CONSIDER YOUR WAYS: A CALL TO HOLINESS
“LOOK INWARD”
Haggai 1:7-15
Big Idea: God also loves you so much that he cannot allow you to continue your path of destruction and heartache.
Supporting Scripture:
• Psalm 19:7-13
• Luke 15:11-24
• Revelation 3:14-22
PRE-SERMON INTRO:
Before I begin today I want to ask you to help me with my sermon. Do you have your cell phones? Okay get ‘em out. I want to ask you a question and then I want you to text me your answer. I will read some of them and respond to it at specific points in my sermon.
Here’s the question: IF YOU COULD DO ANYTHING YOU WANTED … ANYTHING … AS A MEANS OF MINISTRY IN JESUS’ CHURCH, WHAT WOULD YOU DO?
There’s the question. The phone number to text is on the screen – now text me.
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INTRO:
I gotta tell you, this is my favorite passage in the book. Do you know why? It is here that the people of God say “yes” to God’s correction and priorities. It is here that God’s people turn their hearts to him.
In the preceding verses Haggai laid bare their sin. He showed them where they had allowed personal preferences to usurp God’s will for their lives and here … they respond. They repent and turn to him.
The rest of this book is instruction for those whose hearts have turned to God. For those in whom there has been no inner change, and if a heart has not turned to him, the remainder of the book has little to say.
We will return to that concept a bit later.
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HAGGAI 1:7-15 (ESV)
7 “Thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider your ways. 8 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. 9 You looked for much, and behold, it came to little. And when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why? declares the Lord of hosts. Because of my house that lies in ruins, while each of you busies himself with his own house.10 Therefore the heavens above you have withheld the dew, and the earth has withheld its produce.11 And I have called for a drought on the land and the hills, on the grain, the new wine, the oil, on what the ground brings forth, on man and beast, and on all their labors.”
12 Then Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, with all the remnant of the people, obeyed the voice of the Lord their God, and the words of Haggai the prophet, as the Lord their God had sent him. And the people feared the Lord. 13 Then Haggai, the messenger of the Lord, spoke to the people with the Lord's message, “I am with you, declares the Lord.” 14 And the Lord stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and the spirit ofJoshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, and the spirit of all the remnant of the people. And they came and worked on the house of the Lord of hosts, their God, 15 on the twenty-fourth day of the month, in the sixth month, in the second year of Darius the king.
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Every culture and every age of history brings new challenges to the Christian faith. This has been true from the beginning of the church. As we respond to the streams of culture, sin and need in society, the church is often placed in the dubious position of playing catch up; seeking to clarify its message. I am not sure it can be any other way. We do not have a crystal ball so we cannot see what is coming and it is only after we are faced with the questions that we can offer Biblical solutions to the great needs of the day.
One big problem is that the solution the church offers is seldom uniform. Rare is the time when all of the people of God give the same response. We send mixed messages and then the church is forced to back up and talk amongst ourselves. The great councils of the past represent this very dynamic; the church was sending a mixed message and the creeds serve as an illustration of a church that has come together and agreed on a response. It is also proof that there was disagreement and even false responses being offered by some facets of the body.
The morass of our day is quite overwhelming. The great human needs and questions that face us invite many responses from the church and not all of those responses are, as I said, uniform. The human needs requiring response by the church run the gamut:
• Global ethics
• Peace and conflict
• Population resources
• Stewardship of the earth
• Global health concerns
• Religious fanaticism
• Clean water
There are needs and questions closer to home to be addressed too:
• The relationship gap between wealth, poverty and hunger in America
• Immigration
• Changing ethnic demographics
• Race relations
• Sexual orientation
• Violence and crime
• Our quality of education compared to the rest of the world
• The ethical use of technology
• The role and power of government
I told you it was overwhelming.
And, as is often the case, as the church seeks to give redemptive answers to human questions we hear a cacophony of conflicting answers that require us to disengage from the real conversation and talk amongst ourselves.
And this morning I want to address one of the prevailing (and loudest) answers the church is offering. This answer requires us to stop and say … “Wait, that is not complete. That is a damaging half-truth”
You see, half-truths are deceptive and fail to be redemptive.
And what is that prevailing message?
“GOD LOVES YOU JUST AS YOU ARE.”
More and more we hear this being given as an answer to those steeped in sin without finishing the truth.
In recent days a Christian artist has “come out” claiming to be gay and in part of her explanation she says, "What Jesus taught was a radical message of welcome and inclusion and love. I feel certain God loves me just the way I am."
{http://www.christianitytoday.com/gleanings/2014/august/worship-songwriter-vicky-beeching-comes-out-as-gay.html}
I use Vicky Beeching merely as an example of a common mantra that we hear used more and more whenever the church has to face sin, “God loves me just the way I am.”
This is a false Gospel. This message says God is soft-spirited and easily placated or appeased. He makes no stringent moral demands of human beings. He wants us to like ourselves and like him. So it’s fine with him if we do pretty much as we please, whatever we please. It suggests God is an “I’m O.K., you’re O.K.” divinity—the perfect deity for an Age of Feeling.
Now I understand and heartily proclaim that …Yes God does love you just as you are. But God also loves you so much that he cannot allow you to continue your path of destruction and heartache. God calls you to turn to him – to allow him to bring inner transformation and inner healing through the work of His son, Jesus Christ. God calls you to be delivered from sin.
Now it might seem that I have digressed this morning from Haggai 1:7-15 but I have not. You see Haggai’s neighbors also faced a common answer that was incomplete and Haggai called them on it.
And … they acknowledged the truth of Haggai’s words, repented and turned to God. And God brought healing and change.
God always brings forgiveness, healing and transformation whenever we turn to Him in surrender.
May I ask you,
• Are you buying into the modern lie that says, “God loves me just the way I am but requires no change of heart on my part”?
• Is God calling you to surrender to His Lordship and authority today?
• Are you willing to do the hard but right thing and surrender so you can experience His forgiveness, transformation and healing?
From where I sit, I see three things about God’s transformation illustrated in today’s Scripture.
1. GOD EMPOWERS CHANGE
Your Heavenly Father does everything possible to make your move to him possible.
He is not standing with his back to you demanding you get his attention and jump through hoops before he will grant pardon and transformation. Rather, like the story of the prodigal son illustrates, Your Heavenly Father is waiting on his “front porch;” he is looking down the road longing to be reconciled and the moment he sees you make a move his way he moves towards you … he even runs towards you!
2. GOD EXPECTS CHANGE
God is not content to simply have you by his side. He wants you changed and restored into the image of Jesus. God wants you to be whole and free from the sin that seeks your ruin.
The Bible never teaches us that God is passive. God is not just waiting for you to make decisions and then making a smooth path based upon the decisions you make. God has a path prepared and he expects you to follow it.
3. GOD BLESSES CHANGE
Everything we are looking for in our worldly pursuits is a cheap, hollow, and superficial counterfeit for the joy, purpose, and destiny that God has for you.
It is already prepared. He knows your deepest needs.
His healing is available when you come and surrender to him and allow him to fill you with His Holy Spirit.
WRAP-UP
Well, let me read some of your responses.
Those are very good. What a difference you could make in people’s lives if you chased those dreams. So I have one more question for you …
WHY AREN’T YOU CHASING THOSE DREAMS?
Do you know what I would do if I could do anything for God’s kingdom today? This. What I am doing … pastoring / shepherding His people and preaching His word. I paid the price to do it … I went to seminary; I went through a time of proving and ordination. I served wherever God placed me without reservations … I am “living my dream.”
You can chase yours too.
Have you ever feared that if you follow God in full obedience that, somehow, you will get the short end of the stick?
Have you ever wondered if obeying him would mean you would be poor, or left to serve-namelessly in the shadows, or stuck in a particular place you don’t want to be in, or relegated to a career you would not enjoy?
That’s some of what the people of Haggai’s time were fighting against. They seemed convinced that building God’s temple would mean they would not get to build their own lives. Hence they decided to build their lives first and afterwards they would tend to the things of God.
The problem is … it had now been 16 years (according to Ezra 3) and they were still tending to their own lives and not making any progress. There is even a hint here that they had taken the cedars dedicated for the temple and used them for their own projects.
They were motivated by a myriad of things.
• FEAR of being destitute.
• FAMINE “demanded” they gather more and more
• FATE had brought them to this place at this time and they could not pass up the opportunity
• FRUSTRATION because life as-of-this-moment left them determined to get ahead
• FOREIGN POWER had been in charge for so long but now they could call the shots
But FAITH was what was lacking within each motivation and DISOBEDIENCE was the result.
The thing is, all the preparation and attention to personal needs actually backfired on them … they were as unsatisfied as ever. Their “bags had holes” that they could not patch. The more they selfishly chased things for their own gratification the greater the sense of emptiness within.
God was using the awareness of their neglect to point them in the direction of favor and blessing. God’s says to them – “Hey! Look inward at the neglect! Turn to me, obey me, do what I have told you to do and watch me take care of you?”
Repent.
Return.
Change.
In her commentary on Haggai, Joyce Baldwin speaks of the “moral paralysis” that keeps us from obeying God. “Because we know what God wants us to do and because we don’t want to do it, our lives are stuck in a kind of permanent spiritual neutral—we can’t go forward or backward. We just stay where we are—miserable and unfulfilled.”
Then she added this telling sentence: “To think that any time will do to become serious about His cause is to fail Him completely.”
She is absolutely right.
There is a time to talk and a time to act, a time to consider and a time to stop talking and starting doing.
This was their time to act. Because they had not honored God, every area of life was suffering. The only remedy was to stop making excuses and start doing what God had told them to do 16 years earlier.
And act they did! Haggai’s neighbors courageously, publicly and completely left their personal and private projects to signed on with God.
So here’s where the rubber meets the road today …
TODAY IS YOUR TIME TO ACT. IT IS TIME FOR YOU TO GIVE ATTENTION TO THE TEMPLE OF GOD (WHICH YOU ARE).
As I said last week, in order to truly understand the words of the prophet we need to read them in light of the words of Jesus.
Listen to the words of our Lord:
24 Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 25 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. 26 For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul? (Matthew 16:24-26)
Those who have ears to hear
Let them hear
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This sermon is provided by Dr. Kenneth Pell
First Church of the Nazarene
Broken Arrow, Oklahoma
www.banazarene.org
