Living Life and Missing the Boat

Haggai 1:1-15

I am presently attending a conference we call Pastor’s School. This is an annual opportunity for pastors in my denomination to gather for instruction, encouragement, and worship. This year the focus is on worship. I am thankful for a group of pastors, laymen and wives who love to worship. It has been such an encouragement to me. I have been thinking about worship for a while now, since I was involved in helping to plan the agenda. I want to share some thoughts on worship that will extend through several posts.

WARNING: Necessary background information ahead…

The background behind the Old Testament books of Haggai and Zechariah help us better understand their message. Both of these prophets were sent to the people who had returned from the Babylonian captivity to challenge the people to get back to the work of rebuilding God’s Temple.

In 520 BC Haggai and Zechariah were commissioned to challenge those who have returned from the captivity in Babylon to take up the Temple project again. Begun in 536 BC and abandoned in 534 BC because of their enemies and the challenges of re-establishing themselves in the land, the rebuilding of the Temple had been forsaken.

When Cyrus, the Persian king, gave order that would allow the captives in Babylon to return to Jerusalem, Zerubabbel led some 42,360 people back to their homeland. When they returned, they began laying the foundation of the Temple and planned to finish it. They began the work in 536 BC and halted the building project in 534 BC.

The main reason they stopped working on the Temple was that when they returned, the Samaritans opposed them. They also faced other hardships: a depressed economy, crop failure, difficult living conditions, and the desolation of the land. As time passed it became harder to focus on the rebuilding of the Temple and easier to just try to get through life.

So, for over 14 years they neglected the house of the LORD. They focused on their lives, their economic prosperity, and their future. However, they have not been seeking the LORD and the purpose for which He had brought them back to the land. They were to honor Him by rebuilding the Temple, restoring the priesthood, and re-instituting the sacrificial system in the place where He had chosen to put His Name.

For 84 years, they have been without a Temple, without a functioning priesthood, without a sacrificial system, and they are languishing physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Their worship is inadequate. Some scholars speculate that the synagogue was instituted during the time of the captivity. However, the earliest synagogue discovered appeared in the Hellenistic period around 180-150 BC. I am sure that they found ways to maintain their religion and identity during these times of hardship. But now that they are back in the land, God wants them to rebuild His Temple and reinstitute His system of worship.

In the Introduction to Haggai in the Open Bible we find this description: Finding it easier to stop building than to fight their neighbors, the work on the temple ceased in 534 B.C. The pessimism of the people led to spiritual lethargy, and they became preoccupied with their own building projects. They used political opposition and a theory that the temple was not to be rebuilt until some later time (perhaps after Jerusalem was rebuilt) as excuses for neglecting the house of the Lord.

So in 520 BC, this is how Haggai chastened the people:

“Then the word of the LORD came by Haggai the prophet, saying, “Is it time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, and this temple to lie in ruins?” Now therefore, thus says the LORD of hosts: “Consider your ways! “You have sown much, and bring in little; You eat, but do not have enough; You drink, but you are not filled with drink; You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm; And he who earns wages, Earns wages to put into a bag with holes.” Thus says the LORD of hosts: “Consider your ways!” (Haggai 1:3-7, NKJV)

God is challenging us now to get busy building His Temple, the Church.

“Coming to Him as to a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God and precious, you also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” (1 Peter 2:4-5, NKJV)

In what ways have we been complacent, allowing the cares of this world to cause us to be distracted and unfruitful? Are we so absorbed with getting through life that we fail to “seek the kingdom of God first”?

We need to “consider our ways” and get our focus back on what is really important, what really matters, and what God desires. He wants us to be worshippers and to be proclaiming the gospel that produces worshippers. We need to repent of neglecting the work of God and embrace with zeal the challenge to rise up, worship, and serve Him in spirit and in truth.