Haggai 1:1-11
Living for the only kingdom that matters, part one
Intro: Most of us are familiar with the legend of King Arthur and the knights of the round table.
As the story goes, Camelot, the kingdom they established over 1,000 years ago was so
prosperous and successful because Arthur’s knights loved their king and would gladly have
given their lives for him. Due to Arthur’s great leadership they bought into their king’s vision and
were willing to sacrifice their own personal desires and goals to make it a reality.
But it didn’t last, did it? For one reason. Because Arthur’s queen Guinevere and his
right hand man, Lancelot, grew tired of sacrificing their personal desires for the good of the
kingdom, and they grew tired of Arthur. Their love for what was right turned into an adulterous
affair that fractured the kingdom apart. They wanted the benefits of Camelot without a
commitment to their king or his kingdom.
That’s a poignantly sad description of the Jews in the 6th century BC as they returned to
their homeland in Judah from exile in Babylon. Last week we saw how important the theme of
God’s presence with his people is. His presence gives us salvation, significance, and security,
so the greatest nightmare is being excluded from his presence. But that’s exactly what
happened to the rebellious Jews in the exile that began in 607 BC. For 70 years they were cut
off from God’s presence. But out of the darkness of exile the prophet Ezekiel spoke a promise
of hope, “I will make a covenant of peace with them….And I will set them in their land and multiply them,
and I will set my sanctuary in their midst….My dwelling place shall be with them, and I will be their God.”
And in grace that’s what happened. In 539 BC the Persian king Cyrus conquered the
Babylonians, and two years later he decreed that the Jews should return to their homeland and
rebuild their Temple. After decades of waiting and praying for restoration to the Promised Land,
God’s presence once again was within their grasp. Yet, according to the opening verses of
Haggai, 17 years went by, a new emperor named Darius ascended the throne, and the Jews
still had done nothing to rebuild God’s Temple (read 1:1-2).
Last week drove home one point: we were made to embody and reflect God’s glorious
presence in our world. But that will only happen when we first put his kingdom ahead of our
own – something these Jews were refusing to do. So, Haggai challenges us with the question:
Who’s kingdom are we really living for? And he drives that question home with two big
points: If we decide to marginalize God’s kingdom, we’ll be the big losers, but if we put God’s
kingdom first, we’ll be the big winners. We’ll look at Haggai’s first point today and the other next
week.
A. Excuses to avoid making God’s kingdom a priority reveals our true kingdom.
To begin with, then, these first eleven verses show us how the Jews marginalized,
downplayed, and disregarded God’s kingdom and suffered as a result. But that raises the
question, “Why would God’s chosen people – whether Israel in the OT or the church in the NT ever marginalize God’s kingdom?” The answer Haggai gives is that too often we’re preoccupied
with a lesser kingdom of our own making. That explains the Jews’ attitude in v. 2 (read 2b).
V. 1 tells us that the word of the LORD came to Haggai in the sixth month, which,
according to the Jewish calendar, meant late August and early September – harvest season for
fruit trees and grapes in Israel. So, many scholars believe the Jews used the busyness of
harvest as an excuse to neglect work on the Temple. It’s also worth noting that this prophecy
was also delivered in 520 BC – the year when Darius, the new emperor, was at war with Egypt
and would have called on his vassal subjects in Israel to supply some of the provisions for his
army. So, the Jews could have used the excuse that they didn’t have enough resources to give
toward repairing the Temple. Still, when you consider that they’d not made progress on the
Temple for 17 years, their excuses are unmasked as a mere cover-up for the real issue: their
love for a kingdom other than God’s. Vv. 3-4 supply his response to their excuses (read).
There’s a touch of irony here because the Hebrew word translated “paneled” in v. 4 is almost
always used elsewhere only to describe the construction of Solomon’s Temple.
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As one writer puts it, “the Jews were quite happy to put precisely the kind of time and resources into
building their own houses that they claimed were not there to restore God’s house.” They were busy
investing in a kingdom all right – just not God’s.
I dare say we Christians struggle with that just as much as the ancient Jews. I know I
do. This text forces me to ask myself honestly, “Do I see things like my money and time and
talents primarily as my possessions to do with as I please? Or do I realize that everything I
have actually belongs to God?” Like the Jews in Haggai’s day, we can always come up with
excuses to avoid investing ourselves in God’s cause and kingdom. But our excuses melt away
when we remember, as we saw last week, that God is our suzerain King and everything we
have is his property entrusted to our care to steward for the accomplishment of his agenda.”
Seeing life through the lens of God’s kingship, though, is pretty challenging to us for a
couple of reasons. First, we live in a culture where an individual’s “rights” and autonomy are the
ultimate values. Tolerance and self-determination are the gods of the age. Last week’s
Supreme Court decision made that all the more clear. Consequently, living our lives as
“servants” of God where his will, not ours, reigns supreme is not easy. As a pastor, I’ve seen
this played out again and again. Many people love the idea of God’s forgiveness through
Christ, but when they learn about the obligations that God’s Word commands of us to prove our
covenant loyalty, they recoil with shock. Giving up our autonomy is positively un-American!
Added to that, the Lordship of Christ is tough for us because we came into this world
sinfully wired to rule, not be ruled. An incident from my childhood illustrates it well. When I was
growing up, some of our friends had a lake cabin. And one year we were there for a 4th of July
picnic. And down at the dock was one of those 2 man paddleboats. I just fell in love with that
paddleboat, and I was in it out on the lake most of the morning. After lunch I remember going
back down to take it out again when one of the sons of the people who owned the cabin told me
he and his friends were taking it out. I remember saying to him, “You can’t. It’s mine!” I clearly
remember knowing it was his but saying it was mine. It made no logical sense, but our lust for
lordship of our world rarely does. What I needed was a good spanking. Perhaps that’s what
these Jews who put their own comfort ahead of God’s kingdom needed, and maybe that’s what
we need whenever the Bible is really clear about what Christ’s lordship calls us to, but we resist,
we make excuses, we rationalize, pass the buck, and dodge the issue. Look where lack of
submission got Adam and Eve. Acting like the throne of our lives belongs to us won’t get us the
joy we think it will. In fact Haggai goes on to warn us of
B. The sorrow that waits for us when we marginalize God’s kingdom for another.
That’s painfully apparent in vv. 5-11 (read). Wow! God’s discipline on these Jews for
making God’s kingdom a low priority and making their own kingdoms a high priority was painful.
He made it so their efforts would end in futility and sorrow. It didn’t matter that they planted a lot
of seed, as long as they put their personal kingdoms ahead of God’s, they would harvest little their food wouldn’t nourish them and their clothes wouldn’t keep them warm. Like a good parent
who knows how to make a disobedient child’s life uncomfortable until he wakes up and changes
his ways, God faithfully disciplines us when we put our personal priorities ahead of his. He did it
2,500 years ago, and he’s still doing it today.
Want a good case in point? Look at the two main factions of the Anglican Church.
Originally part of the European Reformation, the Church of England originally embraced the
centrality of Scripture, the lordship of Christ, and the supremacy of the gospel. The result was
the birth of thousands of churches, tens of thousands of home Bible studies, and such heroes of
the faith as John and Charles Wesley, George Whitefield, Charles Simeon, and JC Ryle. Sadly,
by the 19th century other priorities like preserving beautiful church buildings and running mere
social programs began to squeeze the gospel and the Bible from the heartbeat of that church in
Europe. Also, the increasingly comfortable lives of Anglican Church members made the pursuit
of leisure more attractive than the pursuit of God’s kingdom. Church attendance, sacrificial
giving, participation in ministry - even belief in God in some cases - have come to be seen as
optional extras. As a result, the Anglican Church in Europe is dying fast.
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Contrast that with the Anglican Church in Africa, which has grown dramatically in recent
years. I could tell you stories of Anglican churches packed to overflowing every Sunday in
Uganda, Tanzania, and Nigeria – congregations that meet in church buildings with no air
conditioning, no comfortable seats – some with no seats at all! Those churches are rapidly
planting other churches and sending out missionaries to places like England and the United
States and their members give the little money they have to make it happen. Why this stark
contrast? Why is God blessing one part of that church but allowing the other to go into a freefall? Could it be because the African Anglicans have remained committed to their covenant
Lord and his kingdom – to his Word, his gospel, his priorities - while their European
counterparts generally have not? I think we know how Haggai would answer that question. The
Anglicans in Europe illustrate the sorrow that waits for us when we downplay God’s kingdom
and exchange his priorities for our own.
So the question is before us: whose kingdom are we living for? How we answer that
question will determine our joy or our sorrow. There was nothing wrong, per se, with the Jews in
Haggai’s day building comfortable houses and harvesting their fields. Those were not bad
things. The problem was they placed their personal ambitions ahead of God’s. They acted like
they had the right to sit on the throne of their lives rather than bowing down to King Jesus. As a
result they paid a terrible price – a price we’d like to avoid. So, as I close, let me mention three
practical suggestions that can help us avoid such sorrow and live for Christ’s kingdom.
1. Read the Bible daily through a kingdom-focused lens….
2. Pray the Lord’s Prayer regularly to keep your desires in proper perspective….
3. Surround yourself with people who are modeling kingdom-living.
People like Claire Austin…..
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