Click above to watch video.
OR
Click below to play audio and read along.
Hello, my “Walking with Jesus” friends,
You’ve heard the phrase ‘a wake-up call’, right? What has that phrase meant in your life? When have you experienced a ‘wake-up call’ that jarred you from your sleep; or your emotional malaise; or your complacency; or perhaps your waywardness? Did the ‘wake-up’ call jar you into reality and did you take action, important corrective action? Did it perhaps even save your life?
Join me again back in the chaos of Jerusalem, almost exactly 2500 years ago, and let’s witness one of the most powerful ‘wake up calls’ ever received in that city. I wonder if God has a message for you and me today?
Yesterday we met a man named Haggai. His little two-chapter autobiographical story is recorded in the Bible near the end of the Old Testament. We know very little about him except that Haggai was known to be a prophet of God. That means Haggai was a man who received messages from God; which God expected Haggai to deliver to God’s people; and God expected His people to pay attention and respond to those God sent messages.
You’ll remember there are many other very famous prophets, some of whom have many chapters of their messages from God in the Bible. Prophets like Jeremiah or Ezekiel or Isaiah. We’ve spent extensive time looking at many of their messages over the past several months.
For Mr. Haggai, his first verse tells us exactly WHEN he received this message from God and WHAT he did with this message: “In the second year of King Darius, on the first day of the sixth month, the word of the LORD came through the prophet Haggai to Zerubbabel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the high priest.” (Haggai 1:1) Yesterday I told you my research says that date was August 29, in the year 520bc. Zerubbabel and Joshua were the two most recognized leaders, among the 50,000 Jewish exiles, who had returned to Jerusalem from their Babylonian captivity in 538bc. God was giving those two leaders a serious ‘wake-up call’!!
The first part of Haggai’s message is a jolting question: “Is this a time for you yourselves to be living in your paneled houses while this house remains a ruin?” (Haggai 1:3,4) The ‘house in ruins’ God was referring to was the Temple in Jerusalem, still a pile of rubble from its destruction at the hands of King Nebuchadnezzar sixty-six years before in 586bc! What an accusation from God! Paneled houses as compared to piles of untouched Temple rubble!?
Now the next part of Haggai’s first message from God: “Give careful thought to your ways. Go up into the mountains and bring down timber and build My 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 your own house…” (Haggai 1:7-9)
God’s message is very clear, isn’t it my friends? We understand very well what God is saying, for our world has consistently struggled with this very same problem! In fact, maybe this matter of minimizing God or marginalizing God, as we pursue our own selfishness, has been a problem for you or someone you know. What about today, your city and mine? How similar or different is our time from those days of Haggai? These Jewish exiles had returned from exile with carts full of resources given to them to rebuild the Temple! (Ezra 1:4) But it appears many had used those resources to build their own fine houses!! Oh my!
Haggai’s message from God continues: “Therefore because of you, the heavens have withheld their dew and the earth its crops. I [God] called for a drought on the fields and the mountains…on everything the ground produces, on people and livestock and all the labor of your hands.” (Haggai 1:10,11) What? Is it possible that God Himself sometimes actually WITHHOLDS that which is essential for our lives to flourish or our success to be realized?
Is it possible God sometimes barely supplies what is needed for even basic human survival? Oh yes, my friends, the Bible and history give us many examples of God WITHHOLDING the rain, so the ground dries up and crops fail. (1 Kings 17:1; 2 Chronicles 7:13) Why would God do that? As a means of getting the attention of people who are so self-sufficient they think they don’t need God, nor do they have any interest in knowing God.
Evidently as God evaluated the soul condition of many of those nearly 50,000 Jews who had been in exile but whom God had miraculously led out of exile back to Jerusalem, God concluded many of them had their priorities upside down! There was little evidence that they had much interest in rebuilding the Temple and re-establishing their worship of Almighty God as the centerpiece of their lives and Jewish culture.
Yes, the large Altar for Burnt Offerings had been rebuilt and yes, the priests were sacrificing a lamb both morning and evening, but evidently not many, of either the priests or the people, had a burning passion to put their hands to the work of rebuilding the entire Temple. The Temple mount was still covered in untouched Temple ruins even though these former exiles had been back and rebuilding their lives in and around Jerusalem for almost 20 years! Spiritual complacency had taken root in Jerusalem... AGAIN!
I say ‘again’ because that had been the problem in Israel, in generations past, which led God to send His prophets to warn God’s people with an urgent call out of their spiritual lethargy and into spiritual passion; but alas the Israelites had mostly ignored or rejected those prophets! Eventually God’s judgment had been poured out and the demolition of both Jerusalem and the Temple resulted in the widespread debris and captivity in exile for the people!
Haggai was issuing a serious ‘wakeup call’ and evidently the people heard and understood Haggai’s message for the very next words in Haggai 1 are these: “Then Zerubbabel, Joshua and the whole remnant of the people obeyed the voice of the LORD their God and the message of the prophet Haggai, because the LORD their God had sent him. And the people feared the LORD.” (Haggai 1:12)
I want to shout AMEN! For the first time in a long time a message from God to Jerusalem was heard and taken seriously by God’s people there! Do you see why? “…the people feared the LORD.” The debris piles all around them were evidence of the price of minimizing, marginalizing, ignoring or even rejecting God! Do you have any evidence in your life of the price you’ve paid of ignoring or marginalizing or rejecting God?
Look at how God responded: “Then Haggai, the LORD’s messenger, gave this message of the LORD to the people: ‘I am with you’, declares the LORD. So, the LORD stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel, governor of Judah, and the spirit of Joshua, the high priest, and the spirit of the whole remnant of the people. They came and began to work on the house of the LORD Almighty, their God, on the 24th day of the sixth month.” (Haggai 1:13-15) Oh my friends, do you see that God was quick to assure these repentant people that HE would fully engage in helping them?
Do you see that from the day Haggai first brought his first ‘wake-up call’ message to the people it was only 23 days till they had received all parts of this first message; wrestled with the powerful implications of the message; met with their leaders; repented and actually showed up in their work clothes ready to start moving debris and rebuilding the Temple! 23 days! I wonder what our track record is in responding to God when He gives us a ‘wake-up call’?
I have to believe heaven was celebrating as lethargy was sent scurrying to find new lazy hearts and these people joined arm in arm to get working again! Let’s pause right here my friends to take an honest look at our cities, our extended families, our churches, our own personal lives.
Spiritual lethargy or spiritual passion? Mediocrity or Excellence? God honoring priorities or self serving priorities?
If we listen closely, what do we hear God saying to us today my friends? Let’s worship with this new song about God doing a new thing, and I’ll meet you again here tomorrow to see what God did next in this exciting turn around in Jerusalem!
Today’s Scripture: Haggai 1.
Choose below to read or listen.
 |  |
Bible images provided with attribution to www.LumoProject.com.
Have a comment or question about today’s chapter? I’m ready to hear from you, contact me here.
Pastor Doug Anderson
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
Archived back issues of “Walking with Jesus” and other resources are available by clicking here to open our ‘home page’ (or go to HOME at upper right of this page).
Share with friends. Subscribe below for daily “Walking with Jesus”.