In the Jules Verne novel The Mysterious Island, the author tells the story about five men who escape from a prison by hijacking a hot air balloon (www.PreachingToday.com). As the balloon rises into the air, the wind blows it toward the ocean. As the hours pass, the surface of the ocean draws closer and closer. Soon the men realize that if they don’t get rid of some of the weight, they won’t make it to land. So all the nonessentials like shoes, overcoats, and weapons are thrown overboard. The balloon rises slightly, but only temporarily, and soon they’re once again close to the ocean surface. So this time they toss over their food. They figure, "Better to be in the air and hungry than drown with a full stomach." But that solution is only temporary as well, and soon they’re once again sinking perilously close to the ocean. Then one the escapees gets an idea: They can tie the ropes that hold the passenger car and sit on these ropes. That way they can cut away the basket beneath them. As they sever the very thing they’re standing on, it drops into the ocean, and once again the balloon rises. Not a minute too soon they spot land, and they land on the island.
When I read that story, it occurred to me that the escapees’ balloon voyage is a powerful word picture about the need to get our priorities right. So long as we’re safe and secure, the things we surround ourselves with seem important and essential. But when life seems to be sinking toward catastrophe, those things we thought we couldn’t live without seem trivial. The death of my father-in-law two weeks ago reminded me of how important it is to have our priorities straight.
Today we’re going to talk about refocusing our priorities. Today’s message is part one of a three part sermon series on setting our priorities. This sermon series on priorities is part of our church emphasis we’re calling Beyond Every Limit.
I’m anticipating three different kinds of reactions to this sermon series on priorities. Some of you already know that you’re priorities are out of focus, and as you think about this sermon series, you’re afraid. You’re afraid of what God might ask you to do, of what implications rearranging your priorities might mean to how you’re living today. You’re afraid a change in your priorities is going to cause conflict in your marriage or cause you to do without things you really enjoy. If that’s you, I believe God wants to remind you today that he loves you; he loves you more than you can ever imagine. You can trust God, because he’s not out to get you. God wants to do extraordinary things through your life, and you can trust him to guide you in ways that are trustworthy and good. If you’re afraid, trust in God will disarm that fear.
Others of you feel pretty good about where your priorities are, but you know that there’s always room for improvement. You’ve worked hard to align your priorities with the teachings of the Bible. But you also know that keeping your priorities focused is a process, that our priorities can drift gradually away from God’s plan. So even though you feel confident about where your priorities right now, you’re also open to reexamining them, to fine tuning those priorities in any way God might lead you. I believe God wants you to know today that he’s pleased with your faithfulness. He’s honored by your openness to continually reevaluate your priorities in light of the Bible and the leading of His Spirit.
Finally, are some people who are totally convinced that their priorities are just fine and don’t need any reevaluation. Some might even be feeling a little defensive with this sermon series, because you feel like you’re doing just fine in this area. To be honest, up until recently I fit into this third category. I figured I was spending my time and money exactly the way God wanted me to, that this sermon series on priorities would be for other people, but not for me. But the last few weeks God revealed that my attitude was prideful and arrogant. To us who fit into this third category, God’s message to us today is to be humble and open. To not be so proud as to think that we have life all figured out, to be open to refocusing, to taking new steps of faith and trying new things.
Now before we look into the Bible today, I want to remind us what we’re hoping to accomplish these next three weeks of Beyond Every Limit. The purpose of this all church emphasis is to lead our congregation to dream beyond our current limitations and to take new steps of faith. There are several limitations in our congregation that are holding us back, limitations like misplaced priorities, limitations of space, limitations of indebtedness, and limitations in our own vision. Each of our four goals in Beyond Every Limit relates to a limitation we’re facing.
The first goal is to challenge our church members to embrace "Kingdom priorities." Our next three weeks of sermons will directly confront this issue, as we challenge each other to make sure our priorities are in line with God’s purposes. Notice that this goal is directed toward church members, people who consider Life Bible Fellowship Church their church home. If you’re here as a guest, you need to know that the sermons the next three weeks are not directed to you. The next three weeks you’ll be sitting in on some church family business.
The second goal is to relocate our coffee house and install portable classrooms for our adult ministry. This goal is related to our current space limitations. Church consultants say a church should have one acre of land for every hundred people. We’re currently double that, with five acres of land for a congregation that averages about 1000 total people each weekend. It’s because of these space limitations that we have four services each weekend. But we’re especially facing space limitations in our student ministry and our Adult Ministry. Now right now there are no other adjacent properties available for us to buy to expand our acreage, so until there is more land available we’re going to focus on trying to utilize these five acres to their fullest potential. The special offering Pastor Bruce talked about last week and that you’ve been reading about in your Countdown newsletters will go directly to accomplish this goal. We’ll be taking this special offering on Launch Sunday, which is March 23 and 24, the weekend before Easter. We don’t want to incur any further indebtedness, and there’s no reason why a church of our size can’t accomplish this goal without going into debt.
Our third goal is to completely pay off our construction debt by 2005. Back in 1996 we took out a ten year construction loan of 1.7 million dollars to build this ministry center and our back parking lot. We started repaying this loan in 1999, so we’re three years into it. Our current indebtedness as limiting us from some of the areas of ministry we believe God would have us be involved in. We want to pay off that loan by 2005 so resources can be freed up for more ministry and to purchase any adjacent property that becomes available. The focus of the 36 month pledges our church members are making on Launch Weekend will be on this repayment. We want to start making double or even triple payments each month to achieve this goal.
Finally, our last goal is to envision new ministries that will extend the influence of God’s kingdom. At our elder board retreat last month we felt God speaking to us about becoming a Kingdom building church rather than just a church building church. God wants Life Bible Fellowship Church to touch other ministries outside our walls. This fourth goal will be the emphasis of our four banquets coming up tonight, Wednesday, Thursday, and then next Saturday morning. If you consider this your church home, I expect to see you at one of those banquets. And although tonight’s banquet is full, you can still sign up for one of the other three banquets in the courtyard. If you don’t sign up for any of the banquets, don’t be surprised if you get a phone call from me or one of the other staff this week encouraging you to attend. We really believe God would have every LBFC member at one of these banquets to hear the vision.
So that’s what we’re doing, and what we as an elder board are believing God to accomplish. But to move beyond our current limitations, we must embrace God’s kingdom priorities. This is where the Old Testament book of Haggai comes in. Haggai was a prophet God sent to the people of Israel in the sixth century before the birth of Jesus. Earlier the Babylonians had destroyed the city of Jerusalem, destroyed the Jewish temple, and took the people of Israel captive. After seventy years of captivity, a group of people returned to Jerusalem, and at first their priorities were focused, but after time, their priorities got out of focus. Today we’re going to see how to diagnose misplaced priorities, the consequences of misplaced priorities, and the Bible’s solution to misplaced priorities.
1. Diagnosing Misplaced Priorities (Haggai 1:1-4)
Let’s begin with how to diagnose misplaced priorities in vv. 1-4. HERE WE SEE THAT OUR TRUE PRIORITIES ARE REVEALED IN HOW WE SPEND OUR TIME AND OUR MONEY.
The people in Jerusalem thought that their priorities were just fine. Shortly after returning from their seventy year exile they rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem under the leadership of Nehemiah. They also laid the foundation for the Jewish temple under the leadership of the Jewish priest Ezra.
But that was sixteen years earlier. They started out strong, but something happened and they lost their focus. They kept saying, "The time has not yet come to rebuild the temple." They didn’t deny that it was their responsibility, but they kept putting it off for another day. Now we know that those sixteen years were filled with economic struggle and political instability, so to put off rebuilding the temple probably made sense from a human perspective.
Yet God knows that the real problem wasn’t the economy; the real problem was misplaced priorities among God’s people. That’s why God asks them, "Is it a time for you to be living in paneled houses while the temple remains a ruin?" Despite their financial struggles they’d found the time and money to panel their homes. Each weekend they’d go to Home Depot to buy more supplies for more renovations, but all the while God’s temple was no more than a foundation and a pile of rubble.
Now let me just mention how we as Christians should apply a passage like this from the Old Testament. Clearly there is no literal temple today, because God no longer limits himself to a physical structure made of brick and mortar. The Jewish temple that Haggai’s generation would eventually rebuild was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD, and clearly God is not concerned with building a literal temple for his honor today. So it would be wrong for us to say that this building--or any church building for that matter--is the equivalent of the Old Testament temple. According to the New Testament, since Jesus Christ came to the world, the true temple of God is now the Christian community. According to 1 Corinthians 3:16 we ourselves as a congregation are God’s temple. So the equivalent of building the temple for us today is not constructing a physical building, but it’s investing our lives into building the Christian community.
However with that said, obviously in building up the Christian community, we use buildings. Whether it’s a home or a rented hall, a ministry center like this or an office building, we use buildings to strengthen the Christian community. But for us, buildings are not temples but tools for ministry, tools to strengthen God’s true temple. So this building isn’t a sacred place, but it’s a tool for ministry, an instrument to use in order to build up the people of God.
However even though the temple of God has changed from the Old Testament to the New Testament, it’s just as true today as it was back then that how we spend our time and our money reveals our true priorities as God’s people. Our use of time and money is a barometer of our true priorities.
Of course that doesn’t mean that if you give more money to church and volunteer more time for ministry, that we’ll necessarily be more in tune with God’s priorities. I know a pastor who devoted so much time to ministry that he neglected his marriage. In the end he lost his marriage. Clearly my friend’s priorities were just as out of focus as the Christian who refuses to give any time or invest any money. So to say just giving more money and time refocuses our priorities is simplistic.
But our giving is does play a role in focusing our priorities around God’s priorities. The average Christian in America gives less than 3% of their total annual income to ministry. That not only counts their contributions to their local church, but also includes contributions to other ministry groups, non-profit organizations, and missionaries. So clearly there’s a lot of room for most Christians to grow.
I personally believe in the biblical principle of tithing. I don’t believe it was a law like it was for the nation of Israel, but I do think tithing is a principle. When my wife Chris and I went through premarital counseling here at LBF Church in 1983, Pastor Bob challenged us to invest a tenth of our income to ministry. Pastor Bob warned us that if we didn’t establish that pattern when we were young, idealistic and broke, that we’d have a very difficult time making that commitment later. So Chris and I made that commitment to never give less than 10% of our gross income,, and we’ve have tried to live by that principle throughout our 17 years of marriage.
I’m not telling you that you have to tithe, but I am challenging you to evaluate your own giving. Does it reveal that you truly do value God’s priorities?
Far too often we’re today like the people of Haggai’s generation. We claim everything’s fine with our priorities, but our actions betray us. Our date book shows how much we really value our marriage, time with our kids or church’s ministry to other people. Our checkbook reveals how much we really care about the poor or our congregation’s vision for reaching people. Regardless of what we say, how we actually use our time and money diagnoses our true priorities.
2. The Consequences of Misplaced Priorities (Haggai 1:5-11)
That brings us to the consequences of misplaced priorities in vv. 5-11. Here we learn that when we edge out God’s priorities, life stops working for us.
The first command God gives the people is to spend time in self-reflection and evaluation. Haggai is trying to help the people see the cause and effect relationship between their misplaced priorities and the problems that they’re having. Because their priorities were wrong, they were struggling. They had unmet expectations. They expect a lot each time they planted their seed, yet when harvest time came they were continually disappointed with a small crop. They were unsatisfied in their personal lives. They’d eat, but they were never really full. They’d drink, but it was never enough. And they were broke. They’d make money, but as soon as they cashed their check it seemed to be gone. They never have enough to meet their needs.
In fact, it’s because of this struggle that they’re saying, "It’s not yet come for us to rebuild the temple." How can they rebuild the temple when they harvest so little, they’re unsatisfied, and broke? Surely things will turn around soon, and then maybe they’ll think about rebuilding the temple.
But Haggai says they’ve got it all wrong. The ultimate cause of their trouble isn’t just a bad economy or bad luck or bad weather, but the cause of their problems is actually their misplaced priorities. God is the one who’s caused their crops to be smaller than expected. God has caused their economy to struggle. And until they get their priorities straight, life will continue not working for them.
Notice v. 8 again. The result of their misplaced priorities is that God is not taking pleasure in his temple. Instead of a temple standing as a testimony to God’s greatness, there’s only a foundation surrounded by rubble and ruin. God’s pleasure has been robbed. But God’s glory has also been robbed. The Hebrew phrase "be honored" in v. 8 can be translated "reveal my glory." In other words, God’s glory was being obscured by his people’s misplaced priorities. The Bible clearly tells us that God wants to make his glory visible to all people, so they can come to know him personally. But when God’s people have misplaced priorities, God’s glory is hidden and obscured.
We have a 101 excuses for why we edge God’s priorities out of our lives, but in the end we pay a steep price. We rob ourselves of the life God wants for us. Instead of having enough resources to meet our needs, we find that there’s never enough. Instead of God taking pleasure in his Church, we find God’s heart grieved. Instead of the Church revealing God’s glory to a lost world, God’s glory is obscured and shrouded by the misplaced priorities of everyday Christians. When people in the world look at the Christian community they see a bunch of people who pretty much have the same priorities as they do.
It’s been said, "Christianity has not so much been tried and found wanting, as it’s been found difficult and left untried." That statement is nowhere more true than when it comes to this issue of how we use our time and money. The New Testament teaching about stewardship and giving has not so much been tried and found wanting, as it’s been found difficult and left untried.
Just like the people of Haggai’s generation, when we edge out God’s priorities, life stops working for us.
3. The Solution to Misplaced Priorities (Haggai 1:12-15)
Now let’s look at the solution to misplaced priorities in vv. 12-15. Here we learn that when we realign our priorities to God’s priorities, His blessings follow.
Notice realignment to God’s priorities began with the leadership. Zerubbabel was the governor of Israel, and Joshua was the high priest. Only after the leaders got their priorities straight did the rest of the people follow their lead. We see this principle again and again in the Bible, and this is why we believe our pastors and elder board set the pace for the rest of our congregation in this area of priorities. If I as a pastor am not willing to sacrificially give toward a project or a ministry, I can hardly expect anyone else in the church to give sacrificially. If our leaders aren’t honoring God with how they spend their time and their money, they can hardly expect the church to be any different. It’s because of this principle that all of our elders, staff, and volunteer leaders in the church are turning in their commitment to Beyond Every Limit this weekend, because we believe we set the pace. At this week’s banquets we’ll be sharing how much our leadership team has committed, how much they’re setting the pace for the rest of the church.
But notice here that obedience did not immediately lead the people to rebuild the temple. Obedience in this text was to follow the command of v. 5, to give careful thought to their ways. In other words, it began with reevaluation, with seeking God’s guidance on where their priorities were messed up.
This leads the people in v. 12 to "fear of the Lord." In the Bible "fear of the Lord" is an attitude of reverence toward God that leads to trust. Fear of the Lord is loving God with all our hearts, serving him with all our passion, and obeying him as best we can. This is the response God was looking for from his people, both then and now. If Israel had started rebuilding without first evaluating themselves and renewing their trust in God, rebuilding the temple would’ve been meaningless. It was not only important that they rebuild, but it was also important that their motive for rebuilding was the right motive.
Far too often churches forget this when it comes to giving. We forget that genuine generosity flows from a heart that’s fully submitted to the Lordship of Jesus. Biblical generosity is the fruit of Christian growth. When churches forget that, they tend to rely on fundraising techniques to fund ministry. Fundraising techniques use things like bingo nights, raffles, and silent auctions. Churches that rely on fundraising techniques sometimes give public recognition to people who give more money than others. Now there’s nothing wrong with groups like Little League and the Rotary using fundraising techniques, but when we use fundraising techniques in the church, we sell people short of the blessings of spiritual growth. Rather than helping people grow in their devotion to Jesus and generosity, we simply exchange something for donations. I believe that the fundamental reason why churches do this is that they don’t trust their church members to listen to God. At Life Bible Fellowship Church we make a distinction between a giving campaign like Beyond Every Limit and a fundraiser. A fundraiser works on the principle of exchange. In exchange for a financial donation, you get your name on a plaque, or a prize, or public recognition, or whatever. A giving campaign works on the principle of Christian growth. A giving campaign teaches biblical principles about giving, shares the vision with people, and then trusts people to listen and obey God. That’s what happened in Israel in response to Haggai’s prophecy, and that’s what can happen here at LBF Church today.
Now after they feared the Lord, then God stirred their spirits to begin rebuilding the temple. The phrase "stirred up the spirit" in v. 14 carries the idea of waking up a sleepy person, so they’re alert and ready for action (Wolff 52).
When we realign our priorities with God’s priorities, God’s blessings follow. Like with Israel, it begins with renewing our commitment to trust in God. We do this by spending time in reflection, asking God, "Show me where I’m not pleasing you. Show me where my priorities are wrong." This renewal of commitment means renewing our allegiance to Jesus, affirming our commitment to live under his Lordship. Only then, when we’re fully submitted and open to the Lord, does he then stir our hearts to do what he wants.
In Beyond Every Limit that’s what we’re asking you to do, to put yourself in a position of trust and surrender to God, so he can stir your heart. Nothing more, nothing less.
Conclusion
How can we overcome the limitation of misplaced priorities in our congregation? We overcome that limitation by looking at our true priorities that are revealed in our actions. We then look at the connection between our priorities and our lives. And finally we realign ourselves with God’s priorities, so he can stir our hearts to obedience.
