Have you ever felt like you have worked hard and figuratively it seems like there is a hole in your purse/wallet? This is what the LORD says is happening in Haggai 1.
5 Now this is what the Lord Almighty says: “Give careful thought to your ways. 6 You have planted much, but harvested little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it.”
But now he is going to explain to them why this is happening.
It’s because when they returned to the land of Israel, they rebuilt their homes which was good. Except as they continued to build and build their homes, adding fancy paneling and other things, the house of the LORD was neglected.
“Later,” they kept saying. “It’s not time yet.”
But after a time of grace, the LORD used calamity to bring them to a state of awakeness that something was off. But they weren’t getting it so he had to spell it out for them.
They were spending all their time on building their own houses and really just makes excuses to rebuild the temple. So for this the LORD was bring frustration to their work.
9 “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, while each of you is busy with your own house. 10 Therefore, because of you the heavens have withheld their dew and the earth its crops. 11 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.”
This gave me pause on two levels. Why does God do things like this? At least to Israel.
If we remember he had to send them into captivity because of their evil. They were worshiping gods other than him to whom they were in covenant, and these gods were always about doing evil.
The promise of their return to Israel was that they would be a people who would once again seek the LORD (Jer 29).
10 This is what the Lord says: “When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my good promise to bring you back to this place. 11 For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. 12 Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. 13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. 14 I will be found by you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.”
But in the euphoria of returning back to the land, they were already in little more than a year already neglecting the role of God in their life to whom they had made covenant.
The thing is that we are worshipers by how we are created. If we do not worship God, we will find something else to worship. Typically that worship is our lusts and desires.
If God had let them continue to neglect worship in their lives, how long do you think they would drift back to their sinful ways? Fairly quickly for sure.
And how do you wake up a covenant people? In a nation? Through discomfort. And that’s what he brought to them. Discomfort so that they would seek him and ask him why.
It’s not that comfort equals right relationship with God. It doesn’t as we see clearly in their lives pre-exile. And In fact we have warnings that comfort can be a temptation to forget god (Deut 8:1-10). History proves this out. The church tends to grow and do well in every condition except one. Prosperity. Somehow prosperity causes us to tend to forget God or be arrogant in thinking prosperity is of our own doing. Blessing is good until it becomes a stumbling block.
But yes. In this case the discomfort was to shake them to seek Him. Then the LORD sent a message through the prophet Haggai: Rebuild the temple. Don’t neglect the priority of worship.
And that’s the second pause I had. The place of worship in our lives.
We live in the new covenant now so it’s no longer about the temple. The people of God are the church. But there’s the place of worship–both corporately and individually.
Do I get so busy with other things, good things even, that I neglect that place of just worshiping the LORD? Is worship at the center of my being? Or am I building my own “house”?
That gave me pause.
And then corporately. If I’m honest I’m really struggling with the institutionalized church. I think this frustration is felt the world over. The traditional model isn’t working for the times. The church is good. But the current model of auditorium Christianity is an old wine skin. One that is cracking.
Take into consideration this verse:
What then shall we say, brothers and sisters? When you come together, each of you has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. Everything must be done so that the church may be built up. 1 Cor 14:26.
Each one has a hymn? Or only the team of a couple of people. Each one has a word to share? Or only one. Where can the gifts of the majority come into play?
Small groups, they say.
I guess I’ve struggled with too many small groups. One, that I don’t typically fit a demographic that the small groups are based around. And two, that small groups from my experience have been fill-in-the-blank of a workbook and move to the next person. Is each person bringing a hymn? A testimony? A word of instruction? Not really. But that’s just my experience.
But regardless, worship, both individually, and also corporately must be at the center of our souls. Worship must persist. Because if we are not consistent in worshiping God, we will drift into worshiping something else. If only our own agendas.
So I paused on Haggai 1. And hope you do too.
