By: Jason CookGetting Started
Procrastination is one of my guilty pleasures in life. I tend to be a perfectionist, so procrastination is an ever-present friend - always there when something less pleasant needs to be done. Have an article you need to write? There are an endless number of small chores, home improvement projects, and social feeds that demand your attention. Why do today what can be put off until tomorrow?
So it was also for the people of God when Haggai the prophet spoke to them. The House of God needed to be built, but there was always a ‘good’ reason to put it off. Haggai 1:2 captures the prevailing sentiment among the people, “Thus says the Lord of hosts: These people say the time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the Lord” [Emphasis added].
Construction on the temple had stopped. As the sermons from our pastors these past weeks have shown us, there were a variety of reasons for this work stoppage. At first, it appears a change in administration and political pushback may have been responsible. (See Ezra 6). As anyone who works in government can attest, new leadership usually means new priorities, the taking of credit, and the shifting of blame. There is nothing new under the sun.
While I’m certain these external pressures had an impact on the construction schedule, the prophet does not single this out as the primary reason for the delay. The people of God appear to have been distracted. This is evident in the prophet’s rebuke of their priorities, which reads like a diagnosis of the human condition straight out of Ecclesiastes. Consider verses 4 – 7, “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.”
Reading these verses brought to my mind a moment in history when John D. Rockefeller was asked “How much money is enough?” His reply was simple, “Just a little bit more.” No matter how much you consume, you will always want more. They had built their paneled houses, which (as anyone who appreciates mid 1970’s church interior decoration can tell you) was the pinnacle of opulence. Every man had “busied himself with his own house” (v.10). And still, it was not enough to be satisfied.
To their credit, the people obeyed the Lord their God and the voice of His prophet Haggai. They began to work on the temple of God. They repented and feared the Lord. And the Lord was pleased. “I am with you, declares the Lord” (v.13). You can do a lot when you know Dad has got your back.
But there is more to the story and a lesson for us today.
Making Progress
Chapter 2 opens around two months after the beginning of this massive project. Progress was hard to see on a project so big. The people began to be discouraged and felt unprepared for the long and difficult road ahead. They thought 60 years of decline could be reversed with a few months’ work. That is why it is so important to be “faithful in little things” (Luke 16:10). Ground yourself in what you can do for the Lord today.
It also seems that discouragement began to settle over the people, especially some of the ones who could remember what the temple was before. The older ones wept because the temple was so much better back when. I am a nostalgic person by temperament and will defend nostalgia in its proper place, but nostalgia can sometimes be dangerous. “Say not, ‘Why were the former days better than these?’ For it is not from wisdom that you ask this” (Ecclesiastes 7:10). Chasing the ideal past is like trying to catch the wind. It’s futile. It can also circumvent the good of the now for the ideal of the past. And often our view of the past is distorted when, in our humanness, we remember only the good and not the bad. Instead, we should honor the past while looking toward the future with faith.
When we look toward the future with faith, we can resist many of the burdens and sins that would hinder us. Anchored in wisdom, we can see the bigger picture, that God is satisfied to do his work in this world with frail and human hands. Through the church and its people, with all our faults, God is building his house, and anything worth building takes time. The Lord tells us to “work, for I am with you” (v4). His presence with us is not based on the work we accomplish, but “according this the covenant that I made with you when you came out of Egypt. My spirit remains in your midst. Fear not” (v5).
God dwells with us. In our discouragement we must remember this truth. He will “shake the heavens and the earth” (v7), “will fill this house with glory” (v8), and “the latter glory of the house shall be greater than the former…” (v9). We forget just how much we need the Lord. We need to be reminded. God is with us.
Nearing Home
You may have heard the saying, “You can’t go home again” The phrase was taken from Thomas Wolfe’s 1940 book of the same name, which is considered by many to be an American classic. As time passed, the saying grew to become more widely used in the American lexicon. It describes what so many of us experience when we try to return to a place (or time) from the past and find that we cannot go back to the way things were. Nothing feels the same. The reason for this is twofold. First, the people and places we left have changed over time. They are not the same as they were when we left. And more importantly, we have changed too. We are not the same person from all those years ago. No wonder it can be hard to go back when you have traveled far from home.
In Luke 15: 11-32, Jesus tells a story about a man with two sons. The youngest son demands of his father the share of the inheritance, which in this time and culture was basically wishing that the father was dead. The father, who I imagine was devastated beyond consolation, consented and divided the inheritance between this younger son and his older brother. The younger son then took everything he had and ran away from Dad. He went to a faraway place and squandered everything the father had worked his entire life for. The Bible calls his behavior ‘reckless living,’ which was everything his Dad had warned him against. After the younger son blew his inheritance, a famine hit, and he found himself so destitute that he hired himself out as a servant and was assigned to fields to feed the pigs. He became so desperate that he longed for what the pigs ate because no one cared enough about him to make sure he had enough to eat.
The younger son hit rock bottom and realized that his father’s servants at least had bread to eat, so he hatched a plan. He would go back home, swallow his pride, and ask Dad if he could be a servant since he was no longer worthy to be a son. The decision was made so he went back home. When he was far off, his father saw him, ran to him, hugged, and kissed him. The boy tried to give his speech about how he wasn't worthy to be his son anymore. But Dad would have none of it and called a celebration. His son that was dead was alive again. His son that was lost was found. The father got his family back.
The prodigal son, at his lowest point, realized he could always go back to his Dad. The people of God in Haggai were assured, that no matter how far they had strayed from God, if they would repent and hear His voice, that He would bless them and be with them. The temple that they would build during this time was made of stone. And that temple would need to be repaired, need to be rebuilt, and would eventually be destroyed by the Romans. However, Jesus said “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19). The House of God endures because it is not made with human hands (Acts 7:48).
And the good news is, there’s room enough for us. You can go home again.