing or hoping that God thinks like that.

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 true for us as believers. When we sin we don’t need to do penance, to try and make it up to God. 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.

Israel cannot atone for their own sin. Sin is too serious, to contagious, to 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 can’t earn Grace(15-19)

But that’s not the only thing about God that Israel need to learn. Three times in v15-19 God calls Israel to give “careful thought to”, or 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 to do. 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. We pray for something and expect an immediate answer, and if not start wondering what we’ve done that’s causing the divine log jam. 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 just expect those things, we forget 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 character of God.

And that ought to humble us. 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.

Hope in the house that God builds(20-23)

(19)Ends with a promise of present blessing, undeserved but graciously given. (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 7 for a minute. 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.

But look here at the promise (23), Zerubbabel is spoken of not just as the LORD’s signet ring but as 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.

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 a people whose sin has been atoned for will know God’s presence, God’s rule, God’s kingdom.

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. Live now looking and longing for the kingdom, hopeful and grateful for what God is doing and what he certainly do. Don’t settle for what you do long for what God has done and promises he will do.

Don’t despair, 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.

What are we tempted to think earns God’s favour? 

What stops us being thankful to God? 

God keeps his promises, how can we help one another live in the light of them?

Haggai 1 - God's call to get Building

Here are the notes from LightHouse last night on Haggai 1.

 

Israel and Judah have been taken into exile in Babylon, Jerusalem and the temple have been destroyed. They have been allowed to return, just as God said, by Cyrus and began to rebuild both the city and the temple. But it hasn’t been without difficulty, there’s been opposition and hardship and the people are disheartened and discouraged and have stopped building the temple.

Now it is 520BC and Darius is king and in his second year Haggai brings God’s message to God’s people.

Prioritise God

One of our problems with Haggai is his focus on the temple. We don’t have a temple, the church building isn’t the equivalent, in fact Jesus challenges the role of the temple in his ministry, and in Acts worship moves away from the temple.

But in the Old Testament the temple was hugely significant to the people of God. Turn to 1 Kings 8, here we see Solomon praying as he dedicates the temple, he acknowledges that (27-30)the temple cannot contain God but is a place where God chooses to dwell with his people. It’s a significant sign to God’s people that God hears their prayers(31-32), brings justice(33-36), and forgives sin. The temple was even a place where foreigners could call on God(41f). It was the centre of social, religious and political life for the people of God, and when it was destroyed they were devastated. We don’t have an equivalent, but the closest would be if in one terrorist attack Buckingham Palace, Canterbury Cathedral/St Pauls, and the Houses of Parliament were all destroyed at the same time.

God’s presence was what set Israel apart from the nations around them, what made them distinctive and the temple was the visible reminder and evidence of that. No temple, no sacrifice, no atonement, no identity as the people of God.

Do you see why this was such a devastating blow to the people of God? The issue isn’t about a building. The modern application of this book in its call to rebuild the temple is not to build a church building, or to refurbish it or put a new roof on it. That is trivialise and externalise God’s message and his concern. This book is not about buildings but about the place God occupies in our lives. For us there is no temple to build, no sacred building because in Christ we are filled with the Spirit and become the temple as we meet together as living stones.

But the problem in Haggai’s day is that people have given up building(2-4). God doesn’t just know that they have stopped building but he has heard their excuses for doing so. “The time has not yet come.” We would build the temple but the time isn’t right, we need to wait a bit longer. Maybe they were waiting for opposition to totally stop then they could rebuild safely without any threat to worry about. Or perhaps they were waiting until they were less busy working on their own homes and security, then they’d have time to dedicate to God. Maybe they were waiting to be wealthier, or have more skilled builders so they could do a better job of rebuilding. Or they maybe they were waiting for a sign that now was God’s time for them to continue building the temple.

Whatever the reasons (3-4)God knows that they were just excuses “Is it time for you to be living in your panelled houses, while this house remains a ruin?” You see the contrast God is making you have time to build your own elegant, opulent homes, wealth enough to invest in panelling, time enough to give to that, but not to rebuilding the temple.

You see what God is saying don’t you? Time isn’t the problem priority is. They are concerned about the wrong house. They’ve become consumed with their own comfort and prosperity and concern for God has been pushed to the margins. And God highlights his glory and majesty in how he reveals himself to them, he is Yahweh – the I am, the eternal one, the creator and sustainer. But he also reveals himself here as Lord Almighty – that is the God of heavens armies – the one who is glorious. And yet you won’t rebuild my house. You are not concerned to make the most of my promises, my presence, you are unmoved by the chance to return to what you were.

It brings to mind Matthew 7 “seek first the kingdom of God.” We’re prone to the same problem, the problem of distraction. To get taken up with, or find our time and energy consumed by things other than the glory of God. We struggle with exactly what they did, in terms of building our homes rather than God’s kingdom either through preoccupation with work and earning more, or by a focus on our nuclear family, or in a hundred other ways.

And we are just as good at making excuses as they were. The time hasn’t yet come because... the children are too young, I just need to do this first, work is really busy, I need my time off to rest and so on...

In the same way God cuts through their excuses and calls them to think about their hearts and the place they’ve give him he calls us to think us tonight. Whose kingdom am I seeking? Not mentally but when I examine my direct debits and my diary?

Trusting God to secure our Future

We live in a consumer society where we satisfaction is only a purchase away, where there is always something more to get, to attain, to experience, to have. There is always a better way to be satisfied to be fulfilled, and the warning is don’t stop or you’ll fall behind. Security is having the next best thing, be it investments, gadgets, fashion, whatever.

There is nothing new under the sun because that’s exactly where Israel find themselves(6-9). But God has a shock in store for them, they can’t find fulfilment because he isn’t letting them, they can’t find security in having enough because he’s teaching them to find their security in him, to trust him to secure their future.

(5-6)Whatever they do they don’t have enough, life is like a purse with holes in it – isn’t that a great picture – doesn’t life sometimes seem like that?

And the surprise here is (9-11)God says that’s his doing, not because he doesn’t love them but because he does. Barrenness is not because God has left them, it’s because through it God is lovingly disciplining them. He wants their life to be better than they could possibly make it even if their effort succeeded, because true security will only ever be found in him.

In fact God’s discipline has been just as he promised it would be if his people forgot about him in Deuteronomy 28, drought, a lack of harvest and so on. God loves them and wants to bless them but won’t allow them to be satisfied without him – because that wouldn’t be real satisfaction.

Let me just pause there to address the issue of blessing. Sometimes I think we’re a bit squeamish about the idea of blessing as a reaction against the prosperity gospel, but there is a danger in that which leaves us thankless for what we have. Does God want to bless us? Yes God does, and some of those blessings are material. If you have a home, a car, an education above primary level, a job, an income you are blessed. Family and children are blessings from God, leisure time is a blessing from God, your church family is a blessing from God. I could go on. Recognising God blesses us isn’t saying that God wants us to have a Mercedes, a mansion, model wife or husband and a million. What I’m saying is that God’s blessing is in his supplying our needs. Think back to Matt 7 “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” Jesus promises that god will provide and as a result of his loving Fatherly nature. Unless we get that God blesses us in our everyday provision we won’t be thankful.

But what God is teaching here is that he won’t allow his people to be satisfied by things that only satisfy temporarily. God delights in a people who seek him, who live trusting him. The key to security isn’t found in work, in our bank balance, in stuff, it’s in knowing God who provides.

That is so counter cultural. Our society seeks security in working harder, longer, smarter, better. But God says re-orientate your living. We will only put God first if we trust that he will provide everything else we need, that he will provide security.

What will this look like?

It isn’t an excuse for laziness, notice (8)God calls them to work. But it is a call to trust God. It might look like turning down a promotion or overtime so that you can go to gospel group, or serve in church. It might mean not taking a job elsewhere in the country because you’re committed to God’s kingdom in this location. It might mean not working Sunday’s on study, or encouraging our children not to do school work on Sundays. It will mean ensuring we encourage our children to read and understand the Bible and serve in the church as much as we teach them phonics times tables or push them at school. Because we know what will bring security is seeking God’s kingdom not trying to secure life ourselves.

What will secure our future and our children’s? Seeking God’s kingdom, knowing that he lovingly will provide.

Putting God firstHere’s my confession, I find it hard as a preacher not to be envious of Haggai. Haggai gets to see in a short time span what pastors and preachers long to see when they share God’s word with people. (12-15)The leaders respond and lead the people to repent, a repentance seen in their recognition that the charge God makes is just and the rebuilding restarting. And notice God encourages their response. It’s as if God is longing for them to respond so much that he is just waiting for them to start and then he stirs them up even more.

God comforts them with his presence with them, as they seek him he will be found by them and be with them. God is like the Father running out to welcome his run away son home again. God works to discipline, call his people and stir up his people and willingly waits to bless, comfort and empower his people. And as they build they find they have everything they need, there was no need to wait.

As we examine our hearts, as we consider we have that same promise but magnified. We aren’t called to build a physical temple but to be living stones being built up into God’s temple where his Spirit dwells as we meet together. This isn’t just a call to individuals to put God first but to commit to a community where we put God first in terms of our commitment to one another and to ensuring one another goes on and grows(1 Peter 2:5).

Putting God first is a call we need to hear. ‘Consider your ways’, look at your heart, look at your actions, commitments, your anxieties, your security. Am I trusting God? Am I putting him first?

Do I need to repent? Do I need to realign my priorities with his? Seeking first God’s kingdom is not an individual task, it’s a communal commitment. We seek God as we hear his word and put it into action in our lives, living equipped with our eyes fixed on Jesus. As we love others by giving generously to meet needs be it of our wealth or time because we love and trust God who promises to provide.

Here are the discussion questions we discussed afterwards:

1. What stops us putting God first? 

2. Do you think of yourself as blessed, why or why not? How can we be more thankful? 

3. What does it look like to seek God’s kingdom?