Text: Haggai 1:1-11, Title: Disguising Your Despising, Date/Place: NRBC, 2/18/07, AM
A. Opening illustration: Against all those monks, who tried to think of the best ways to serve God, stood this one command: “Honor your father and mother.” Luther said, “Where will these poor wretches hide when in the sight of God and all the world they shall blush with shame before a young child who has lived according to this commandment.” [Luther’s Large Catechism] You could feed hundreds of the poor and give shelter to thousands of homeless, but if you despise your mother, you are despising God. A little child handing her mother a freshly picked dandelion has outdone you.
B. Background to passage: Just as God said would happen through Isaiah and Jeremiah, Cyrus the Persian released the Jews to return to their homeland in 538 BC. Their primary goal was to rebuild the temple awaiting the return of God’s hand of blessing and possibly the Messiah. That went well for about two years. Then all sorts of political turmoil, opposition, and apathy took its toll and produced a job that ceased before it really got started, and a discouraged people indifferent to God’s house, His desires, and His glory. Sixteen years later, on August 29, 520 BC (the day before the New Moon Offering), God calls Haggai, who had been a part of those taken from Israel in 586 BC and had returned and helped build in 538 BC, to be a prophet, and deliver a message to the people. Four times in our text today Haggai uses the title for God “the LORD of hosts” emphasizing God’s sovereign control over all things including the myriads of angelic forces used to bring about His judgments upon his covenant people. And the whole discussion of the book is framed in covenant terms—God’s faithfulness and Judah’s failure to keep its part of the covenant.
C. Main thought: Our text this morning will highlight the main thrust of the book of Haggai by pointing out the problem, its results, and giving God’s prescription about how to begin to fix it.
A. The Problem (v. 2-4)
1. Haggai is very clear that he stands in a long line of classical prophets that boldly proclaim “thus saith the Lord.” So, quoting God (not a rabbi, or even his own opinions), he gives us a quote of the people. It had become their slogan to justify their lack of commitment to God and his temple. They may have said that for a couple of reasons (political unrest, economic stress, waiting on the 70 year to pass, waiting on the Messiah), but God is not impressed. And it is not that God has a desperate need that Israel can fill (because God has no needs as though He lacked anything) through the temple. In fact, the building is not the problem at all, only a symptom. It was the symbol of God’s presence among His people. And so their problem was that they didn’t love God! They didn’t want His presence, only his blessing. They didn’t care about His desires, His pleasure, His will, nor His glory. They were consumed with their own prosperity, agendas, personal comfort, and priorities. They were totally self-consumed. Remember that it had been 16 years since any effort had been exerted.
2. 2 Sam 7:2, Philip 2:21, Isa 56:11, Matt 16:24,
3. Illustration: Edwards saw that one of the chief works of Satan was “to propagate and establish a persuasion that all affections and sensible emotions of the mind, in things of religion, are nothing at all to be regarded, but are rather to be avoided and carefully guarded against, as things of a pernicious tendency. This he knows is the way to bring all religion to a mere lifeless formality, and effectually shut out the power of godliness, and everything which is spiritual and to have all true Christianity turned out of doors.” tell about the man in Ontario, Canada who refused the promotion within the bank that he worked and excelled in, so that he would not be drawn into the unrealistic expectations and time commitments at the expense of his family, drawing on Elijah’s Mt Carmel experience Tozer says, “Current evangelicalism (in the ‘50s) has laid the altar and divided the sacrifice into parts, but now seems satisfied to count the stones and rearrange the pieces with never a care that there is not a sign of fire upon the top of lofty Carmel. But God be thanked that there are a few who care. They are those who while in love with the altar and delight in the sacrifice, are yet unable to reconcile themselves to the continued absence of fire.”
4. Oh what a sad parallel with our society and culture! We seek to purchase, acquire, and obtain stuff so that we can live a comfortable existence. Sacrifice is not even a word that we use, unless we are talking about other people sacrificing for us. We are the richest nation on the earth, and you would think that we would have time for God and His priorities. In general we (myself included) are not driven primarily in our lives with the pleasure of God and doing everything that we can to bring him glory. We are content to have religion and church just as long as it doesn’t interfere with our occupational goals, or our recreational pursuits, or our children’s extracurricular activities. We are content to have church and not experience the presence of God. There is no brokenness to our hearts if we come to church and nothing happens. If God doesn’t show up, doesn’t speak to us, doesn’t save people, doesn’t move in our midst, we don’t care!
B. The Results (v. 5-6, 9-11)
1. Haggai is preaching to a disillusioned people who had returned 18 years earlier with high hopes of rebuilding and reestablishing the City of Zion. They had visions of prosperity, but all they have seen is economic hardship. God describes their dissatisfaction/frustration in several ways. But the point is that they were discouraged and disheartened, which had developed into the self-centeredness described previously, and resulted in an inability to find contentment and satisfaction. Secondly, a result of misplaced priorities and lack of love for God is divine chastisement. Remember that God disciplines his children for the purpose of refining and restoring them to covenant faithfulness. Haggai makes it very clear that the lack of yield in the field and fruit of the womb, as well as the drought and fruitlessness of their labor is a direct action of a loving God toward his wayward children. God still works in his church and in lives through chastisement and discipline.
2. Mal 2:2, Josh 7:11, Prov 3:11, Heb 12:6, 10-11,
3. Illustration: “Men are merely taller children. Honor, wealth, and splendor are the toys for which grown children pine; but which, however accumulated, leave them still disappointed and unhappy. God never designed that intelligent beings should be satisfied with these enjoyments. By His wisdom and goodness they were formed to derive their happiness and virtue from Him alone” –Timothy Dwight, Pastor Gary from Scott’s church who was so humble that when anything happened in his children’s lives, he began to confess sin and examine himself,
4. Just like Israel, you and I will live lives of frustration and dissatisfaction if we are focused on the pursuit of temporal things. If you set your desires and you hope of satisfaction upon relationships, financial prosperity, recreational enjoyment, educational prowess, or anything less than the glory of God, you will eventually leave empty. Things of this world do not satisfy. They only provide the illusion of satisfaction. There is a deep need for God in our lives, and we must realize that He is the most infinitely satisfying being in the universe, and all your needs and desires will be quenched in Him, and Him alone. Do you want a life free from frustration and want, be satisfied with Jesus, let him meet every need. We know that God brings hardship into lives sometimes without a chastening purpose (Job, the man born blind). But I am afraid that we have gone to the opposite extreme, and never do any self-examination when we hit into trials in our lives. We live in a culture that teaches us to cast blame for all of our sin on others, nature, chance, and bad luck. When the bible is clear, sometimes hardship comes from God on account of our sin. Sometimes it is sickness, loss, hardship, depression, pain, and we must practice self-examination. Much further pain could be avoided if we would honestly deal with sin in our lives. In the life of a church, if God brings seasons of drought, it must examine itself and root out any known sin.
C. The Prescription (v. 7-8)
1. God through the prophet gives a prescription to remedy the disease of lack of love for God and misplaced priorities. He says to set your heart upon your ways, repent, and get to work. He uses the phrase “consider your ways” twice, and it means to set one’s heart upon reflection of the past and its meaning. He calls on the people to think seriously about their ways. The implication here is that the ways are wrong, but God doesn’t want a Sunday School answer. He wants heartfelt contrition. He wants brokenness. He wants people to really “get it” that they have messed it up, and not simply have a worldly sorrow that comes from being confronted or caught or punished. He wants people to fall on their faces with broken hearts realizing how much they have slighted God, and be willing to do whatever it takes to fix it. Then what he says to do is to get busy. Go up to the hill country, get some wood, get some contractors together and move.
2. Rev 3:19, Jer 2:30, Luke 3:8, 2 Cor 7:11,
3. Illustration: “There is no greater heresy for a man than to believe that he is absolved from sin if he gives money, or because a priest lays his hand on his head and says: ’I absolve you;’ for you must be sorrowful in your heart, else God does not absolve you.” – John Wycliffe, "Operator, please let me out of the phone booth--I’ll pay, I’ll pay, just let me out!" The customer mistakenly thought I had control of the phone booth’s doors and had locked him in! In his book I Surrender, Patrick Morley writes that the church’s integrity problem is in the misconception "that we can add Christ to our lives, but not subtract sin. It is a change in belief without a change in behavior." He goes on to say, "It is revival without reformation, without repentance."
4. What he tells Israel, is the message to us; and it is so simple. Not easy, but simple. The truest repentance in our lives comes when we realize what David did in Ps 51:4; and we are hurt in our heart that we hurt the heart of Christ, grieved the Spirit, and maligned our testimony. The fires of revival are carried by the fuel of a holy discontent with the present condition. We must not be satisfied with church as usual, Christianity as usual, the status quo faith. We must consider our ways, then go up and get the needed resources and get to work. We have spent far too long discussing the problems in the church, when God wants us to get busy fixing them. We could have another committee to discuss it, but really what needs to happen is to focus our eyes upon the flaming holiness of the Lord of Hosts, and bring into clear view our shallowness, apathy, and wretchedness within ourselves before Him. And that work begins in your own heart. Consider your ways! Its time that we realize that we have spend an enormous amount of time and money and effort on ourselves at the expense of the Kingdom.
A. Closing illustration: Most Christian I know are stuck. We feel caught in jobs we barely endure and often despise, in relationships that plunder us and deepen rather than remove our aloneness, in activities that are soul wizening (to become dry, to shrink) in their triviality and yet insatiably addictive. We squander jewels and hoard worthless trinkets. We experience harrowing emotions over mere trifles and can barely muster a dull ache over matter of shattering tragedy. We feel we’ve no time and no energy for the things that we know matter deeply, even eternally, but waste much time in silly diversions. We are impatient with our child’s longing to spend ten minutes with us at bedtime, but then we waste an hour in idle telephone chatter or two hours watching the latest studio-produced pointless video. We gossip even though we’ve made repeated resolves not to. We envy, resent, judge, avenge, sulk and overeat. We read People magazine – maybe even playboy – but not our Bibles. We feel that everyone else’s has more money, longer vacations, newer cars, nicer clothes and fewer things going wrong with their hot water tanks, cars and children than we do. We wonder where the freedom is for which Christ set us free. AND this secret fear haunts us: Is everyone else fulfilled and I’m the only one who’s not? Or even worse: is no fulfilled, and we are all just playing a charade that we are?
B. Consider Your Ways!
C. Invitation to commitment
