Over the next three weeks we are going to be looking at the
book of Haggai. I’ve called the series “Out Of The Ruins Renewal: The Book of
Haggai For the Church today”. Haggai speaks to the people of God at one of the
low points of their history. Jerusalem and the temple had been destroyed, the
people had been away in captivity in
Babylon for seventy years, the political scene was changing with the rise of
the Persian empire, and now a rag tag
remnant had come back home and were eking out an existence amidst the ruins of
what used to be. They are a struggling people with a struggling leadership.
Haggai’s message is one of renewal and of hope, it’s a call to put their faith
into action. In four short messages over a six month period, that’s all we know
of Haggai and his ministry, Haggai inspires that remnant to take on the amazing
task of rebuilding the temple, symbolic of renewing themselves as God’s
peoples: Renewing their witness to the greatness and the goodness of God.
People had come back to Jerusalem from exile and they had
started to rebuild their lives amongst the ruins. They had restarted
agriculture and kick started the economy and trade, started rebuilding the
infrastructure and a living for themselves. That was their focus. Some of them
had obviously started to do quite well and had got to a certain level of
prosperity as they had start to build
more than just basic shelter, rather houses of panelled wood. The focus was to
get ahead financially. Peter Craige says that the focus was on themselves
individually, this meant that they had no thought of rebuilding the temple in
Jerusalem, that they had not put the worship of God as a central priority in
their lives.
Now throughout the psalms that come from the time of the exile there is a longing to go back to Jerusalem to worship God, what kept them going and together was that they were God’s people. But as they had come back they found that they had new priorities, they found themselves coping with a harsh economic reality which more than their faith shaped their priorities.
We live in a society with that same priority. That sees
fulfilment in terms of standard of living and personal financial security. Some
people just get by, others do quite well and many struggle. We live in an age where
we are promised so much but in reality it delivers so little. Technology was
supposed to make life simpler but do you see people working less.
Christian thinker Ronald Sine’s says that the way we live in
suburbia is not moral neutral. He says we value individuality, consumerism,
privacy, conformity and exclusion. That few Christians recognise that their
communities have values that run contra to their biblical faith. He goes on to
say that while he knows many Christians who faithfully maintain a vibrant
faith, moral integrity and church attendance in the suburbs, but that their
values and priorities differ little from the society around them. That many
churches while doing quite well in this environment, end up being little more
than chaplains for the dominant culture. They have lost their identity as God’s
people and their mission and prophetic edge.
God uses Haggai then to call the people to a new priority,
to a new policy. On the first day of the sixth month he brings a word to the
leaders of God’s people, both civil, in the form of Zerubbabel, a member of the
Judean royal family and governor of the district and religious in the form of
Joshua the high priest. It would have been in public setting, scholars believe
that the first day of the month would have been a public gathering of some
kind. He says that God hears what the
people are saying…”it’s not time to rebuild the house of God”. He calls the
people to think carefully about the way they are living, and points out that
the reason that they are not finding prosperity and fulfilment in their
priorities and plan is that they have forgotten that at their very centre,
their identity is as God’s covenant people. How can God bless them when they
are not putting that first in their lives? In fact Haggai in verses 9-11 says
what they are experiencing with drought and famine are the consequences of
forgetting their covenant relationship with God.”
Haggai calls them to a new priority in their lives. Rebuild
the temple. Their focus was wrong, they thought that God would bless them and
out of that they could then focus on being God’s people. But God’s priorities
are the other way round. This is the right foundation for our lives. As we saw in our New testament reading from
the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus affirms that priority, why worry about what you
will eat, what you will wear, rather put first the Kingdom of God and his
Righteousness and all these things, all the stuff that can take all our time
and energy, will be added unto you.
One of the things I love about the book of Haggai is that it
is one of the prophets which we are able to see people’s reactions to their
message. It says that Zerubabbel and Joshua and all the people, obeyed the word
of the Lord. They heard Haggai’s word and believed that it was from God and so
they feared the Lord. God was speaking to them again. So they started to
rebuild the temple. How do we respond to
the word of the Lord through Haggai today? How does our commitment to Jesus
manifest itself as a priority in our lives? How does that work itself out? In serving in
church and the community? In the relationships we invest time in? In how we use
your resources? In time spent? In sharing our faith with other people?
We tend to hold onto the “I am with you” promise like it was
a sunny summer day and we forget that is what makes the commission possible,
that we are called to be disciple makers and Christ’s presence through the Holy
Spirit is what enables us and empowers us to do that.
Can I say one of the things that amazed me last year is the
way God has stirred peoples spirits in
this Church to take up different ministries, like Kathryn with the cook nights,
and other things like mainly music and sporty for kids;
My hope is that God would continue to renew our priorities my
hope is that the Spirit may stir us up again as we focus on Christ.
