[0:00] Good morning. It's good to be with you today. For the next two weeks, we're going to be looking at the book of Haggai, chapter one today, as we've just heard read. Thank you for that. God's temple lies in ruins. How will God's people respond?
[0:20] Haggai is the first of the three post-exilic prophets. So what this means is that these were the three prophets, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, who spoke after the period of exile in Babylon.
[0:39] Every prophet before this period of exile had been warning the people that judgment would come if they did not repent, and judgment came, and they experienced decades of exile in Babylon.
[0:54] But even in the midst of this judgment, God remained faithful to his people, and in time would allow them to return to their homeland.
[1:06] And this is what we see in Haggai. But we get the historical context for this in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah in our Bibles. So I'm going to try and briefly summarize the important events leading up to Haggai's prophetic ministry, just so that we can get a bigger picture of what's going on here.
[1:27] So at the beginning of Ezra, the Lord moves in the king of Persia. Persia is the new global empire. And the Lord moves in this king to send the exiles home so that they could rebuild the house of the Lord.
[1:43] That is the temple of the Lord. So a remnant of Jews return to their homeland under the leadership of Zerubbabel and Joshua. And upon their return to Jerusalem, they would have found a city left in desolation still by the Babylonians.
[2:03] Even though there were Jews who had been left behind, they were left so poor that they couldn't possibly rebuild. But with the return of the exiles from their long captivity, a new hope was on the horizon.
[2:18] So the people start to rebuild. They lay the foundation. We read in Ezra chapter 3 that when the foundation was laid, the people began to shout for joy.
[2:30] And they could be heard from far away. So far, so good. Everything seems to be going well. But it turns out not everyone is too happy about the rebuilding of the temple.
[2:44] We read in Ezra chapter 4 that a group of people approached the Jews and asked if they could take part in rebuilding the temple, claiming that they too worshipped the Lord, their God.
[2:56] But the Jews refused to be helped. Now there's a couple of reasons why they would refuse. The first is more of a practical reason. The permission from Persia to rebuild the temple had been given specifically to the Jewish people.
[3:13] But another reason is that this group that had asked could they help rebuilding, they were known as the Samaritans. Now the Samaritans shared a lot in common with the Jews.
[3:27] They were monotheistic, so they believed in one God. And they also accepted much of Jewish scripture, although there were some exceptions.
[3:37] But there were still some fundamental differences between Samaritan practices and Jewish practices. And as you read through Ezra, and then especially when you get to Nehemiah, you see that the Jewish leadership is very concerned about an intermingling between these different peoples.
[3:57] And they're quite concerned about the Jews picking up idolatrous practices, especially in light of the fact that they had just been set free from captivity that had been brought upon them as a result of their idolatry.
[4:14] Now if you're thinking this might sound a bit harsh on the Samaritans, it kind of is. The Jews weren't explicitly commanded by God not to allow the Samaritans to help them.
[4:24] You'd want to really have a study of Ezra and Nehemiah to come to a better conclusion as to what they should have done here.
[4:35] But you can at least see where the Jewish leadership was coming from with not allowing the Samaritans to help. But the Samaritans were really not happy about being left out.
[4:49] And they did everything they could to disrupt the rebuilding of the temple, making accusations and complaints against them and bribing local Persian officials to make things difficult for the Jews.
[5:03] And this ultimately stirs up a great rivalry between the Samaritans and Jews, which lasts for centuries. Now the book of Ezra tells us that the opposition from the Samaritans lasted from the time of Cyrus until the time of Darius.
[5:20] So this would have been a period of about 16 years. So the Jews have just spent decades in exile in Babylon in a foreign land, no temple. And now they come home and they have to wait another 16 years to begin rebuilding again.
[5:36] And as we look to the first verse of Haggai, we see that it's in the second year of the reign of Darius that the Lord raises up a prophet called Haggai. And Haggai will bring four messages or four sermons to the returned exiles.
[5:51] So there's a brief history of post-exilic Palestine. I hope that you all feel like experts in ancient Near Eastern history now.
[6:03] But this is the context we find ourselves in as we look to the book of Haggai. Today we're going to be looking at chapter one. And in this chapter, I think we can notice three things.
[6:15] The first is that the sheep have strayed. The second is that the shepherd speaks. And the third is that the sheep obey. So looking to the first, that the sheep have strayed.
[6:28] The opening verses show us how God's people have strayed. Look at me in verse two where they say, the time has not come, has not yet come, to rebuild the Lord's house.
[6:41] How can they say this? Are these not the same people who have just come out of exile from a foreign land? They've spent all these years without a temple.
[6:54] Without the temple, they couldn't worship as they were directed to in their scripture. They couldn't sacrifice and make atonement for their sins as they were directed to.
[7:05] But perhaps most importantly, the temple is where God made himself present among his people. And without the temple, they didn't have this.
[7:19] Now it's true that they did start off with good intentions. They did try to rebuild the temple. They laid the foundations and it was their enemies who put a stop to it. But something different is happening here.
[7:31] There's something different about their attitude. They started to say, it's not the right time to rebuild the temple. Not right now. Not yet.
[7:43] What has caused this change in their attitude? Verse four gives us some insight into what has happened. God responds to their objection.
[7:53] Is it a time for you yourselves to be living in your panelled houses while this house remains a ruin? When their enemies persecuted them, they may have had no choice for a time to turn their attention away from the temple.
[8:11] And they start to work on their own houses. But over time, their houses begin to turn into beautiful, luxurious, panelled houses.
[8:24] While the Lord's house remains a ruin. And over time, their desire to see the Lord's house rebuilt disappears. So much so that they can see the Lord's temple in ruins right in front of their eyes.
[8:38] And yet they still say, not right now. Not yet. It's not the right time. But they have been in front of their eyes. These exiles have only been home for 16 years.
[8:49] And already they've begun to stray. Like sheep, they wander off to where they think the grass might be greener. But they have shirked from their responsibilities.
[9:02] And their priorities have become skewed. Brothers and sisters, does this not remind us of the grim reality that our own hearts are so prone to wander?
[9:15] We're like these people. We can often start off with such great intentions. We start off with great energy and enthusiasm for the work of the Lord.
[9:26] We tell ourselves, we'll pray more. We'll read the scripture more. We'll seek the Lord more. We'll step out in obedience more. And for a time, maybe we do.
[9:39] But as time passes, we so easily stray from the commitments we make to God. And we find ourselves looking towards things in our own life ahead of him.
[9:55] And what is it that takes the place of God when we've strayed from him? In this passage, we can identify that it's our panelled houses. And my word, the world is full of panelled houses, isn't it?
[10:10] The world offers us so many comforts. What are your panelled houses?
[10:20] What are your comforts? Money? Entertainment? Technology? Relationships? What are the things that, in your life, that distract you from the one you were created to worship?
[10:35] What steps are you going to take to remove that panelled house between you and the Lord? If your panelled house causes you to say, like these people, not right now, not yet, to the Lord, then you have an idol between you and the Lord.
[10:54] And something needs to change. And something needs to change for these people. So we see that the Lord speaks.
[11:05] The shepherd speaks. He intervenes by speaking through the prophet Haggai. He starts by telling them in verse 5, Give careful thought to your ways.
[11:19] Now we're going to see this phrase appear a number of times throughout the book of Haggai. And the literal translation of that phrase means, Set your heart to your ways.
[11:31] Set your heart to your ways. God speaks directly to the heart. People today believe that they're being led by their heads, by their intellect.
[11:45] Scripture makes it clear that we're actually led by our hearts. We're led by our deepest desires. And the head only rationalises or justifies what our hearts desire.
[11:59] When we wander off course, it's our hearts that need corrective action. When the sheep wander from the flock to where they think they can find greener pastures, what will the shepherd do?
[12:13] Will he not use his rod and staff to guide his sheep back to safety? This corrective action is how the shepherd cares for his flock. But correction hurts, doesn't it?
[12:26] It hurts because it pierces our hearts. We can see how the Lord's correction might hurt in verse 6, where we see how the people's lives have looked for the last 15 years.
[12:42] Reading from verse 6, it says, You have planted much, but harvested little. You eat, but you never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill.
[12:54] You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it. In verse 6, we see that there are consequences for sin.
[13:08] Isn't there such a sense of emptiness that sin brings in this verse? The people look everywhere for fulfilment.
[13:20] They look for it in their work, in food, in comfort, in wealth, and yet nothing ever satisfies them. Their work in building up their own little world of comforts is never rewarding.
[13:36] The food is never satisfying. Their clothes don't even keep them warm. And they can never save up anything meaningful. Their priorities have splintered in so many different directions.
[13:50] Do you ever wonder why our world is experiencing such a crisis of meaning today? So many people feel a loss of identity and meaning in their lives.
[14:03] We don't know who we are anymore. We don't know what our purpose is anymore. Everyone is just blindly following their own heart's desires. People have no objective sense of meaning in their life anymore.
[14:19] No standard that they're aiming towards. And like these returned exiles, we try to fill that void with so many different things that end up making us feel even more empty than before.
[14:36] What is the solution to the emptiness and meaninglessness that people are experiencing in our world today? The Lord's house needs to be rebuilt in people's lives.
[14:50] Look at me from verse 7 to 11 where we see things from the Lord's perspective. This is what the Lord Almighty says. Give careful thought to your ways.
[15:02] So set your heart to your ways. Go up into the mountains and bring down timber and build my house so that I may take pleasure in it and be honored, says the Lord.
[15:15] 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.
[15:28] While each of you is busy with your 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 olive oil, and everything else the ground produces, on people and livestock, and on all the labor of your hands.
[15:56] In these verses, the Lord gives further detail into the corrective action he's been taking against these people. Again, think of how a shepherd will use his rod and staff to guide his sheep when they wander.
[16:11] However, I think these verses also give us a glimpse into God's very heart for his people. Give us a glimpse into the shepherd's heart for his sheep.
[16:23] See how in verse 8, he commands them to gather timber and to start rebuilding. But why? So that he might take pleasure in it and be honored.
[16:35] Think about those amazing words with me for a moment. The almighty God, creator of everything, dependent on nothing, is pleased and honored by being present among his own creatures.
[16:55] Even though he is so much greater than us, he isn't disinterested in us. We aren't just an afterthought to him.
[17:06] We aren't just an experiment to him. And even in spite of our disobedience, he doesn't abandon us. It is still the desire of his very heart to be present among his people.
[17:22] That is a God who loves us. God is not a narcissist whose ego is hurt by the fact that his people haven't built him a temple yet.
[17:33] That's not what's going on in this passage. God actually wants to dwell among his people, to be present with them. And not just in the sense that he's omnipresent and so he's everywhere at once, but he actually wants to have a particular, manifest, localized, real presence among his very own people.
[17:58] This is pleasing and honoring to him. Think about a parent of adult children who have moved out of home and lived their own independent lives.
[18:10] Is it not pleasing and honoring to the parents when their children come home and visit? When their children make a conscious, free will effort to spend time with them?
[18:22] How much more pleasing is it to the Lord when his children make a personal, free will decision to spend time in his presence?
[18:32] And this is something we cannot take for granted. See how in verse 9 it says, You expected much, but see, it turned out to be little.
[18:44] The returned exiles took for granted that they would be blessed by God by virtue of the fact that they were his chosen people. They took for granted all of the promises God had given to their ancestors, but they didn't realize that these promises were worth nothing without the presence of the Lord their God.
[19:07] Consider these words of Moses in the book of Exodus chapter 33. If your presence, speaking to God, if your presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here.
[19:21] How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me from your people? What else will distinguish me and all your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?
[19:37] What is it that distinguishes the Israelites from all the other people on the face of the earth? The presence of the Lord, the one true God among them.
[19:54] Are you beginning to see why it was so important for these people to rebuild the temple? And can you see how skewed their priorities must have become for them to shun the one thing that was setting them apart from all other peoples?
[20:09] The one thing that gave them a sense of meaning? Friends, if we do not have the presence of the Lord, then what do we have?
[20:21] Seriously, what gives your life meaning if you do not have the presence of the Lord? To know the presence of the Lord should be our one desire.
[20:34] Consider the words of the psalmist in Psalm 27, verse 4. One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.
[21:00] What a privilege it was for these people to know God, to have access to his presence through the temple. And yet still they chased after other comforts.
[21:13] But again, this should remind us of us, shouldn't it? We are the new covenant people of God, aren't we? Do we not have access to the presence of the Lord?
[21:27] In Christ, we have been given a new and greater temple. Through Christ, we can know God intimately.
[21:38] And still we seek other comforts ahead of him. It's like waking up one day on a tropical island with beautiful weather and amazing scenery.
[21:52] And instead of going out and exploring this island that you've woken up on, you shut yourself away in your hotel room. And you draw the curtains and you just scroll through Facebook all day.
[22:03] Everything we could possibly want or need has been fulfilled in Christ. Why would we ever allow anything to come in the way of us and him?
[22:24] So how will the people respond to this word? Look with me in verse 12. Then Zerubbabel, son of Shealtiel, Joshua, son of Josedach, the high priest, and the whole remnant of the people obeyed the voice of the Lord their God and the message of the prophet Haggai because the Lord their God had sent him and the people feared the Lord.
[22:53] I want to draw our attention to two aspects of the people's repentance in this verse that I think we can learn from. The first is that the people obeyed the Lord and the second is that the people feared the Lord.
[23:09] Obedience. Obedience is a fitting response to correction. When the shepherd guides his sheep back to the proper path, will they push back against them?
[23:20] Will they stiffen their necks against him? Or will they be soft-hearted and allow their wandering to be corrected? Repentance is something that takes place in our hearts, but it is shown in outward obedience.
[23:37] It is a change in your heart that leads to a change in your actions. If I've wronged you in some way and I come to you and repent and ask for your forgiveness, and then I continue to act in the same way against you, you have every right to say that I haven't repented.
[23:55] In response to Haggai's message, the people didn't just wallow in self-pity, and they didn't just pay lip service to God, but they took action. We see at the end of verse 14, they stopped saying no, not yet, to rebuilding the temple, and they got to work.
[24:12] That is repentance. Now, it is important to strike a balance here. It is appropriate also to lament our sin. If we don't feel any sorrow at all towards our sin, there's a problem there.
[24:27] But it doesn't have to end with sorrow. Your sorrow should and can lead to real change. Don't just wallow in self-pity over our sin.
[24:41] Don't try to pay penance for our sin by showing God how sad we are about it. Just obey. Notice how in verse 14, the Lord stirred up the spirit of the people to act on their repentance.
[24:57] For new covenant believers, it is the spirit of the Lord himself that we have been filled with, who empowers us to true obedience.
[25:08] In John chapter 8, Jesus says, Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever.
[25:22] So if the son sets you free, you will be free indeed. Christ did not just come, just so that we could be forgiven of our sin.
[25:34] He did come to forgive us from our sin, but he also came so that we would be set free from our sin and so that we would become a member of the family of God, adopted by the Father, through the work of the Son, by the power of the Spirit.
[25:54] We are no longer slaves to sin. We have been equipped with everything we need to live in obedience. So that's obedience.
[26:05] We also have fear is a way that these people respond. Fear is also an appropriate response to the Lord's correction.
[26:16] The constant refrain of the book of Proverbs is that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And this passage gives us a glimpse and to why that is the case.
[26:28] We've seen the lack of wisdom in pursuing worldly comforts over pursuing the presence of the Lord in this passage, haven't we? We've seen where it leads these people, planting with no harvest, eating and drinking, but never satisfied, clothed, but never warm, never able to hold on to their savings.
[26:49] So what is the solution to their skewed priorities? Fear of the Lord. Fear is the proper response to God's wrath, justice and correction.
[27:02] The Lord is not a good luck charm. He's not a free ticket into heaven. He is the maker of the heavens and the earth, of all things seen and unseen, of mountains and valleys and rivers and oceans and planets.
[27:18] He causes kingdoms and governments to rise and fall and he demands obedience from his people. And when the people heard the word of the Lord spoken through the prophet Haggai, they realized his wrath was upon them.
[27:36] So their fear was a very appropriate response. In fact, they had lived without fear of the Lord for too long. Living in fear of the Lord is very simple.
[27:50] It's recognizing who the Lord is, recognizing what he requires of you, and realigning our priorities in light of that reality.
[28:03] And finally, we see that when God's people do repent, when they reprioritize him over all things, over all other comforts, when they live in fear and obedience to him, the Lord immediately pledges his presence to them.
[28:25] See at the end of verse 13, I am with you, declares the Lord. Friends, our God is a gracious God who is quick and eager to forgive the sins of a truly repentant people.
[28:43] That is the God we serve. God is not a distant God. He isn't just looking down on us from afar, waiting for us to mess up so that he can condemn us.
[28:56] And when we do repent, he doesn't forgive us while keeping us at a distance and holding his nose. The Lord generously grants his presence to his people.
[29:07] He doesn't wait until we've proved ourselves to be worthy. Notice how Haggai brings the word of the Lord on the first day of the month, as you'll see in verse 1, but it isn't until the 24th day in verse 15 that they actually begin to rebuild the temple.
[29:24] God knows the hearts of his people. He knows that there was true repentance in these people that would lead to obedience, and he immediately pledged his presence to them.
[29:38] While the temple is important in what it represented, it isn't so much the building itself that God was concerned about, but the hearts of his people, their devotion to him.
[29:49] That is what he values. So when they repented and when they put him first in their hearts, immediately, he promised he was with them. He doesn't wait for them to finish the temple.
[30:02] He doesn't even wait for them to get started on the temple. He generously granted his presence to them. Again, it is pleasing and honoring to God to be present among his people.
[30:19] And we see that most clearly in the person of Christ, don't we? Jesus Christ, the Son of God who took on human flesh, came and lived among us, fully God and fully man, lived a perfect life, never sinned, and yet surrounded himself with sinners like you and me.
[30:40] He was a friend to them and he loved them. Jesus, although he was God, as we read in Philippians 2, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage.
[30:54] Rather, he made himself nothing by taking on the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.
[31:13] That is the length to which our God has gone so that we might be saved from our sin and united with him. The Father did not even spare his own son for our sakes.
[31:29] He has not held anything back from us in any way. He has not held himself back from us in any way. Do not reject his mercy.
[31:41] Draw deeply from the well of salvation that has been given to us in Christ. It never runs dry. He is willing and eager to grant forgiveness to you.
[31:58] His mercies are new every morning. It is more pleasing and honoring to Christ than we could ever fully comprehend on this earth when a sinner turns from their sin and turns to the Lord for forgiveness.
[32:17] and is brought into the presence of God. Let's pray. Lord God, we are in awe of your glory.
[32:36] We are in awe of how gracious you are. How you graciously grant your wonderful presence to us. you have graciously granted Christ to us.
[32:50] You have graciously granted your spirit to your people to empower us unto true repentance. Lord God, help us to take these words to heart.
[33:02] Help us to take Haggai chapter 1 to heart. Help us to set our heart to our ways that we might not just be hearers of the word but doers of the word. Lord God, we pray all this in the name of your precious Son Jesus.
[33:18] Amen. Amen.