Was reading in Haggai this morning. Haggai dates from around 520 B.C. A small remnant of the two remaining tribes
of Israel, Benjamin and Judah, had been allowed, even encouraged, by King Cyrus
of Persia to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple to their God in about
538 B.C. But because of many
distractions, the work on the Temple was at a standstill, and God sent Haggai
to exhort them to complete the project, which was finally completed about 516
B.C. Enough of the history.
Haggai 1:3-11 (NIV) Then the word of the LORD came through
the prophet Haggai: "Is it a time for you yourselves to be living in your
paneled houses, while this house remains a ruin?" Now this is what the LORD Almighty says: "Give
careful thought to your ways. You have
planted much, but have 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." This is what the LORD Almighty says:
"Give careful thought to your ways.
Go up into the mountains and bring down timber and build the house, so
that I may take pleasure in it and be honored," says the LORD. "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 his own house.
Therefore, because of you the heavens have withheld their dew and the
earth its crops. I called for a drought
on the fields and the mountains, on the grain, the new wine, the oil and
whatever the ground produces, on men and cattle, and on the labor of your
hands."
Does this sound at all familiar? “You earn wages, only to put them in a purse
with holes in it.” Sounds awfully
familiar to me. No matter how much money
I made, there was never quite enough to make it until the next payday, and no
matter how carefully I tried to budget and keep track of every penny it seemed
like some of it just vanished into thin air.
Maybe there is a message here for me today?
Back in Deuteronomy chapters 27 and 28 God gives a series of
blessings and curses to the Israelites as they prepare to enter the Promised
Land. You should read them, they are
both awesome and scary. Starting in
chapter 27 there are a series of curses: Cursed is the man who carves an idol,
cursed is the man who perverts justice, cursed is the man who attacks his
neighbor, cursed is the man who dishonors his father and mother, cursed is the
man who does not uphold the words of this law by carrying them out, etc. Then chapter 28 gives some blessings:
(Deu 28:1-14 NIV) If
you fully obey the LORD your God and carefully follow all his commands I give
you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations on
earth. All these blessings will come
upon you and accompany you if you obey the LORD your God: You will be blessed in the city and blessed
in the country. The fruit of your womb
will be blessed, and the crops of your land and the young of your
livestock--the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks. Your basket and your kneading trough will be
blessed. You will be blessed when you
come in and blessed when you go out. The
LORD will grant that the enemies who rise up against you will be defeated
before you. They will come at you from one direction but flee from you in
seven. The LORD will send a blessing on
your barns and on everything you put your hand to. The LORD your God will bless
you in the land he is giving you. The
LORD will establish you as his holy people, as he promised you on oath, if you
keep the commands of the LORD your God and walk in his ways. Then all the peoples on earth will see that
you are called by the name of the LORD, and they will fear you. The LORD will grant you abundant prosperity--in
the fruit of your womb, the young of your livestock and the crops of your
ground--in the land he swore to your forefathers to give you. The LORD will open the heavens, the
storehouse of his bounty, to send rain on your land in season and to bless all
the work of your hands. You will lend to many nations but will borrow from
none. The LORD will make you the head,
not the tail. If you pay attention to the commands of the LORD your God that I
give you this day and carefully follow them, you will always be at the top,
never at the bottom. Do not turn aside
from any of the commands I give you today, to the right or to the left,
following other gods and serving them.
Notice that these are conditional blessings: “If you fully
obey the Lord your God and carefully follow all His commands”.
Verse 15 continues with the other half of the conditions:
“If you do not obey”. Some of these are
pretty nasty, here is just a sample, but you should go and read them all:
18 The fruit of
your womb will be cursed, and the crops of your land, and the calves of your
herds and the lambs of your flocks.
22 The LORD will
strike you with wasting disease, with fever and inflammation, with scorching
heat and drought, with blight and mildew, which will plague you until you
perish.
28 The LORD will
afflict you with madness, blindness and confusion of mind.
30 You will be
pledged to be married to a woman, but another will take her and ravish her. You
will build a house, but you will not live in it. You will plant a vineyard, but
you will not even begin to enjoy its fruit.
56-57 The most gentle
and sensitive woman among you--so sensitive and gentle that she would not
venture to touch the ground with the sole of her foot--will begrudge the
husband she loves and her own son or daughter the afterbirth from her womb and
the children she bears. For she intends to eat them secretly during the siege
and in the distress that your enemy will inflict on you in your cities.
Whoa! Pretty nasty
stuff. And, as you read the history of
Israel and Judah in the books of the Kings and the Chronicles you will see that
both the blessings and the curses occurred as the nations did or did not obey
the Lord their God.
So, back to Haggai and also forward to us today and to my
life specifically. Haggai was telling
the people that they had their priorities all wrong. The people were saying to each other that
they needed to rebuild the city, they needed to rebuild the walls, and they
needed to rebuild their houses and their businesses and their farms. Then, when they got done with all that they
would find the time to rebuild the Temple.
God thru Haggai was telling the people to first rebuild the Temple and
then to do the other stuff. And because
their priorities were wrong, God was not blessing the labor of the people.
I think that the New Testament version of Haggai’s message
is found in Matthew 6:24-34 (NIV) "No one can serve two masters. Either he
will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and
despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money. "Therefore I tell you, do not worry
about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will
wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than
clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they
do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds
them. Are you not much more valuable than they?
Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? "And why do you worry about clothes? See
how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all
his splendor was dressed like one of these.
If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today
and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you
of little faith? So do not worry,
saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we
wear?' For the pagans run after all
these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his
righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for
tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
Motivational experts tell us to visualize our goals. Get a picture of the car you want to have and
put it next to your bathroom mirror so you see it every time you look in the
mirror. Get a picture of the house you
want to have and hang it on the wall at the foot of your bed so that you see it
when you awaken in the morning and before you sleep at night.
See verse 33? “But
seek first his kingdom and his righteousness”.
I think that means that we need to visualize the kingdom. Visualize what it would be like if all people
knew the love of God. Visualize what
this world will be like when He comes again in glory, and the lion lies down
with the lamb. And then begin to act on
that visualization. Act like a friend of
Jesus. Act like God is your Father. Tell people how much God loves them. Show people how much God loves them. Help make the kingdom of heaven a
reality. Help build the kingdom of
heaven. And as we begin to visualize the
kingdom and act like we are part of the kingdom our visualization will begin to
happen. God will bless the work of our
hands, and our purses will overflow with the kind of wealth that matters, the
wealth of His kingdom. And He will take
care of our needs and worries. After
all, He knows that we need food and shelter and will provide them because we
are His children obeying His commands.
I seem to have spent the bulk of my energies trying to
provide for my family. It has now, at
this very late date, become obvious to me that my priorities were wrong. Yeah, so I worked an 80 hour week, and the
choices were between putting in a few more hours of work to earn a little more
money to pay the bills or going to church, so since I need more money to pay
the bills I better go to work. The
correct response would have been to take the family to church. And I was raised properly, with the proper
priorities, and I should have known better.
But I let the priorities of the world become my priorities, and kept
trying to fill that purse with the holes in it.
Can’t be done.
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