When God Gets Our Attention
Malachi 1:5-11
Rev. Brian Bill
1/15/12
On Monday I went out to PCS to pick up our daughter Megan after school. I arrived a bit early and was chatting with some other parents when all of a sudden I heard a mom scream and point to the floor. I looked and saw a huge black spider. A young girl was moving forward to pick it up. Someone else wondered if it was one of those fake ones. I went into action and simply stomped on it. When I lifted up my shoe, I saw a whole bunch of baby spiders scurrying across the floor. I smashed them as well while the screaming mom proceeded to jump up on a chair.
As you can imagine, this really got the attention of everyone in the hallway. A few students saw it happen and went back to tell their classmates. When the bell rang and the kids poured out of their classrooms, many already knew what had taken place. I felt like a hero! It didn’t take long for the story to grow, along with the size of the spider. Whatever the case, it shook up the students…and especially the mom on the chair! This incident certainly got our attention.
Have you ever been through an experience that God used to arrest your attention? It might not be a spider but maybe it’s been stress or the loss of someone you love, or a sin exposed in your life, or getting laid off from a job, or a relational rupture, or money worries, or family friction or maybe it’s a general sense of frustration or even futility. I want to submit this morning that a sense of dissatisfaction should lead us to find satisfaction in God alone.
We learned two truths last week from the opening verses of Haggai:
Let’s proceed and stop procrastinating
Let’s prioritize God and stop living for our own pleasure
Let’s set the context again. Because of their disobedience, the southern kingdom of Judah was destroyed by the Babylonians and many were captured and brought to Babylon to live. Many of God’s prophets predicted that this captivity would not destroy the nation; it would eventually end and 70 years later God’s people would be allowed to go back home.
Last week I retold the history in my words and no doubt confused some of you, now let’s let the Word of God shed some light on the situation and the setting for the Book of Haggai. Turn to 2 Chronicles 36:15-23 and follow along as I read: “The Lord, the God of their fathers, sent word to them through his messengers again and again, because he had pity on his people and on his dwelling place. But they mocked God’s messengers, despised his words and scoffed at his prophets until the wrath of the Lord was aroused against his people and there was no remedy.
“He brought up against them the king of the Babylonians, who killed their young men with the sword in the sanctuary, and spared neither young man nor young woman, old man or aged. God handed all of them over to Nebuchadnezzar. He carried to Babylon all the articles from the temple of God, both large and small, and the treasures of the Lord’s temple and the treasures of the king and his officials. They set fire to God's temple and broke down the wall of Jerusalem; they burned all the palaces and destroyed everything of value there.
“He carried into exile to Babylon the remnant, who escaped from the sword, and they became servants to him and his sons until the kingdom of Persia came to power. The land enjoyed its Sabbath rests; all the time of its desolation it rested, until the seventy years were completed in fulfillment of the word of the Lord spoken by Jeremiah.
[By the way, this explains why the exile lasted 70 years; for 490 years God’s people had ignored God’s law that they were to let the land rest every seventh year (see Leviticus 25:4). God made up for this by taking all these unfulfilled Sabbath years at one time. To put it in an equation, it looks like this: 490 รท 7 = 70].
“In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, in order to fulfill the word of the Lord spoken by Jeremiah, the Lord moved the heart of Cyrus king of Persia to make a proclamation throughout his realm and to put it in writing: ‘This is what Cyrus king of Persia says: The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth and he has appointed me to build a temple for him at Jerusalem in Judah. Anyone of his people among you - may the Lord his God be with him, and let him go up.’”
50,000 Jews returned to Judah and rebuilt the altar and began offering sacrifices. Two years later they finished the foundation of the Temple. But then they stopped working and honed in on their own homes for 16 years. Haggai comes on the scene to tell them to put God at the center of their lives and to get back to work.
This morning we’re going to camp in Haggai 1:5-11 and we’re going to see that God is calling us to:
Pause and Ponder
Look and Learn
Go and Get
Are you ready to dive in?
1. Pause and Ponder. In verse 5, God refers to himself as Jehovah Sabaoth again in order to get their perspective back to where it should be: “Now this is what the LORD Almighty says…” Simply put, they had lost their view of God as big and mighty. They, and us, need to recapture how mighty and majestic He really is. You see, when our understanding of God’s immensity slips, we allow other things to overshadow Him. That’s what happened to them. Instead of praising Him, they were living for their own pleasure. That reminds me of the title of J. B. Philips’ book called, “Your God is too Small.” A pastor from another generation nailed it when he said, “What you think about God is the most important thing about you.”
What does the LORD Almighty want to say to His people? Check out the second half of verse 5: “…Give careful thought to your ways.” This is really the major message of the book and is unique to Haggai, occurring five times in two chapters: in 1:5, in 1:7, in 2:15 and twice in 2:18. Idiomatically it means, “To lay your heart on the road.” Literally it means to “bring your mind to bear upon your ways.” The cadence in Hebrew is very powerful. To use more popular language, we’re to think about why things stink in our lives. The New Living Translation puts it like this: “Look at what’s happening to you!”
That’s not easy to do, is it? This is especially the case when we’re surrounded with mindless pursuits and shallow thinking. Have you ever thought about what the word “amusement” means? To “muse” means to think and when the letter “a” is put in front it means to “not think.” According to Merriam-Webster, it used to mean “to divert the attention of; so as to deceive.” That reminds me of a book written some time ago called, “Amusing Ourselves to Death.”
Would you notice that God doesn’t say, “What are your feelings saying or what do your friends say?” Instead, He wants us to engage our minds and do a serious inventory. If we don’t, we’ll default to living for ourselves and not for the Almighty. Socrates was right when he said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” I started reading a book this week by Craig Groeschel called, “The Christian Atheist.” He suggests that many Christians today believe in God but live as if He doesn’t exist.
Let’s be honest about something. We are experts in considering the ways of those around us but not so much in considering our own ways. It’s easy to slam others while excusing ourselves. Let’s pause and ponder right now as we soak up some other Scriptures that speak about this same truth.
Lamentations 3:40: “Let us examine our ways and test them, and let us return to the Lord.”
Luke 15:17: “When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death!’”
2 Corinthians 13:5: “Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you – unless, of course, you fail the test?”
God can use all sorts of things to get our attention. I’ve been enjoying watching and listening to how Denver Broncos Quarterback Tim Tebow is causing the sports world to pause and ponder. Not only did he lead his team to a stunning victory over the Steelers on Sunday in a playoff game, he threw for exactly 316 yards and people began pointing out the allusion to John 3:16, which Tebow famously painted in his eye black in 2009 when he led the Florida Gators to the national championship. By Monday morning, John 3:16 was ranked as the top-searched item on Google. Coincidence or not, his passing yards had millions of people pausing and pondering, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
After pausing and pondering, God calls His people go deeper by looking at what’s been happening and then learning from it.
2. Look and Learn. Verse 6 shows us what happens when we don’t put God first. It’s hard to see in English but in Hebrew these phrases come out in staccato bursts: “You have planted much, but have harvested little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it.” God hit their agriculture and their economy. The message is clear – we will never find satisfaction until our priorities are right. They had a lot of action but they could get no satisfaction. A sense of dissatisfaction should lead us to find our satisfaction in God alone.
God was causing their affliction in order to get their attention. This frustration was seen in the three basic needs of life – food, water, and clothing. And this led to futility because whatever they thought they had disappeared like money put into pockets with holes in them. It was like a double curse. They brought little home and what they did bring simply melted away.
Friend, if God is not at the center of your life, even if you get what you think you need it won’t be enough. This truth is spelled out in a number of Scripture passages.
Leviticus 26:26: “…You will eat, but you will not be satisfied.”
Hosea 4:10: “They will eat but not have enough…”
Amos 4:6: “‘I gave you empty stomachs in every city and lack of bread in every town, yet you have not returned to me.”
Sometimes when someone tells me what they’ve been doing to manage their life or their stress or their problems and things are just falling apart, I’ll say something like this: “How’s that working out for you?” God turns to us today and says something similar: “Take a look at the mess in your life and what’s been happening when you put yourself first. How’s that working out for you?”
You’ve probably heard this expression before: “The hurrier I go, the behinder I get.” God not only understood their circumstances; He was the One who caused them. Sometimes God gives us what we want so that we’ll experience some consequences, with the ultimate goal being that we turn back to Him. Psalm 106:15 says: “So he gave them what they asked for, but sent a wasting disease upon them.”
Let me say it as clearly as I can: If you and I put our purposes above God’s priorities, we will never get what we’re after. Here’s a news flash: Only God can satisfy our souls. Until you put me first, He says, life won’t work. The more we marginalize Him, the worse things will get.
This is expanded in verses 9-11 where again we see a choppy cadence: “‘You expected much, but see, it turned out to be little. What you brought home, I blew away. Why?’ declares the Lord Almighty. ‘Because of my house, which remains a ruin, while each of you is busy with his own house. Therefore, because of you the heavens have withheld their dew and the earth its crops. I called for a drought on the fields and the mountains, on the grain, the new wine, the oil and whatever the ground produces, on men and cattle, and on the labor of your hands.’”
A farmer’s hope every spring is to “expect” much when the seed is planted. In Isaiah 5:10, we read that farmers were planting six bushels of seed and harvesting only about half a bushel. God was doing this to get their attention. And God is doing it again to these people who had stopped working on the Temple. They were serving themselves instead of God so the only way to get their attention was to clobber their crops. The little they harvested was blown away by God.
We see the title “Lord Almighty” again, which we learned last week means the “God of the Angel Armies.” God links their situation directly to their sins when He says, “Because of you…” God’s house was in ruins while each was “busy with his own house.” This is an interesting phrase. It means that they were “running all the while each to his own house.” They were absorbed in their own pursuits. I find it fascinating that this is how Jesus describes the pursuit of pagans in Matthew 6:31-32: “So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.”
Some of us probably feel like all we’re doing is running around from thing to thing. Have you ever noticed how many times people answer the question, “How are you?” with this phrase, “I’m busy.” It’s almost like we need to validate our lives by letting people know how busy we are. That reminds me of the song sung by Archibald on Veggie Tales: “I’m busy, busy, dreadfully busy; you’ve no idea what I have to do; busy, busy, shockingly busy; much, much too busy for you.” When people tell me why they haven’t been to church for awhile, the number one answer I hear is, “We’ve just been so busy.” Listen. Our busyness can keep us from God’s business.
Haggai uses couplets and triplets to express the totality of the drought. God hits their three main crops in the two main growing seasons, out in the fields and up on the mountains – grain, grapes and oil. He also afflicts the animals and the labor of their hands. In addition, this drought encompasses all of creation, from “the heavens” to “the earth.” God had warned His people back in Deuteronomy that He would send drought if they were to drift from Him. Deuteronomy 28:23-24: “The sky over your head will be bronze, the ground beneath you iron. The Lord will turn the rain of your country into dust and powder…”
Listen. God is not doing this because He hates them; He’s doing it because He loves them and longs for them to come back to their spiritual senses. Unfortunately, people back then and now, are stubborn. We see this in Amos 4:9: “‘Many times I struck your gardens and vineyards, I struck them with blight and mildew. Locusts devoured your fig and olive trees, yet you have not returned to me,’ declares the Lord.”
Let me give a disclaimer at this point. It doesn’t necessarily mean that because you are having problems that God is punishing you. There’s often not a direct correlation between your suffering and your sin. Just ask Job or Jeremiah. Bad things happen in our sinful world. The NIV Application Commentary has some good insight: “Blessing is not always the reward for obedience (Psalm 73) and curse cannot always be tied to disobedience (Job).”
Having said that, because God loves us so much when He sees us drifting His aim in our adversity is to get our attention. If we end up broken and on our knees, that’s a good thing! I quote from the NIV Commentary again: “Experiences of hardship should always become opportunities for spiritual reflection.” Here’s how I work it all out. When I go through something challenging or difficult or sad, I try to ask these kinds of questions: “God, what are you trying to teach me? Is there a sin I need to confess? What do you want me to change in my life?”
Charles Spurgeon has written, “God doesn’t allow his children to sin successfully.” He loves you too much to let you sin in secret. That’s why it often gets exposed. God cares too much to let you meander through life, pursuing only your own pleasure. Note the phrase in verse 10: “Because of you…” As a result, God blew it all away. Would you notice who did this? “I blew it away…” “I called for a drought…” Look over at 2:17: “I struck all the work of your hands with blight, mildew and hail, yet you did not return to me…”
C.S. Lewis once said, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains; it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” He blows stuff away and calls for a drought so that we will return to Him. If it seems like what you’ve been chasing has just vaporized before your eyes, if you make money only to find it flowing through holes in your pocket, if you feel like you never have enough, the Lord Almighty may be knocking out the props in your life to get your attention.
When I know someone is straying and sinning and doesn’t appear like they’re interested in the things of God anymore, I often pray a prayer like this: “God make them miserable in their sin. Do whatever you need to do to bring them back to you. Like the prodigal son, help them see the slop their sin has caused them. Make them restless and dissatisfied so they return to you.”
There are many people who don’t yet know Christ who are searching for satisfaction in all the wrong places. We’ve included a tract in your bulletin today called, Soul Satisfaction. Would you look for someone to give it to this week? The main message is that we will be unsatisfied until we find our satisfaction in Christ alone.
3. Go and Get. It’s not enough to just pause and ponder or even to look and learn. God also wants us to go and get. We see this in verse 8: “‘Go up into the mountains and bring down timber and build the house, so that I may take pleasure in it and be honored,’ says the Lord.” It’s time to amend what is amiss. As far as I can tell, this is the only command in the entire book. It’s actually threefold – go, bring, and build. As we learned in our study of 1 John, it’s not enough to just say we love God; we must live like we do. Words are good, but actions are better. God wants us to work. The logs won’t come rolling down the mountain on their own. They had to go up and then bring down.
When someone tells me that they want things to change, I often ask them how badly they want to get better. You see, if we sort of want to get back where we need to be spiritually, it probably won’t happen. We have to go after God if we want to change because our default setting is selfishness and procrastination. We always head south if we stay passive. Sometimes we need to go and get resources, seek out help, sign up for counseling, and pursue accountability if we are serious about rebuilding our relationships or finding fulfillment or aligning ourselves with God’s purposes.
We’re to go and get not just so we’re satisfied but ultimately so that God is pleased and honored. We don’t make changes just to get out of our predicament but to please God because when He is glorified, we will be satisfied as well. I like how John Piper puts it: “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.”
God finds great pleasure when He is put back in His rightful place. He is honored when we honor Him. He is worshipped when we consider Him to be weighty. The phrase literally means, “I will get glory to myself.” We must value pleasing and honoring Him more than pleasing ourselves or others.
Let’s refuse to displease or to disgrace God. His name and His fame should be what we proclaim. And we do that when we obey Him and when we stop running after our selfish pursuits. I keep coming back to what the Westminster Shorter Catechism says: “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.”
C.S. Lewis once said, “The only thing Christianity cannot be is moderately important.” Too many of us just give God part of our life, like a pie that is cut up into different slices – my social slice, my job slice, my family slice, my hobby slice, my school slice, my retirement slice, my sports slice…oh, and my spiritual slice. God doesn’t want a slice of your life; He deserves and demands the whole pie. I don’t know what’s worse – deliberately disobeying God or not giving Him first place in my life. In Isaiah 48:11, God says that He will not yield His glory to another.
Let’s go back and pick up what comes next after Jesus describes how the pagans run after food, drink and clothes in Matthew 6:33: “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” Things work when God is worshipped. Our needs are met when we live like God is all we need.
As I reflected on this, I wrote down these three thoughts.
1. The more you focus on your own happiness the unhappier you will become.
2. Sin will take you further than you were planning to go and keep you longer than you were planning to stay.
3. Pleasing God is the only pursuit that will give you ultimate pleasure.
Pause and Ponder. Look and Learn. Go and Get.
Oh, that we would be like the psalmist when he wrote in Psalm 119:59-60: “I have considered my ways and have turned my steps to your statutes. I will hasten and not delay to obey your commands.”
Barbara Wilkinson is headed to Guatemala on Thursday to serve with Todd and Amy Block. She’s also meeting up with PBC members John and Vera Wahls. The Block’s are ministering to orphans and will be on the ballot at our Business Meeting on February 21st as we consider adding them to our missionary team. I’d like us to pray for Barbara this morning as she lives out what obedience looks like.
