At the church where I serve we are in the middle of a
sermon series entitled when God speaks. During this series we are spending our
time together looking at these letters that we
often have a tendency to skip over, which are referred to as the prophets. We
are going to discover who these letters that we have a
tendency to skip over were written to. We are going to discover what these
letters that we have a tendency to skip over reveal about who we are. We are
going to discover what these letters that we have a tendency to skip over
reveal about the nature of God and God’s activity in history. And as we go
through this series, our hope and prayer is that God would move by the power of
the Holy Spirit in our heads, hearts and hands so that we understand and
embrace the timeless and timely truths that these letters that we often skip
over have for our lives.
This week I would like for us to
spend our time together looking at a letter that is recorded for us in the Old
Testament of the Bible called the book of Haggai, which is the next letter that
was written by a prophet chronologically, which is not necessarily the order
that they are found in the Bible, where they are organized by size. So let’s
look at the man and the message of the Book of Haggai, beginning in Haggai 1:1:
In
the second year of Darius the king, on the first day of the sixth month, the
word of the LORD came by the prophet Haggai to Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel,
governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, saying,
Now
to fully understand the man and the message of the book of Haggai, we first
need to understand what happened between the time of the book of Lamentations,
which we looked at two weeks ago, and the book of Haggai. In 609 B.C., King
Josiah, who ruled over the Southern Kingdom of the Jewish people was killed.
After
his death in 609 B.C., King Josiah was succeeded by a series of Kings who did
evil in the sight of the Lord. In spite
of repeated warnings by the prophets, these kings led the Jewish people to turn
from the Lord to worship false gods instead of the Lord. Then, in 586 B.C., the
Lord fulfilled the promise that He had made to the Jewish people, through His
spokesman the prophets, when it came to what would happen if they continued to
follow false gods instead of following the Lord. The Lord rejected the Jewish
people as He had been rejected.
The
Lord removed the Jewish people from the Promised Land and destroyed the Temple
through the Babylonian Empire who conquered that capital city of Jerusalem and
carried away the Jewish people to captivity in Babylon. And from 586 to 538
B.C., the Jewish people lived as a conquered people in that nation of Babylon.
Then,
in 538 B.C., as predicted and proclaimed by the prophet Isaiah, the Persian
Emperor Cyrus, after conquering the Babylonian Empire, began to allow the
Jewish people to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple.
Under the leadership of a man named, Zerubbabel, who was the governor of the
Jewish people, and Joshua, who was the high priest of the Jewish people, some
50,000 Jews returned in 538 B.C. and began to rebuild the temple.
However, after some immediate opposition, work on the
Temple ceased. And, for the next eighteen years, the Temple remained in ruins.
And it is in the context that God raised up two prophets, Haggai and Zechariah
to deliver His message to the Jewish people who had returned from exile to the
Jewish nation. And on August 29th 520 B.C.,
which was the second year of Darius the King, Haggai delivered the first of
four messages from the Lord to the Jewish people. So let’s look at that message
together, beginning in Haggai 1:2-6:
2 "Thus says the LORD of
hosts, 'This people says, "The time has not come, even the time for the house of the LORD to be
rebuilt."'" 3 Then the word of the LORD came by Haggai the
prophet, saying, 4 "Is it time for you yourselves to dwell in
your paneled houses while this house lies
desolate?" 5 Now therefore, thus says the LORD of hosts,
"Consider your ways! 6 "You have sown much, but harvest
little; you eat, but there is not enough to be satisfied; you
drink, but there is not enough to become drunk; you put on clothing, but no one is
warm enough; and he who earns,
earns wages to put into a purse
with holes."
Here we see the Lord, through Haggai, proclaim the
position of the Jewish people when it came to rebuilding the Temple in
Jerusalem: "The time has not come, even the time for the house of
the LORD to be rebuilt." Even though the Jewish people had been back in
the Jewish nation for eighteen years, they proclaimed that rebuilding the
Temple was something that could wait until a later date. “Now is not a good
time to rebuild the Temple; the Temple can wait until later” was the position
of the Jewish people.
However, we see the Lord, through Haggai, reveal the
true reality of the situation in verse 4: "Is it time for you yourselves
to dwell in your paneled houses while this house lies desolate?"
You see, the issue for the Jewish people wasn’t a lack of time. After all, the
Jewish people had eighteen years. And the issue for the Jewish people wasn’t a
lack of resources. After all, in 538 B.C. Cyrus had allowed the Jewish people
to return to Jerusalem and was willing to provide the resources necessary to
fund the rebuilding of the Temple. In addition, as the Lord sarcastically
pointed out, the Jewish people had the resources to build expensive homes for
themselves.
You see, once again the issue for the Jewish people
was their selfishness and rebellion. The Jewish people selfishly chose to
disobey the Lord’s call for them to rebuild the Temple. The Jewish people
selfishly rebelled against the Lord by failing to place the Lord first in their
lives. Instead, despite the Lord’s activity through Cyrus that provided them
the opportunity to return from exile to their own country, the Jewish people
selfishly placed themselves first.
And because of their selfishness and rebellion against
the Lord that placed themselves over the Lord, the Jewish people experienced
economic insecurity from the hand of the Lord. The Jewish people experienced
the economic insecurity that flowed from a series of poor harvests that left
them without enough food, clothing, or financial resources. Haggai then
recorded the Lord’s response to the selfishness and rebellion of the Jewish
people that led to them to place themselves before the Lord in verse 7-11:
Thus says the LORD of hosts, "Consider
your ways! 8 "Go up to the mountains, bring wood and rebuild
the temple, that I may be pleased with it and be glorified," says the
LORD. 9 "You look
for much, but behold, it comes to
little; when you bring it home,
I blow it away. Why?"
declares the LORD of hosts, "Because of My house which lies desolate, while each of you runs
to his own house. 10 "Therefore, because of you the sky has
withheld its dew and the earth has withheld its produce. 11 "I
called for a drought on the land, on the mountains, on the grain, on the new
wine, on the oil, on what the ground produces, on men, on cattle, and on all the
labor of your hands."
Here we see the Lord command the Jewish people to stop
delaying and to start rebuilding the Temple. And is His command, we see the
Lord call the Jewish people to consider their ways. The Lord wanted the Jewish
people to consider that the way that they were living their lives resulted in
economic ruin and poverty. And the Lord wanted the Jewish people to clearly
understand that the reason that they were experiencing economic ruin and
poverty was due to the fact that they had selfishly placed themselves and their
plans before the Lord and His commands. Instead of following and bringing glory
to the Lord by rebuilding the Temple, the Jewish people selfishly chose to
follow and bring glory to themselves by building fancy and expensive houses for
themselves.
The Lord wanted the Jewish people to consider that the
way that they were living their lives resulted in the Lord bringing a drought
upon the Jewish people. And the Lord wanted the Jewish people to clearly
understand that the reason that they were experiencing a drought was due to the
fact that they had selfishly placed themselves and their plans before the Lord
and His commands.
The Lord wanted the Jewish people to clearly
understand that the issue for the Lord wasn’t about wealth or poverty: the
issue wasn’t about whether or not they should have a nice house; the issue was
about priorities. The issue was that the Lord was not the highest priority in
their lives. Haggai then recorded how the Jewish people responded to the message
that they received from the Lord in verse 12-15:
Then
Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high
priest, with all the remnant of the people, obeyed the voice of the LORD their
God and the words of Haggai the prophet, as the LORD their God had sent him.
And the people showed reverence for the LORD. 13 Then Haggai, the
messenger of the LORD, spoke by the commission of the LORD to the people
saying, "'I am with you,' declares the LORD." 14 So the
LORD stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of
Judah, and the spirit of Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, and the
spirit of all the remnant of the people; and they came and worked on the house
of the LORD of hosts, their God, 15 on the twenty-fourth day of
the sixth month in the second year of Darius the king.
Haggai records for us that on September 21st
520 B.C., 23 days after receiving the message from the Lord, the Jewish people
began the work of rebuilding the Temple in Jerusalem. After spending 23 days
finishing the harvest season while preparing and planning how they would go
about rebuilding the Temple, the Jewish people began the work of rebuilding the
Temple. And as the Jewish people began the work of rebuilding the Temple, the Lord
proclaimed a promise to the Jewish people: “I am with you”.
You see, the Lord wanted the Jewish people to clearly
understand the He would be present with them and would empower them to rebuild
the Temple as they strove to place the Lord first and follow His plans and
commands.
Tomorrow we will see Haggai deliver the second of four
messages from the Lord to the Jewish people…
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