Don't Get Sidetracked -- Haggai 1:1-11
A life without a mission is a life without meaning. Fritz Kreisler was one of the most famous violin masters of his or any other day, and regarded as one of the greatest violinists of all time, he was known for his sweet tone and expressive phrasing. To achieve this success he described his life mission: "Narrow is the road that leads to the life of a violinist. Hour after hour, day after day and week after week, for years, I lived with my violin. There were so many things that I wanted to do that I had to leave undone; there were so many places I wanted to go that I had to miss if I was to master the violin. The road that I traveled was a narrow road and the way was hard."
Kreisler had a mission in life, to be the best concert violinist he could be. That meant he had to eliminate everything from his life that took him away from that goal. As Christians we are called on a mission as well and it's much more important than being a world class musician. We can't be sidetracked by any other endeavour. Because a life without a mission is a life without meaning. This morning we'll be looking at the book of Haggai. It tells the story of a group of people who had a clear mission but who were sidetracked from it. But before we look at the Bible, let's look to the Lord, let's pray.
A life without a mission is a life without meaning. The book of Haggai begins by giving a date. (read verse 1) For this date to mean anything to you, I have to give you a little background for this book. The Israelites had been taken into captivity many years before. The Babylonians had besieged and eventually conquered Jerusalem. The city was burned to the ground and the walls were demolished. Most of the people were taken away into exile to live in Babylon. You can read about it at the end of 2 Chronicles 36:15-19:
The Lord, the God of their ancestors, sent word to them through his messengers again and again, because he had pity on his people and on his dwelling place. 16 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. 17 He brought up against them the king of the Babylonians, who killed their young men with the sword in the sanctuary, and did not spare young men or young women, the elderly or the infirm. God gave them all into the hands of Nebuchadnezzar. 18 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. 19 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.
20 He carried into exile to Babylon the remnant, who escaped from the sword, and they became servants to him and his successors until the kingdom of Persia came to power. 21 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.
After 70 years the Babylonian empire fell to the Persians and they had a different policy with foreigners. King Cyrus made the proclamation that any who wanted to return to Jerusalem could do so. They were given the task of rebuilding the temple so they could pray and intercede for the king. The Book of Ezra records what happened. About 50,000 people responded to the call and returned to Jerusalem. As the returned exiles got settled down in their new homes they began offering sacrifices to God, they started gathering supplies of wood and stone to begin building. Then finally after about two years they started the reconstruction of the temple. They laid the foundation with a great celebration. But soon they ran into difficulty.
When the Israelites moved back to Jerusalem, there were people living in the surrounding area. They were a mixed people that the king of Assyria forcibly brought in as immigrants to the land. When they offered to help the Israelites with the rebuilding, the exiles refused. The Jews wanted to keep the temple pure and untainted by Gentiles. Predictably the surrounding people didn't react well to this rejection. They started a program of sabotaging the construction. They even hired people to frustrate the Israelites. They finally sent a formal protest letter to the king of Persia and got the permission to stop the building.
All work on the temple stopped for a period of 16 years. That's when God acted. He sent two prophets, Haggai and Zechariah to encourage and spur the Israelites on to continue with the building. This book is a record of the message given by Haggai. Haggai's message is directed to two of the most important people among the exiles, to Zerubbabel, the governor and to Joshua the high priest.
The Israelites had returned to Jerusalem with a very clear goal. They came to rebuild God's temple. They started well, but then they were forced to stop and hadn't begun again for over one and a half decades.
But we Christians can be often in a very similar situation. We have a very clear mission for life. What would you say is our purpose? Why didn't God just take us up to heaven after we became Christians? Have you ever heard of the shorter Westminster Catechism? It's a series of theological questions followed by answers to those questions. The first question is: What is the chief end of man? The answer is: "Man's chief end is the glorify God and to enjoy Him forever." How do we do that practically? I think we do it through obeying the great commandments and the great commission. What are the two greatest commandments? Jesus tells us in Matthew 22:37: "Jesus replied: 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbour as yourself.'"
What is the great commission? Jesus says in Matthew 2818-20: "Then Jesus came to them and said, 'All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.'"
Our mission is very clear. We are to love God and others and we are to glorify God by making disciples. Now saying that our mission is clear, the specifics differ. Where are we to go, to whom shall we share the message of Christ's love to, and how we are to do it, those all differ. The details may differ but our mission is clear. The problem is that though we have a clear mission we often lose sight of it. We are just like the Israelites. We get distracted and sidetracked. What are those things that sidetrack us from our life mission?
The Israelites started well but they were sidetracked by the opposition they experienced. The opposing people surrounding them compelled them to stop. And they were in that position for sixteen years. In that time, not a brick was placed on the foundation of the temple. Verse two tells the attitude of the Israelites (read verse). They said that it wasn't time yet to start building. In the meantime they had to just struggle to survive. They had to tend their fields and repair and improve their homes. I'm sure they sometimes thought about their mission. Maybe they walked past the foundations of the temple and they were reminded. But they reasoned that it wasn't the right time. They had to wait until they had the perfect situation, until the circumstances were just right. The question is, when would that be? When would be the right time? They had waited sixteen years, how long would they still have to wait?
It was opposition that caused the Israelites to get sidetracked from their mission, from their reason for living. What about us? What are some of the things that cause us to forget about our life mission? Well, I think there are many, but I think a good place to look is Jesus' teaching in the parable of the sower. Do you remember that parable? It's found in Matthew 13:1-23 and in Luke 8:4-15. A farmer goes out to sow seed and it falls on four kinds of soil. Each of the soils represents how people receive the Word of God.
Let's look at each of these soils. First the seed falls on the path and the birds come and gobble it up. Jesus explains that these are people who hear the Word of God but the devil takes it away before they can believe and be saved. How can that happen to us? I think that happens when we hear the Word of God, but then we don't take time to meditate upon it and pray over it until it translates into changes in our life. We don't apply what we hear. James 1:22 says: "Do not merely listen to the Word and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says."
Twice in this passage God tells the Israelites to give careful thought to their ways. They were supposed to examine their lives in light of God's revelation. We need to do the same. We need to think carefully about how the Word of God applies to our life and then obey it. I think one big problem with people who have been Christians for a long time and who have attended church for years, is that our head knowledge is all the way up here, but our obedience and practice is way down here. Just think about how many messages you hear in a year. If you come to church every week, that's 365 sermons. And then there's Bible studies and Sunday school and any messages you hear from the internet. That's a lot of head knowledge. We hear a sermon and we think, "O yeah, I've heard that before." But the question isn't how much we've heard, but how much the Word of God has changed us.
If we listen to God's Word and don't apply it, then it does us no good. In fact, I think it does us more harm than good. My challenge to you is don't listen to a sermon or attend a Sunday school class, or a Bible study, or a discipleship group, without coming out with some plan of action. Have one application you will put into practice. If we don't, then Satan will take the Word of God and snatch it from our hearts.
The second kind of soil is rocky ground. The seed fell on this soil and it sprouted quickly, but when the sun came up the plants became scorched because they had no root. Jesus explains that this soil represents people who receive the Word of God joyfully but because they not are firmly rooted in the faith when trouble and persecution come they quickly fall away. That's what happened with the Israelites Haggai was addressing. They began well but when opposition hit, they got sidetracked from their mission and they stopped building God's house. Problems, hardships, suffering and loss can make us lose sight of our goal. Maybe you've experienced this in your own life.
Maybe there was a time in your life when you made a decision to commit your life to give your whole heart to Jesus Christ and follow Him no matter what. Maybe it was at a conference like TC, or maybe it was during a time of crisis in your life when you hit rock bottom and had not place to turn. And when you made that decision you did it as sincerely as you know how, with all of your heart. But then a couple of years or months or weeks later the reality of life hit. You had a tough break up of a significant relationship or you experienced the death of someone close to you or you prayed with all your might that you might get that job or pass that test or get into that university and it fell through. And then you forgot all about your commitment to God. You just struggled to stay afloat.
When you really commit yourself to follow God, many people get the idea that your life should get easier. The opposite is often true. When you get serious about following Jesus, then you will experience more troubles and problems and persecution. That makes sense if you think about it. If you're a Christian you have a mortal enemy. His name is the devil and he will try to destroy you with every weapon in his arsenal. But the devil isn't like God. He's not all powerful and he can't be everywhere at once. So if you were the devil, who would you focus your attack on: a Christian who is kind of lukewarm and living life for his own pleasure, or a Christian who is on fire for the Lord and sharing his or her faith and living for the kingdom of God? Well the answer is pretty obvious, isn't it? If we decide to commit to Christ with all of our hearts, if we go all in as Christians, then we can expect the devil to attack us first and hardest. And He will use suffering and hardship to distract us. But God has a way of turning Satan's plans around for His glory.
You know that hardships and suffering can either push us away from God or push us closer to the Lord. What makes all the difference is the choice that we make. When we face challenges and difficulties and loss we can either blame God and shake our fist at Him, or we can run to God and plead for His help. You see the devil wants to use opposition, persecution, and suffering to make us turn away from the Lord. But God allows Satan to bring them into our lives so that they can cause us to run to God and depend and trust in Him completely. I think the suffering soul who trusts and depends on God even when they don't know why they are going through this pain and loss, is very precious and beautiful to God. Mother Teresa said, "Pain and suffering have come into your life, but remember pain, sorrow, suffering are but the kiss of Jesus - a sign that you have come so close to Him that He can kiss you." If you are experiencing loss, pain, grief or suffering, it is an invitation to run into the arms of the One who suffered all for you.
The third type of soil is ground that was infested with thorns. When the sprouts came up the thorns choked out the wheat. This kind of soil represents people who hear the Word, but the worries of life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the pleasures of the flesh prevent the God's Word from producing fruit in our lives. I think for many of us these thorns are an ever present reality. Let's look at them separately. First there are the worries of life. At times the pressures of just getting by can take our eyes off the real reason we are on this earth. I think that happened to the Israelites in Haggai's day. The Israelites were sidetracked from building the temple and then they spent their energies just trying to make life bearable in the ruins of Jerusalem.
That happens all the time on the mission field. Often living overseas in a third world country is more challenging than living here in our home country. The missionary has to learn the language and the culture. Often doing simple things like buying food, travelling on public transit, preparing a meal, doing household chores can be a major undertaking. And just living life can occupy all of your time. I remember first arriving in Papua New Guinea and settling into our new home. I didn't know how the water worked. I had to get my neighbour to teach me how to turn on the gas oven. We almost froze to death on the first night because we had only brought along summer clothes, but since we are at 5,000 feet, it got cold at night. I got sick with diarrhea and for a couple of weeks I was either throwing up or sitting on the toilet. Life can easily sidetrack us from our mission.
But this just doesn't happen to missionaries, the worries of life affect us as well. I remember when I was in seminary and struggling through the end of semester rush of assignments and exams. After I finished my last paper I started cleaning up my desk. I took off all my notes that I had pinned to my bulletin board and as I removed them and transferred them to the garbage, I noticed a card pinned to the board. I had forgotten all about it since it was covered up by my notes. It was a commitment card that I had dated and signed several months before. I remembered distinctly what had happened. Our church was having a missions conference with a special speaker. I remember being moved by his message. At the end he gave the invitation to us to commit our lives to follow Jesus Christ anywhere and to do whatever He wanted us to do. He invited anyone who wanted to respond to come forward to that altar. I remember that I was the first one there. To remember our commitment we were given these cards to date and sign. When I had gone forward I was totally sincere, but the busy-ness of life made me forget. Just like my notes covered up the card, so the worries of life sidetracked me from my commitment to give Christ everything.
Has the busy-ness of life distracted you from your real mission on earth? Often for many of us we over-commit in our jobs or school because we believe that we must give our everything so we can succeed. But what are we succeeding at? Are we called in life to get straight A's? Is that our purpose in life? Is our mission on earth to get a senior position in our company? Is that why God left us here on earth after we were saved? No, it isn't. The chief purpose of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. We have to keep the main thing the main thing.
If you are working at school so hard that you don't have time to read the Bible and pray or go to church, then you need to stop spending so much time in school. Let me let you in on a little secret. In the long run of things it really won't matter if you get 80% or 95% in your high school marks. In the long run of things it doesn't matter if you get accepted at Queen's or York. People won't remember or care once you grow up. And God certainly won't be impressed by what school you went to. But when you appear before God, He will ask you, "Did you live for My kingdom and My righteousness?" And at that point nothing else will matter.
What about your job? If you are spending so much time at work that you don't have devotions, or you can't invest time in your family, then you need to change your job. Your reason for living isn't to work at your job, no matter how great or important that job may seem. If you job is adversely affecting your relationship with Christ, either cut back or quit. I know what you're thinking, "How can I support my family if I quit?" Believe what Jesus Christ said in Matthew 6:33: "But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well." You have a mission on this earth and it isn't to win a scholarship or to become president of your company. Your mission is to love God and others with all that you have and to make disciples of all nations. Never let the worries of life distract you from your main goal.
Second there is the deadly distraction of the deceitfulness of wealth. We talked about this last week, but it is so insidious and powerful that I think it would be wise that look at it again. Wealth and money are not just neutral items of exchange and barter. Money has the demonic power to enslave. So many people are sucked in by the deceitfulness of wealth. How many people do you know who have it as their goal in life to be rich? Remember the popular game show, "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire"? I don't know if you ever noticed in the title, there is no question mark. There isn't a question mark, because the answer is taken for granted. It's not question at all. Everyone wants to be a millionaire.
But the pursuit of money will lead to our spiritual destruction. 1 Timothy 6:9-10 says: "People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs."
What's the solution? How can we escape the trap and allure of money? We need to learn to be content. We have to surrender all that we possess to God and instead devote ourselves to do His will. Learn to be generous and give. Giving brings freedom.
Third, there are the thorns of pleasure. The word pleasure is translated as lust in other places in the Bible. Lust is a powerful force that can sidetrack us from our passion for God. You only have to look at stories of the Bible where lust destroyed the spiritual vibrancy of a person who was following God. Samson comes to mind. He had two major character flaws, anger and sexual lust. He was brought low by a woman he was sleeping with, Delilah. I think that God had his eyes put out so that he could no longer look at women in lust. And there is David who committed adultery with Bathsheba and to cover his crime he had her husband murdered. As a result David suffered the heartache of his family falling apart. His oldest son raped his half-sister and was later murdered by her brother Absalom. Later Absalom tried to kill David and take the throne for himself.
And the destructive power of lust isn't just something in the past, it happens all the time today. In fact, I think that sexual lust is at the peak of its destructive power in our western society. I remember befriending a Christian guy in my fourth year of university. He was a great guy, but he was always after girls. He shared with me that when he was in his first year of university, he lived in residence. He said he had a great ministry with the non-Christian guys on his floor. But he said that during that time he also started dating a girl and ended up sleeping with her. He said something interesting: when the guys on his floor found out about his sexual activity, they stopped listening to what he had to say about Jesus Christ.
Sexual lust kills our passion for God and our testimony before others. Today the statistics are staggering how many young people are engaged in sexual behaviour before marriage. And it's even greater the number of people, not just young people who regularly look at pornography. If you are engaged in sexual activity, whether with another person or looking at porn, if you want to follow God, you have to stop. There is no other option.
The good news is there is forgiveness. Jesus Christ died on the cross to pay the penalty for every sin. Often people need help getting free from the addictive power of sexual sin. Let me encourage you to find another person who can pray with you and who can hold you accountable.
There is a fourth kind of soil. It is the good soil that bears a harvest of many times what was sown. This soil represents the people who have noble and good hearts, who hear the word, retain it and by perseverance they produce a crop. These people aren't sidetracked but have a single vision of living out their God given mission to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.
It's so easy to be sidetracked. There are so many different influences and temptations to draw us away from our main goal. What happens when we get sidetracked? Why is it so dangerous to be diverted from our real goal in life. Well we can see what happened to the Israelites in Haggai's time. Take a look at Haggai 1:3-6 (read verses). The Israelites had stopped building the temple, the very reason they had returned to Jerusalem in the first place, and now they were focusing on making themselves comfortable. They lived in houses that were paneled. That means these houses were more than just basic living structures, they also had ornamentation. The Israelites had become sidetracked from their main goal of building the temple of God and now were just trying to live as comfortably as possible in the ruins of Jerusalem.
But even this lesser goal wasn't being met. The Israelites experienced only frustration after frustration. They worked hard at planting crops. They cleared fields, plowed them, planted the grain and they carefully weeded and watered them. But when harvest came they found little crops had ripened. And it wasn't just their crops, but everything seemed to be going wrong. They ate but even as they left the dinner table they were still hungry. They drank, but nothing stopped their thirst. They put on clothes but they were still cold. They worked to earn a wage but they couldn't seem to save any money.
Verses 9-11 explains why the Israelites experienced frustration after frustration (read verses). The reason the Israelites couldn't get ahead, the reason they didn't have any crops, the reason they were disappointed and unfulfilled was because of the Lord. It was His doing. Because the Israelites had neglected building His house, God frustrated all of their other goals and dreams. Because the exiles were busy with their own houses and business and left God's house untouched, then God caused a drought on everything they put their hands to. There was a drought on the land. The fields didn't produce crops. There was a drought on men and animals. The cows didn't have calves and the wives didn't have children. There was a drought on everything they put their hands to. God was using this frustration to turn the Israelites back to Him and back to their true mission, to build the house of God. That's why God tells them twice to give careful thought to their ways. God was using these negative circumstances to get their attention and to call them back.
God uses the same methods today. If we are Christians and we have become sidetracked from our true goal in life, to love God and others and to make disciples of all nations, then God is so loving, He won't let us keep pursuing our dead end goals. He will bring circumstances in our life that will frustrate us and leave us unfulfilled. Someone once said that many people reach the top of the ladder and find out it was leaning against the wrong wall. How many people have reached the pinnacle of success only the find out that achieving their goals didn't satisfy their souls?
A study co-funded by the Gates Foundation, portrays the ultrarich as lost souls burdened by the fears, worries and family distortions of too much money. The respondents to the survey were 120 people with a net worth of $25 million or more. According to an article in The Atlantic, "the respondents turn out to be a generally dissatisfied lot, whose money has contributed to deep anxieties involving love, work, and family. Indeed, they are frequently dissatisfied even with their sizable fortunes. Most of them still do not consider themselves financially secure; for that, they say, they would require on average one-quarter more wealth than they currently possess."
If you are a Christian and you are not living out your mission on earth to love God and others and to make disciples of all nations, then you will never be satisfied. You may buy a big house and even climb to the top of your profession, but there will always be something missing. We were made to live for God and Him alone. If we get sidetracked from our true purpose then we will experience frustration and disillusionment. Maybe you've been experiencing that in your own life. It seems no matter how hard you work, you just can't get ahead. Month after month your fall deeper and deeper into debt. You try working longer hours and taking overtime but nothing seems to help. As soon as you start getting a handle on your finances you get an unexpected expense. Or maybe you've achieved the Canadian dream. You've got the big house with a three car garage. You're financially independent. You've got a maxed RRSP and your family is doing well. But at night, when everyone else is asleep, you wonder, "Is this it? Is this all that there is?"
The Lord would tell you to give careful thought to your ways. It may very well be that God is bringing this frustration into your life to bring you back to your real purpose on earth. What does God ask us to do?
Look at what God told the Israelites to do in verses 7 & 8 (read verses). God tells the Israelites to start building. He was calling them back to their mission. And it wasn't an easy thing that God was calling them to. They were to go up into the mountains, to cut down trees and drag them back down to the construction site and start building again. That's hard work. And not only that but they would have to stop panelling their houses and planting their crops. They would have to quit their jobs and join the construction crew. Not only that but they would have to start facing the opposition of the surrounding people who had stopped them before. When they had quit building they could live in peace, but now they would have to face their constant persecution and attacks. God was calling back the Israelites to their mission. But this wasn't something easy and simply added to their schedules. This called for a total change in the course of their lives.
Do you know something, we are in exactly the same position. God is calling us back to our life mission. And it isn't easy. It isn't something we can just add on to our calendar and think that God will be satisfied. We can't just say, "I'll follow God with all that I have and am. I choose to live my life to glorify Him and enjoy Him forever. So I'll make sure I go to prayer meeting every month. Or I'll have a ten minute devotional time every day." Just adding on a church event or an extra habit isn't going to do it. When God calls us to our mission, He calls us to change the very course of our lives.
I remember when God called our family to the mission field. It wasn't a little decision. In many ways we were doing well. I was working in a growing church. People liked me. We had just got a house a few years before. We finally bought two cars. The kids were settled into Christian schools. What could be better? But I was experiencing frustration at the church. I couldn't follow where the senior pastor was leading. And I felt that it was time for a change. Initially I put out my resume to the denomination to have it circulated among churches. But as time went on I became more and more convicted of my original call.
I had received God's call at a missions conference when I was right out of university. That's what I was gearing my life for and when I met a Christian girl who was interested in missions in teacher's college, I thought I was well on my way. But while in seminary we had our first child more quickly than we expected. I started interning at a church and then they asked me to work part time and then full time. Before I knew it we had three children and I was at the church for almost ten years.
I believe that God brought a new pastor to move me out of my comfort zone. I had become sidetracked from my call to the mission field and the Lord was moving me back. But even as the idea became more and more clear that we were to go on missions, I had many fears. We had to leave our home, our family, and our friends. I had to give up a regular income and trust God to supply the money we needed. And my parents, who weren't Christians couldn't understand what we were doing. We were talking away their only grandchildren to the other side of the world to live in a jungle. But when Ruth confirmed the call to the mission field in her own heart, that was all the reassurance I needed to move ahead. Was it easy to move and return to my life mission? No it wasn't, but I can tell you, coming out the other end, that it was the best thing we could have done. It was worth it.
God gave the Israelites the reasons why He wanted them to build the temple. It would give God pleasure and honour. When we choose to live out God's mission for our life, it will also give God pleasure and honour. That alone should be motivation enough to change our lives.
Where are you this morning? Have you been sidetracked in your Christian life? Is God calling you back to your mission on earth, to glorify God and enjoy Him forever? I don't know what God's call is for you. It may be changing your career and serving God in full time Christian ministry. It may be breaking a relationship that you know is drawing you away from God. It may be quitting a job that is draining away your spiritual life. I don't know the specifics of God's call for you. But I do know one thing, if you are a Christian, God has a plan for your life, and that plan will lead you to love Him with all your heart, to love others as yourself and to make disciples of all nations. That's the best thing you can do, because a life without a mission is a life without meaning.
