House of the Lord
Haggai 1:1-9
Everyone was excited. The talk had been of building a house of worship and everyone wanted to be a part of it. They talked about what it would like when they had a permanent place to worship, a place to call the House of God. Everyone seemed to be talking about it. And everyone was excited. They could close their eyes and picture what it would be like on that great day, they could see what it would look like as they walked up to the front doors and they knew that this was a good thing.
They understood that sacrifices would have to be made and for the most part people were willing to make them. Not everyone was willing to make sacrifices to see the dream become a reality but most were. And the dream began to materialize, the talk became action and where there had simply been a pile of rubble the building began to take shape.
And then something happened, the sacrifices stopped being made, the construction slowed and eventually stopped and what was supposed to be a place for people to worship and meet with their God was a half completed nothing.
So what happened that was so important that it detracted the people from finishing the task they had been called to do? Was it bad things or evil things that now occupied their minds and their energies? Were they so caught up in immoral actions that they had no time for the things of God? What could possibly have happened that could cause these people to forsake what they knew they were supposed to be about.
It was, are you ready for it? It was life. Simply the busyness of life. Nothing bad or evil it was just stuff. The everyday had replaced the eternal. The secular had replaced the sacred. And as a result the house of God had never been built.
This is the situation the people of Israel found themselves in and the very situation that the Prophet Haggai found himself addressing. This book was written by Haggai, you ever wonder why Prophets never have ordinary names like Bob, this morning we will be reading from the book of Bob. The name Haggai actually means “My Feast” suggesting that he may have been born during one of the many feasts that the Israelites celebrated. The book was written in 520 BC eighteen years after thousands of Jews returned from exile to reconstruct the temple.
Haggai’s intent was simple, he was writing to let the Jews know why they had not been blessed.
So why was that and what does it have to do with us?
The Dream. If you’ve been paying attention over the past couple of months you’ve learned that Israel was divided into two kingdoms after King David and his son Solomon had ruled. That was around 930 BC. There was the Northern Kingdom, to the North and the Southern Kingdom, which of course was to the South. These two separate kingdoms were sometimes called Israel and Judah. The Northern Kingdom, or Israel was conquered by the Assyrians in 722 BC and the Southern Kingdom including the holy city of Jerusalem fell 136 years later in 586 BC. to the Babylonians. Part of the strategies of both the Assyrians and the Babylonians was to take the very best of the conquered population prisoner. And that was the fate of the people of Jerusalem.
But what goes around often comes around and Babylon was conquered by Persia in 539 and the Persian king, Cyrus permitted fifty thousand Israelites to return to Jerusalem to re-establish their city and specifically to rebuild the temple which had been destroyed by the Babylonians.
And they were excited about the prospect of the Temple being restored. Ezra recorded a little of what was happening, Ezra 2:68-69 When they arrived at the Temple of the Lord in Jerusalem, some of the family leaders gave generously toward the rebuilding of God’s Temple on its original site, and each leader gave as much as he could. The total of their gifts came to 61,000 gold coins, 6,250 pounds of silver, and 100 robes for the priests.
Ezra 3:7 Then they hired masons and carpenters and bought cedar logs from the people of Tyre and Sidon, paying them with food, wine, and olive oil. The logs were brought down from the Lebanon mountains and floated along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea to Joppa, for King Cyrus had given permission for this.
Ezra 3:11 With praise and thanks, they sang this song to the Lord:
“He is so good! His faithful love for Israel endures forever!”
Then all the people gave a great shout, praising the Lord because the foundation of the Lord’s Temple had been laid.
We have a dream, it may not be as grand of a dream as restoring the temple was but it is our dream. A dream of having a church building we can call home, a permanent place to worship on Sunday mornings, a place that we can see our children married, a place where Sunday School and Junior Church and Nursery will be able to meet and hang their masterpieces.
And we are one step closer to that dream becoming a reality, our offer has been accepted on the land and on December 15th it will be ours. The clearing will start, a sign will go up and what had simply been a dream will suddenly become an incredible amount of work. The great thing is that because of our time line it will have a beginning and an end.
And you believe in the dream, through our building on Faith Campaign you demonstrated your belief and your faith in what God could do through you by committing over $358,000.00 to that dream over the next three years. And so far you have come to the table with over $ 95,000.00, and that’s great.
I’ve seen you looking at the concept drawings and sometimes explaining them to visitors. What has just been the vapour of a vision over the past five years is starting to solidify into something real. And we all know that it will take sacrifice, sacrifice of time, sacrifice of money and sacrifice of personal preference.
And then everything stopped. Ezra 4:24The work on the Temple of God in Jerusalem had stopped, and it remained at a standstill until the second year of the reign of King Darius of Persia. The Detour All of the excitement all of the enthusiasm, all of the sacrifice just stopped. It was like someone pulled the plug or they had gotten a blue screen of death. One minute it was full ahead and the next minute it was full stop. And there was several reasons for it. There was Opposition, there were people who just didn’t want the project to go ahead, for various reasons. Some felt threatened by the process, others were afraid that they would have to make sacrifices for the project. Regardless of their reasons they were intent on stopping the temple from being rebuilt. And they did their best. They tried to frighten the people and when that didn’t work they tried to discourage the people. They mocked them and made fun of them, ridiculed their efforts said that they would never finish. And then they began spreading rumours about them, rumours that eventually led the authorities to suspect that what they were doing was wrong.
If you’ve been following what has been happening in the life of your pastoral family since we announced that we were going to build you would realize that we’ve faced some interesting circumstances, circumstances that could have distracted us from the vision and the goal or having our own building. And perhaps it has just been a number of coincidences, or may it hasn’t been.
But ultimately it wasn’t the outward Opposition that caused the project to stall it was inward. The people had returned with a clear vision to rebuild the temple. But as they went about the job other things began to take on increased importance. Not bad things, probably even good things. Planting more crops, building bigger homes driving nicer chariots. And pretty soon good things had taken the place of the main thing. And for fifteen years the dream lay dormant and the temple lay half-finished.
And that happens. This is my third church building project. And I’m excited about what is going to happen. And many years ago I discovered that not everybody gets as excited as I do about the prospect of building a new church. When we built in Truro 16 years ago I was just a child, I was a babe in the woods and I wasn’t prepared for the opposition that we faced. Not from bad people, good people, even Godly people, but people who didn’t necessarily share my dreams. And some were very vocal in their opposition, others were quiet and voted with their money or lack of money and others voted with their feet and left the church.
When we were done some of those who had opposed the building publicly threw their support behind what we had done, publicly and some didn’t. Some of those who left came back and some didn’t.
In Brisbane we faced similar reactions. I remember though when we were finished one of my best friends came to me and told me that he and his family were leaving the church. When I asked why he told me that the new move took us beyond a practical distance from their home. We were now a half an hour away and with children in the kids program and the youth program it just didn’t work and so they decided to go to a Baptist Church that was closer to home. And that confused me because they had voted for the move, they had contributed sacrificially to the finances and had been on the site numerous times helping out with construction and painting and providing lunch and snacks for the work crew. And when I asked them about that they told me that the move and decision to get into our own building was the right one for the church, but not for Barry and Joan, and they wanted to do what was best for the church. You gotta love that.
And I’m sure that some of you have noticed that since we have started talking about building that some faces you used to see you don’t see now. And that hurts but I understand it more then I did 16 years ago.
It’s easy to get sidetracked, it’s been seven months since we had the capital campaign, and there are some folks who have been waiting to see if anything was going to happen. Well we will own the land in less then a month, a sign will be up and clearing will start something has happened. So if you haven’t written that cheque yet, now is the time.
Let’s go back to the book of Haggai where the prophet makes an observation and then asks a question Haggai 1:2-4 “This is what the Lord Almighty says: The people are saying, ‘The time has not yet come to rebuild the Lord’s house—the Temple.’ ”
So the Lord sent this message through the prophet Haggai: “Why are you living in luxurious houses while my house lies in ruins?”
So what happens next? What happens when God’s people, called to fulfill God’s vision get sidetracked? Good question, I can’t answer for every situation but Haggai spells it out here. Haggai 1:5-6 This is what the Lord Almighty says: Consider how things are going for you! You have planted much but harvested little. You have food to eat, but not enough to fill you up. You have wine to drink, but not enough to satisfy your thirst. You have clothing to wear, but not enough to keep you warm. Your wages disappear as though you were putting them in pockets filled with holes!
The next thing we need to look at is The Disaster. The people got distracted by life, by everyday things, raising their families, earning a living, building houses and homes. But something went wrong. Instead of getting more they were getting less. The harder they worked the harder they had to work. Every time they seemed to be able to make ends meet someone would move the ends. Why? Was it because they were doing bad things? Evil things? No. So what did God have against people who just wanted to earn a living and get ahead in life? Nothing.
The problem wasn’t what they were doing, it was what they weren’t doing. You see here’s the problem. God allowed the people of Israel to return home so they could rebuild the temple. God blessed them as a people so they could rebuild the temple. And they blew it. They took what was meant for the sacred and they squandered it on the everyday.
Let me tell you a Denn story. When I was in College I was learning to fly, and it was expensive but I was convinced that was what I was supposed to be doing, and God helped me pay for it. I got extra hours at work, things seemed to work out. That summer I received a great summer job and was able to buy what I thought was a dream car but it actually turned into a nightmare. Around September I realized that I hadn’t been flying, and that once my tuition at college was paid for the fall I didn’t have the funds that I needed for flight time.
And so I questioned God, why didn’t I have the money. I was doing what I thought I was supposed to be doing and I had prayed about my need, I had been faithful in making sure I tithed what I made, so where was my flying money? And God directed my attention to my five year, old light metallic green, fully loaded Chrysler Newport.
I had squandered what God had given me on the wrong thing. It didn’t look like the wrong thing, as a matter of fact it looked pretty impressive on the lot, it wasn’t a bad car, or an evil car but it wasn’t what God had given me the money for. It was the worst car I ever owned and I’ve owned some pretty sad cars. I spent major bucks on it, dumped piles of money into it and ended up almost giving it away.
I’m sure that nobody here has ever been in that situation where they prayed that God would provide and he did, and they used it on the wrong thing and then they didn’t get the extra hours they thought they’d get, or the bottom fell out of their investments or the sales weren’t there. And they blamed God.
I wonder if that is why God included Luke 16:9-10 in the Bible? You don’t remember Luke 16:9-10? It says I tell you, use your worldly resources to benefit others and make friends. In this way, your generosity stores up a reward for you in heaven. “Unless you are faithful in small matters, you won’t be faithful in large ones. If you cheat even a little, you won’t be honest with greater responsibilities.
And it’s not just money, it’s easy to give away our time, talents and priorities, things God provided for expanding His Kingdom for the everyday. And we’ve been at this for a long time, we’ve been setting up and tearing down for over nine years. And it’s easy to think “This is never going to happen, we’re never going to get beyond this point.” But now it’s happening. Have you been by the land yet? This isn’t land we are thinking about buying, it’s not land we’re looking at, it’s not land we have an offer on, this is our land.
So what were they to do? For fifteen years they had been doing what they thought was best. For fifteen years they had been neglecting to do what God wanted them to do and what was the end result? The same thing that happens every time we figure that we are smarter then God, every time we trade the sacred for the profane. So what was the offer.
Haggai 1:7-8 This is what the Lord Almighty says: “Consider how things are going for you! Now go up into the hills, bring down timber, and rebuild my house. Then I will take pleasure in it and be honoured,” says the Lord.
The Decision And so the Israelites had a decision to make, would they continue to do what they had been doing, sowing and reaping going on with life while ignoring the purpose and dream God had given them. God could have turned them into little robots who would have done exactly what he wanted them to do without thought or question. But he left them with the choice; just do what you are supposed to do or don’t. It’s up to you.
The benefits of doing the right thing is spelled out in Haggai 2:18-19 “On this eighteenth day of December—the day when the foundation of the LORD’s Temple was laid—carefully consider this: am giving you a promise now while the seed is still in the barn, before you have harvested your grain and before the grapevine, the fig tree, the pomegranate, and the olive tree have produced their crops. From this day onward I will bless you.”
And no I’m not preaching or advocating a prosperity gospel, some type of name it and claim theology. Nope, but it’s very clear through the Bible, the word of God. God provides for his work through his people, he blesses us so that we can bless others through the Kingdom of God. But what happens when we use what was supposed to be for God’s purpose for our purpose? Do you think God will keep handing it out?
You child comes home from school and says “I need twenty bucks to help pay for my free education.” And you give them the twenty dollars and the next day they are back asking for the money all over again. And you ask them, “Where did the twenty dollars go I gave you yesterday?” and they tell you they spent it on junk food and video games, what would your response be? Maybe you’d give them another twenty dollars with a warning about what would happen if it didn’t get to the school. And the same thing happened again. How long would it take you before you caught on and made sure that you got the twenty dollars to the school some other way? Yep, and God is probably at least as smart as you are.
God has given us a dream, and a vision for touching our community. And He has given us the means to do it; all we have to do is be faithful to what he’s asking us to do.
Hope you enjoyed this message, PowerPoint may be available, check out www.powerpoint4preaching.com or email me at denn@powerpoint4preaching.com
