How many of you have dreamed of growing wise and mature? Maturity and development seem to be two of the most necessary traits of human beings and also two of the most neglected after childhood. We hear many things on this subject such as girls mature faster than boys but what about when people reach the age of adulthood. We must continue to mature and grow so that we can pass on wisdom and truth to the next generation. We have great respect for those we perceive as mature and wise. Most of you have great respect for John Martin over here. He has grown in his understanding of Scripture and in maturity as a believer. How many of you would like to grow up and be mature like that? Yet, there are many people who grow old physically but never mature. At age 70 they are still acting and thinking as though they were 30, complaining about the same things and fighting the same fights for 40 years. None of us want to grow old like that. How do we grow old and mature then? I believe that answer is found in God’s creation of water.
God has created some wonderful and awesome pieces of nature. I find water to be one of the most fascinating of His creation. Water is one of the rare elements that expands when it freezes instead of shrinking. Water is also one of the most abundant chemical compounds in the world so much so that even our own bodies are primarily made of water. Water also has some of the greatest capacity to dissipate heat which makes our bodies very good at handling heat. Still water can also serve as a mirror as well. God made a natural mirror in which we can see our reflection. What do you normally see in a mirror when you look? You probably see yourself first and foremost but also you can see your surroundings behind and around you. God must have had a reason to create a natural mirror. I wonder if we are supposed to reflect on what’s happening in our lives.
God himself reflected on His creation by saying in Genesis 1:25 that all the land and animals he had created “was good.” Then, in verse 31, once he had finished creating man, He said it was “very good.” God reflected on all He had done and approved of it. I would say that we too need to reflect on our lives. Haggai 1:3-11 speaks about this very subject to the Jewish people who had come back to the land of Israel from Babylon. God calls the people to “consider their ways.” They had forgotten about God and His temple for almost 14 years at this point and God finally sent someone to get their attention. I will tell you the same thing Haggai said to the Jews, “Consider Your Ways!” Reflect on what you are doing and what is going on around you and learn. However, before you can do this, you might want to know what I mean by reflecting.
Considering How to Consider:
This may be a first time lesson to some of you and an all too familiar one to many others. The process of reflection consists of a few stages. First, you examine the current aspects of your life. This may take a little time as you think about different areas of your life such as how you are treating your children and spouse, how you are doing at work, am I living like I am supposed to, and many others that may come up. Ask questions about your life or a situation you are in. How should I handle this? Instead of just reacting to a situation, you can calmly sit down and think out what to do. So, in the case of reading your Bible, you could say, “So, this is what God is saying. Why did God say that I should be careful how I judge? Does the text tell me? How does this affect my life?”
After you have thought about your life or situation and understand what is happening as best as you can, then you should separate the facts from the fiction. It is easy to get emotional and feel like a total failure with no hope of ever fixing the situation. We can get carried away with anger towards someone or bitterness about what someone did without ever really understanding the situation. For instance, I had one of you come to my office and ask me to apologize for something. I felt chewed but I had no idea for what. I seriously did not understand the problem and still don’t to this day but as I was reflecting on the episode later in the day I realized that it was just an over-protective family member expressing themself and that I should just let it go. Now, understanding that and doing that are two different things but reflecting allowed me to separate my feelings from logic and come to a careful conclusion.
Lastly, come up with a plan of action on how to deal with your newly acquired knowledge. Choose to do something about what you have gained from the experience of reflecting on your life or the situation you are in. In the last scenario, I chose to just let it go and fix the issue once I understood it. Once another person explained it, I understood and fixed the problem without reacting to the first person and without causing any hurt feelings in the matter. My action was to be silent in that case but it could be totally different in any other given situation. This is where reflecting on life really helps.
God tells Haggai to have the people reflect on their relationship to God. Today, we will reflect on our relationship to Christ in two ways; our physical relationships and our spiritual relationships. Listen to the text and then we will discuss what God has given them to reflect on. “Then the word of the LORD came by Haggai the prophet, saying, "Is it time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses while this house lies desolate?" Now therefore, thus says the LORD of hosts, "Consider your ways!" “You have sown much, but harvest little; you eat, but there is not enough to be satisfied; you drink, but there is not enough to become drunk; you put on clothing, but no one is warm enough; and he who earns, earns wages to put into a purse with holes." Thus says the LORD of hosts, "Consider your ways!" “Go up to the mountains, bring wood and rebuild the temple, that I may be pleased with it and be glorified," says the LORD. "You look for much, but behold, it comes to little; when you bring it home, I blow it away Why?" declares the LORD of hosts, "Because of My house which lies desolate, while each of you runs to his own house. "Therefore, because of you the sky has withheld its dew and the earth has withheld its produce. "I called for a drought on the land, on the mountains, on the grain, on the new wine, on the oil, on what the ground produces, on men, on cattle, and on all the labor of your hands."
Physical: The Church
The first examination of the text will consist of its relevancy in our formal, physical lives. Haggai tells the people to “Consider their ways!” What ways? Well according to God and Haggai the people’s crops have done terribly, they never have enough food or drink, and they never feel warm from the fancy clothes they wear. They can never earn enough money and what little they do earn disappears quickly and without a trace. Yet, they live luxuriously in their houses of paneled cedar wood. They enjoyed these wonderful homes and yet God’s home was left desolate and half-built. The temple construction had begun almost 16 years ago and stopped only two short years later. The temple laid in waste for 14 more years and yet during this time the people had convinced themselves that it was okay to import expensive wood and build lavish houses. Cedar had to be brought from the area known as Lebanon which was a considerable distance from Jerusalem. In this situation God cries, “Consider Your Ways!”
We have something of a similar situation today. We no longer have the temple where God lived during the Old Testament. No, we have a better temple than they ever did but that is our second point. We do have a meeting place though called the church. Now, the church is actually the people and those people just happen to meet in a building yet this building does have some meaning to it. When people see a church they know what it is. This is a place of worship for Jesus Christ who died to take the sins of mankind away. I call this the physical reflection on the text because it deals with our physical relation to the body of Christ and to the place where they meet together. This is our physical place of worship.
I would say we have some misplaced priorities! We live in lavish homes with more than enough stuff everywhere and yet we slowly let this church decay and fall apart. You will give your money to a special offering for a need somewhere such as Shiloh Children’s Home but you neglect to give to this very church. I have seen it with my own eyes. I remember very clearly the $900 raised on that one single Sunday for Shiloh. Do you remember how awesome it was to give to that cause? What about the cause of the church members sitting next to you? Did you know we have a benevolence fund to help people out in desperate need? Did you know we fund missionaries who feed people overseas or give them medical care? Think about it. Consider Your Ways! Look at how you spend your money and time and see if anything is amiss. This is your church home, where you belong. Take care of your church home and your fellow Christians.
Spiritual: Our Body; Christ’s temple
There is one other aspect of this text that should be understood and reflected upon. As I previously mentioned, there is a better temple in the New Testament. 1 Corinthians 6:19 says, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, who you have from God and that you are not your own?” Once you accept Christ, the Holy Spirit lives in you. Where does He live? Well, you have chosen to become a follower of God. God dwells in temples. God dwells in Christians. Therefore, Christians are temples and God dwells in them. Your body now carries around the indwelling Christ. You have been bought with a price. Christ died for you and now you belong to God and can no longer use yourself as you please. Christians are the new and improved temple.
Now, let’s examine the text in Haggai again looking at it from this angle. The people had chosen to build big, luxurious houses in stead of building up the temple. God even tells them that the drought in their lives, the lack of harvest, and all the other hardships they faced were because they were not focusing on Him. They were so busy doing their own stuff that they had completely forgotten God in the mix. They were busy making money, eating and drinking, and every other common task just so they could make ends meet. They never stopped to think that all their struggles could have been because they displaced God. Bad weather had destroyed the crops by dropping very little rain and the economy had slipped some during the last few years so that could explain the financial situation they were in. These people probably had an explanation for everything and yet God says “Consider Your Ways!” Look around and see all that I am doing to block you from success so that you will look at Me!
This isn’t a far jump in logic to the way we handle our spiritual lives, our temples. We as human beings get so wrapped up in just trying to live life that we lose complete track of our priorities and what is truly important. We have jobs, bills, groceries, clean water and other concerns and yet we have barely skimmed the top. Every second we have seems to be stolen away by someone or something. We build our houses and live our lives out the “best we can” and barely take note of the world around us. Consider the way you are living. Look at the world around you decay and fall apart. Ask yourself, am I living just like everyone else? Christians have time constraints too but that should never ever take you away from Jesus Christ. The Jews were putting their wants and desires before God. They wanted more stuff and better houses. They wanted this and that and soon God became a neglected landmark on the plains of their life. Life took over and soon it had been 14 years since they had truly loved and cared about God. Look at the circumstances of your lives and see if God is trying to wake you up. Reflect on your spiritual life and see if it is even alive. If not, change your priorities and put God first.
Consider Your Ways! This is the message Haggai was sent with and this is the message that I send to you. God is waiting to hear from you and he is throwing everything he can at you to get your attention. “Theologian John Piper says, “God’s anger must be released by a stiff safety lock, but His mercy has a hair trigger.” God loves us too much to let us go. He pursues us—even into our sin and guilt—and pleads with us to turn back. It goes on to say, “I will never leave you nor forsake you” is the pledge that He will never leave us alone. He will hound us, badger us, bother us, pester us, and heckle us until we give in. More than anything, God wants us to give in to His love. “Love surrounds us,” George MacDonald said, “seeking the smallest crack by which it may enter in.” God waits tirelessly and loves relentlessly.” God is using everything He can to get you to return to Him and find peace and love waiting for you. Reflect on your life. Where are you? What are you doing there? When will you come home to Christ? How do you deal with your possessions versus your church? How do you handle your physical life versus your spiritual life?
