"Who Deserves the Better House?" Sermon: Haggai 1:1-15

“Who Deserves the Better House?”

[Haggai 1:1-15]

October 2, 2011 Second Reformed Church

            What excites you?  What do you get so much joy out of that you would be willing to do for free, if you were able?  If you had a billion dollars, tax free, what would you do?  What gives you joy?  I suspect some of us are thinking, “I would do nothing.”  Or, “I would just watch TV,” or “I would just lie about the beach,” or something like that.  But that would grow old – doing nothing, merely being on vacation or being retired – eventually – if you didn’t do anything, it would not be enough.  What gives you joy?

            We recently looked at the book of the prophet Zephaniah, who was preaching about 600 B.C.  And we saw that he was telling the people of Judah that if they didn’t repent and turn back to God, they would be taken off into captivity.  About one hundred years earlier, Isaiah prophesied, “I will profane the princes of the sanctuary, and deliver Jacob to utter destruction and Israel to reviling” (Isaiah 44:28, ESV).

Between 605 B.C. and 586 B.C., God sent Israel into captivity by the Assyrians, and then Judah by the Babylonians.  No one was left in Israel and Judah except for the poorest of the poor – the people who never would have been noticed before the exile. Still, God promised to bring a remnant back.

And God kept His Promise:  in 538 B.C., led by Zerubbabel, Ezra, and Nehemiah, about 50,000 of the millions who were taken into captivity returned to the land and began to rebuild the nation – and they did so with the blessing and the support of Cyrus, the King of the Persian Empire.

Ezra records:  “In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and also put it in writing:

“Thus says Cyrus king of Persia: The LORD, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever is among you of all his people, may his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and rebuild the house of the LORD, the God of Israel—he is the God who is in Jerusalem. And let each survivor, in whatever place he sojourns, be assisted by the men of his place with silver and gold, with goods and with beasts, besides freewill offerings for the house of God that is in Jerusalem” (Ezra 1:1-4, ESV).

About two hundred years before Cyrus came on the scene, Isaiah wrote, “Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer, who formed you from the womb:  ‘I am the LORD, who made all things,        who alone stretched out the heavens,    who spread out the earth by myself, who frustrates the signs of liars and makes fools of diviners, who turns wise men back and makes their knowledge foolish, who confirms the word of his servant and fulfills the counsel of his messengers, who says of Jerusalem, “She shall be inhabited,” and of the cities of Judah, “They shall be built, and I will raise up their ruins”; who says to the deep, “Be dry; I will dry up your rivers”; who says of Cyrus, “He is my shepherd, and he shall fulfill all my purpose”; saying of Jerusalem, “She shall be built,” and of the temple, “Your foundation shall be laid”’” (Isaiah 44:24-28, ESV).

So God used Cyrus, the King of Persia, to free God’s people and send them back to the land that God gave to them, to rebuild the Temple, and all of Israel.  What happened in the years immediately following the exile is recorded in the historical books of Ezra and Nehemiah and in the prophetic books of Haggai and Zechariah.

From the historical books, we know that the people began to rebuild the Temple, beginning with the altar, so they could offer sacrifices.  And we know that they worked diligently and sacrificially.  Ezra records, “According to their ability they gave to the treasury of the work 61,000 darics of gold, 5,000 minas of silver, and 100 priests' garments” (Ezra 2:69 ESV).  Gold was the major item they gave.  Now, remember, these people had just come out of exile.  61,000 darics of gold is about 1,100 pounds.  Based on this weekend’s sale price for an ounce of gold, in today’s money, these 50,000 exiles gave $29.9 million in gold.  They were passionate about rebuilding the Temple and worshipping God; they were joy-filled in giving the gold for the rebuilding of the Temple.

And for two years, they worked to restore the Temple.  But, then, neighboring countries began to get nervous about Israel’s rebuilding, so they pressured the people to stop the rebuilding.  And then Cyrus died; they lost the support of the Persian Empire.  The pagan nations encouraged the Israelites to rebuild their own houses first, to meet their own needs first, and to take a little time to enjoy themselves first.  “After all, you’ve been in exile; you deserve a break.”  And for the next fourteen years, they ignored the Temple and her repairs.

This morning’s Scripture begins sixteen years after the people returned, fourteen years after they had given up the work that God sent them back to do – with all of the supplies from Cyrus and the nations.

“In the second year of Darius the king, in the sixth month, on the first day of the month, the word of the Lord came by the hand of Haggai the prophet to Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest: ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts: These people say the time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the Lord.’”

“Lord, we believe in Your Work, but this just isn’t the right time.  You don’t know what it’s like to work on a budget.  You don’t know what it’s like to have to pay bills.  Maybe I can give to missions next month.  Maybe I can give to the building fund next month.  Maybe I can give next month.  I’m paying for school and prescriptions, and .…  What Lord?  My time?  Well, now isn’t a good time.  My daughter is going to be in a show next month, and I have to give all my time to rehearsing with her.  I have to visit family today.  I have to paint the walls of my den.  I have to buy a present for my mother.  I need to wash my hair.  Maybe I can help with the yard work next month.  Maybe I can do jobs around the church next month.  Maybe I can clean next month.  Let’s see about next month – right now, I don’t have the time or the money to do anything.”

They were lying.  Maybe they had deceived themselves.  Maybe they were afraid.  But they were lying.

“Then the word of the Lord came by the hand of Haggai the prophet, ‘Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, while this house lies in ruins?’”

God said, “Wait a minute:  you’re spending lots of time and money making sure your house is fixed up.  And I don’t mean that you are doing those things which are necessary to make the house a safe shelter for you and your family.  You are spending time and money installing paneling in your homes.  You are spending time and money doing things to make your house as nice as or nicer than the Jones’, while My House lies in ruins.”

Understand, it was not a sin for them to panel their houses.  Their sin was putting paneling their houses – and all the unnecessary things they were doing – above rebuilding the Temple.  It is not necessarily a sin to do things that please us – God has given us this world – all of Creation – to enjoy.  But it is a sin when we put our enjoyment over God and His Will for us.

  “Now, therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider your ways. You have sown much, and harvested little. You eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm. And he who earns wages does so to put them into a bag with holes.”

The Israelites were working hard – they were working hard to please themselves – to provide all kinds of unnecessary things for themselves for their pleasure.  Bigger boats, bigger houses, saunas, swimming pools, Mercedes, BMWs, going to the right clubs with the right people for the right events.  But they were miserable.

They were working twenty-five hours a day, but it wasn’t enough.  “If there were only more hours in the day; if I could only clone myself.”  They were eating themselves into obesity, but they weren’t satisfied.  They were drinking themselves under the table, yet, when they woke up, they needed “another.”  They had hundreds of dresses and suits and pairs of shoes, but they look at them and said, “I have nothing to wear.”  They made six-figure salaries, but the money “burned holes in their wallets.”

Notice, the problem was not that they were lacking anything.  God had blessed them beyond all reason, and they were fat, drunk, dressed to the nines, and miserable.  Still, they thought they didn’t have enough of anything yet to return to the work that God had set before them.  They were ungrateful.  Abusive.  Self-abusive.  Empty.

Still, these were God’s people – this is the Church.  You and I can get caught up in our “stuff” – and neglect the work and the worship of God.  You and I can make things which are good into sin by valuing them more than God.  What stops you from coming to Second Reformed Church more frequently?  What keeps you from being more generous with your money and your time?  There are real emergences – there are real needs – that must be addressed.  But we need to ask ourselves if we have gotten caught up in paneling our houses to the neglect of the House of the Lord.  After all, who deserves the better house?

Do we ever think:  if I only get this one thing done, then I’ll go to church.  If I buy one more of these, then I will give more money to the church.  If I just one more, one more, one more….  Have we become addicted to putting paneling on our walls?  Have we made having our homes magazine worthy an idol?  Or anything else?  What are you obsessed with?  Where do you spend your time and money?  Where do you overspend your time and money?

Let me give you a personal example:  I love books.  I love the feel of books and the look of books.  I love reading books and learning from books.  And that is a good thing.  I am called to preach and teach and study as a pastor.  As a Christian, I am to do everything I can to know God better and to become more like Jesus.  Books are wonderful things.  But, for me, there is a danger of enjoying books to the neglect of God.  I have to always be on guard against my books becoming idols for me.

Putting it humerously, I would be committing idolatry and neglecting God if I said to myself, “I’ll increase my giving to the church after I buy this book on financial stewardship.  I’ll spend more time working and teaching at the church once I buy and read this book on time management.  I’ll just skip worship this morning so I can read this book on loving God.”  And so forth.

What keeps you from taking part in the life and worship of God’s Church?  You may get distracted – obsessed with something that is perfectly fine to do or buy or enjoy, but when it displaces God, when it makes us neglect God, His Worship, caring for the things He has given us and the people He has brought us into fellowship with – then we are sinning.

Television is not necessarily wrong, but if you say you can’t read your Bible, you can’t come to worship or Bible study or something else that is going on because you cannot miss your show, then you are sinning.

And that’s not to say that sin isn’t pleasurable – it is – most people wouldn’t sin if it weren’t pleasurable.  But here’s the thing about sin – the pleasure we receive from it is fleeting – at best.  God told Israel – their stomachs were never full, their thirst was never quenched, they were never warm, and they never had enough money.  Sin cannot satisfy.

But the creatures of Heaven are satisfied; their joy is full.  Why? 

John wrote, “And before the throne there was as it were a sea of glass, like crystal.  And around the throne, on each side of the throne, are four living creatures, full of eyes in front and behind: the first living creature like a lion, the second living creature like an ox, the third living creature with the face of a man, and the fourth living creature like an eagle in flight. And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all around and within, and day and night they never cease to say, ‘Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!’ And whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to him who is seated on the throne, who lives forever and ever, the twenty-four elders fall down before him who is seated on the throne and worship him who lives forever and ever. They cast their crowns before the throne, saying, ‘Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created’” (Revelation 4:6b-11, ESV).

True satisfaction – true joy – comes in worshipping God – which is what all of God’s people will be doing eternally in the Kingdom.

            “Thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider your ways. Go up to the hills and bring wood and build the house, that I may take pleasure in it and that I may be glorified, says the Lord. You looked for much, and behold, it came to little. And when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why? declares the Lord of hosts. Because of my house that lies in ruins, while each of you busies himself with his own house. Therefore the heavens above you have withheld the dew, and the earth has withheld its produce.  And I have called for a drought on the land and the hills, on the grain, the new wine, the oil, on what the ground brings forth, on man and beast, and on all their labors.”

            God told Israel to get up and get back to work – restore the House of the Lord.

            And we might wonder why – why is God so intent on having a house – a temple?  Didn’t God tell David, “Go and tell my servant David, ‘Thus says the LORD: Would you build me a house to dwell in? I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent for my dwelling. In all places where I have moved with all the people of Israel, did I speak a word with any of the judges of Israel, whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying, ‘Why have you not built me a house of cedar?”’ (2 Samuel 7:5b-7, ESV).

            And didn’t Jesus say,  “Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:21-24, ESV)

            And Paul said, “The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man” (Acts 17:24, ESV), and “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own” (1 Corinthians 6:19, ESV).

            The point is not that God was looking for a place to stay; God doesn’t need temples or sanctuaries.  But God told Israel He wanted the Temple rebuilt for two reasons:  first, it pleased God to have a temple on the earth, and second, God was glorified in having a temple on the earth where His people could come to worship Him.  And God’s being glorified is the most important thing to God.

            So God told Israel that He had taken their blessings away:  there would be no more grain or wine or oil until the people got back to work.  That meant there was no food for the people or the animals.  It also meant that there were no provisions for offering the grain sacrifice.  God cut the people and the animals off from food and worship until they got back to rebuilding the Temple. 

“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 feared the Lord.  Then Haggai, the messenger of the Lord, spoke to the people with the Lord's message, ‘I am with you, declares the Lord.’  And 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, on the twenty-fourth day of the month, in the sixth month, in the second year of Darius the king.”

Twenty-three days after God confronted Israel, rebuked them for their sin, and withheld provisions, Israel repented and got back to the work of the Lord and His Worship.

What will it take for us to turn away from those things that take us away from the work and worship of God?   What will it take for us to see that our joy and our satisfaction can only be met in God and following after Him wholeheartedly?

Keeping up with the Jones’ will never satisfy; we will never find real joy in pursuing things that take us away from God.  If you and I desire real satisfaction and everlasting joy, let us work hard to find ourselves in the Presence of God, as His obedient sons and daughters, in all the ways the God calls each one of us to live.

Let us pray:

            Almighty God, You have promised to give Your people abundant, everlasting life, and still we turn away from You, looking for something better.  We tell You that You can wait while we enjoy things that only harm us.  Open our hearts and minds that we might understand that You are our Joy and Satisfaction.  Show each of us how we might be more joyful in You, by making You and Your Kingdom our first priority.  For it is in Jesus’ Name we pray, Amen.