Consider Your Ways

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Transcript:

The book of Haggai was written around the time that they were beginning to, or right before the time that they were to begin rebuilding the temple and rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem under Ezra and Nehemiah. We’ve talked some in different messages about how, you know, God finally got fed up, had enough with the idolatry and the rebellion of the Jewish people and said, said enough, okay, it’s going to stop here and I’m going to get your attention once and for all. and sent the Babylonians in for 70 years to take the best and the brightest of Judah back to Babylon to be captives.

They weren’t necessarily slaves, all of them, but they were taken away from their homes, they were taken away from their families, and they were put to work. Some of them were put to work in the king’s court, some of them were put to work in other areas, but the majority of them were taken back to Babylon and taken away from their people. And at the same time, it was a really tumultuous period of history because they were fighting with the Egyptians, and the Babylonians were at the same time.

And there were all these things going on where one would have control over the area than the other one would, and they’d overthrow the Jewish king, and they’d put up a puppet ruler in his place, and he would do what they say, and then somebody would come along and rebel. And it was just a crazy time to be alive. As I try to study it and put the history together for myself, it’s hard for me to understand what is always happening here because there was just so much going on.

But they had been told that they were going to have 70 years that they were going to be in captivity of Babylon. And because of some of the things that had happened where they had thought we can stand up to the Babylonians, whatever, the city of Jerusalem had been practically destroyed. The temple had been laid waste.

And it sat that way for 70 years. And it’s not as though all the Jews were taken back to Babylon. Some of them were left behind.

Some of them were allowed to stay there. But as I said, the best and the brightest were taken off to Babylon. It had been foretold, you know, so many times God would allow these pagan countries to come in and take over the Israelites for a little while for an unspecified amount of time to get their attention.

Through the book of Judges, it happened. And they didn’t find out until it was over when it was going to be over. But God had told them here already that they’re going to be 70 years.

So, they knew when it began, the clock started ticking, and they knew when this captivity was going to end, when God was going to restore Jerusalem, when God was going to restore His people. And in the book of Haggai, we’re getting close to the end of that, and they still are living as though they don’t know when this is going to end. We’ll start reading in verse 1, and it says, In the second year of Darius the king, in the sixth month of the first day of the month, came the word of the Lord by Haggai the prophet unto Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of Josedech, the high priest, saying, Thus speaketh the Lord of hosts, saying, This people say the time has not come, the time that the Lord’s house should be built.

First of all, I hear people say, especially when you read Old Testament passages, Oh, I just don’t know how he pronounces all those names. Don’t be impressed. I don’t know if I’m pronouncing them right.

I could be way wrong. Just read it like you know what it is. But at this point, it says it’s the second year of Darius the king.

This is after the Babylonians have been taken over by the Persians. So the ones that have ruled Judah for all this time have gotten their punishment as well. And the Persians have come in and taken over.

And in the sixth month, God speaks to Haggai the prophet and sends him to Zerubbabel, who’s the governor of Judah, the man that the Persians and Babylonians have left there to be in charge of what’s left of Judah. He goes to him and says, Thus speaks the Lord. This is what the Lord says, the Lord of hosts.

These people say the time has not come, the time that the Lord’s house should be built. Haggai is sent to the ruler and said, here’s a message from God. He says, these people say the time is not yet to rebuild God’s house.

So far, God has just, through Haggai, pointed out to the governor what he already knows. God’s just telling him what the people are saying. He’s setting the stage for what comes in verse 3.

Then came the word of the Lord by Haggai the prophet, saying, Is it time for you, O ye people, O ye to dwell in your sealed houses, and this house lie waste? In verses 3 and 4 here, God says through Haggai, You’ve already said it’s not time yet to rebuild God’s house. And so God’s question to you, Zerubbabel, and to the people here, God’s question is, Is it time for you to dwell in your fancy homes, and God’s house lie waste?

This word sealed, some of your Bibles may say paneled. Sealed means paneled. And what it’s talking about here, it’s not talking about paneling.

I see sometimes on. . .

There’s nothing wrong with paneling. If you’ve got paneling in your house, I’m not trying to insult you. But it was the style at one point that you’ll see on older shows and things.

People had paneling in their dens, and it was considered the fashion at the time. And this was the same way. It was something that was expensive, something they couldn’t necessarily all afford to do.

And it was something that took effort that they didn’t just build their houses. They actually built their houses and they were decorating them with the finest things they could afford. This paneling was taken from expensive wood and they would put it up and decorate their homes and make their homes just as nice as they could.

There’s not anything wrong with that. That’s not what God’s saying. But he’s contrasting it with their attitude toward God’s house, toward the temple.

He says, you’ve said it’s not time for God’s house to be rebuilt. It’s not time for the temple to be rebuilt. He says, is it time for you to live in your fancy house, your beautiful surroundings, and the house of God lie waste?

He says, now therefore, thus saith the Lord of hosts, consider your ways, consider. That’s a compound of two Hebrew words that I still don’t completely understand, but here the implications of them put together, one of them means to put, and one of them has some connection to the heart or the understanding or the feeling. And what it means here is to take something to heart.

Take to heart the way people of Judah that you’ve been living. Consider your ways. He says, you’ve sown much and bring in little.

You eat, but have not enough. You drink, but you’re not filled with drink. You clothe you, but there is none warm.

And he that earneth wages, earneth wages to put into a bag with holes. He repeats himself, thus saith the Lord of hosts, consider your ways. He says, go up to the mountain and bring wood and build the house, and I will take pleasure in it, and I will be glorified, saith the Lord.

You looked for much, and lo, it came to little. and when ye brought it home, I did blow upon it. Why, saith the Lord of hosts, because of mine house that is waste, and ye run every man into his own house.

Therefore the heaven over you is stayed from dew, and the earth is stayed from her fruit. And I called for a drought upon the land, and upon the mountains, and upon the corn, and upon the new wine, and upon the oil, and upon that which the ground bringeth forth, and upon men, and upon cattle, and upon all the labor of the hands. And so what God has said here is that here they are, living in fine surroundings, trying to build these kingdoms for themselves, and really doing their best, working their hardest to be prosperous, and yet it’s coming to nothing because they have paid no attention to God’s house over here.

And this is not a message on giving to the church. I’m not trying to squeeze money out of anybody. This is a message really on idolatry, because what they had begun to do was to set up other things as being more important than the things of God.

You know, I told you it was during this 70-year period when they knew that they were going to be under the boot of these pagan countries. What we don’t realize at first until we dig into some of the dates there in verse 1 is that they’d been told there was going to be this 70-year captivity, and this date, the second year of Darius the king in the sixth month and the first day of the month, puts them somewhere around year 68 or 69 of the captivity. And up to now, they have made no preparation whatsoever for rebuilding and refurbishing the temple when the captivity ends.

At this point, they’ve not even given it a thought. See, the problem, God had told them that Jerusalem was going to lie waste, that they were going to be in captivity for 70 years. The problem is not that they hadn’t gone to rebuild the temple.

The problem is that they were just putting it off and putting it off and putting it off, not making any preparation and pretending like, oh, it’s not time yet. It’s not time yet. It’s not time yet for us to do something for the Lord.

So let’s take the best we have, and instead of using it to make preparations for when the time is right, let’s just make ourselves at ease. And so they had built their paneled houses and said, at the same time, it doesn’t matter that the Lord’s temple lies waste. They’d made no preparation.

So that was the problem. Again, not the fact that they hadn’t gone in there and rebuilt yet. They were still in that captivity, but they were getting very near the end of the captivity, and they had made no thought toward what was coming on the other side.

So we’re just going to live like this and forget about God’s house. Let’s focus on us for a little while. And I want to reiterate, the things that they were doing were not evil in and of themselves.

The things that they were doing, as a matter of fact, if they’re put in the right perspective, are good things that we should do. We’ll read through the list here of some things that they were doing that weren’t working out. These were good things for the most part.

See, one of the tricky things about idolatry is that it doesn’t necessarily have to be something that’s evil on the face of it. Unless we’re, you know, I’m just going to say it, as much as I love our country, America is a land full of idolatry, just like ancient Israel, just like ancient Judah. I don’t think there’s anyone in here who would dispute the fact that this country is full of people who worship idols.

And yet most people are not out sacrificing goats to statues. See, we think of idolatry in the Bible and it’s people going out to their statues of Baal and their groves of Asherah and their burning incense and their slaughtering animals. That’s not all idolatry is.

Idolatry, an idol, folks, is anything, any noun we could say, any person, place, thing, or idea that takes the rightful place that belongs to the one true God in our hearts, affections, and reverence. Anything. And so the tricky thing, again, about idolatry is you can take even something that’s inherently not evil.

You can take something that’s good and a noble pursuit, and you can elevate it and get your priorities wrong and get it out of place, and suddenly it becomes idolatry. And so he tells them, these things you’ve done, it’s not wrong decorating your house. What was wrong was that they were decorating their house and saying, we’ll worry about God’s house later.

We’ll worry about the temple later. And so he tells them, because of these things, your practices where you’re putting your interest ahead of God’s, he said ahead of his interest, ahead of what he wanted, he was going to make their pursuits to come to nothing. He lists here a few things that they’ve done that have not worked out well.

Verse 6, you’ve sown much, you eat, you drink, you put on clothes, you earn wages. These are not bad things. As a matter of fact, in our society, these are things that are expected, are they not?

These are things that the Bible even teaches that we’re supposed to do. They were sowing, they were preparing for the future, they were eating, taking care of themselves, they were drinking. The Bible doesn’t tell you to go out and have alcohol, that’s not what I’m talking about.

But they were putting on clothes. They were trying to earn money and take care of themselves. These are things that the Bible talks about we should do.

The Bible talks about taking care of yourself. The Bible talks about taking care of your family. These are not bad things, but these pursuits had become where they were more important to the people of Judah, the remnant left in Judah, than God was, than the worship of God, the worship of the one true God.

And the way things were set up then, if they were to worship God in any kind of corporate way, it needed to be done in the temple. Now, we’re fortunate that now we can worship God anywhere. We can come together and worship God, and we don’t have to go through the ordinances of the temple and the sacrifices because Christ rent the veil of the temple, and we have access to God by Him now.

But in that day, if they wanted to worship God in a corporate way, they had to go to the temple. If they wanted to make the sacrifices that they needed to make, they had to go to the temple. And they’re saying, those things are not important.

We can put that off until later. He tells them that they’ve sown much, and they bring in little. I want to talk about these five things that he says that they were going to do that were not going to come to any effect as a result of their idolatry.

He said they would sow so much and bring in little. They would sow much and bring in little. They were out planting crops.

It’s a good thing. It was a life or death thing in that time. They were out sowing crops and sowing seeds and cultivating and hoping that something would grow of it.

As a matter of fact, when you go and plant something, you hope you’ll have a bumper crop. You hope you’ll be prosperous. I have never once planted a garden and thought as I’m out there planting the seeds, boy, I hope only one in ten of these comes up.

I don’t know. There are some plants that take over your yard that probably I should have planted a tenth as many as I did. But I’ve never planted these and thought, hmm, I hope there’s no corn this year.

Planted these. Gee, I hate watermelons. I hope they all die.

No, you plant these things and hope they grow. Hope you have a bumper crop. I’m always thinking it never seems to work out for me.

Coming from Oklahoma, I always plant a garden and have some kind of natural disaster wipe it out halfway through the season. It never seems to work out for me, but I’m planting things thinking, okay, so I’m going to do this with what I get from here, and I’m going to make salsa out of this, and we’ll can this and save extra. Oh, we can take these extra that we’re going to have, and we can give them away to people.

And just thinking about the bumper crop we’re going to have. And like I said, it never works out. Kind of like these people, I guess.

But they were sowing. They were hoping for success in their endeavors. And God said, you’ve sown much, but you’re bringing in little.

He said, you know, your idolatry eventually is going to lead to a lack of success here in the things you’re trying to do. These pursuits that are not evil in and of themselves, but you’re doing them for the wrong reasons and with the wrong priorities, and they’re not going to come to anything. You’re not going to be successful.

So they wore themselves out trying to grow and produce and build for themselves and got no result from it because they were not right with God. And he tells them, you’ve eaten, you eat, but you have not enough. Folks, there was no sustenance in them with their idolatry.

You see, they were unable to provide for even their most basic needs. They were not able to eat enough to fill themselves, probably because they were sowing much and reaping little. But they were eating, but they were never filled.

They were eating, but they were never filled. Eating is one of the most basic needs we have, physically speaking. Of all of the.

. . I’d really like to know what you just said.

Anyway. It’s one of the most basic physical needs we have. Out of all the physical needs that we have, eating is probably third.

We can survive with. . .

I heard a biology teacher, I think it was one time, say we could survive without oxygen for about six minutes. We could survive without water for about six days, and we could survive without food for about six weeks. Folks, of all the things that we need, of all the things that we want, of all the things we think we need, and here in our first world standard of living, there are a lot of things that we think we need.

Oh, I need the electricity. And we do for our standard of living, but there are people all around the world who live without electricity. I need our natural gas.

We need the cable. We have all these necessities and utilities we pay for that aren’t necessarily necessities when you get right down to it. food and water and oxygen, these are basic necessities that we cannot live without.

And when it’s talking about even their most basic necessities, they were not able to provide these things for themselves. Well, they were working and they were trying hard, but they would eat and they would never be filled. God said they had made a God out of their trying to provide for themselves, and as a result, they weren’t able to meet even their most basic needs.

They were drinking, but they weren’t filled with drink. Now, I’ll be honest with you, I don’t know if this means water, if it means wine, if it means something else. It’s apparent to me that people in the Bible did drink sometimes.

I don’t drink. I’m not telling you should drink. But even the, I looked at a passage today, I believe it was in Psalms, that talked about the wine making God glad.

And I thought, what in the world? I’ve never seen that in there. Until I studied a little more and found out it was a reference to the drink offering they had to pour out.

I thought that’s a verse that could be taken way out of context by somebody. And believe me, they would take a verse like that out of context. But some things like oil and wine and things like that were symbols in the Old Testament of joy and gladness.

And for them to drink, whether it was wine or whether it was water or whatever it was they were drinking, something you drink, I don’t know about everybody else in the world, but I drink because I’m thirsty. I know some other people have other reasons. I’m guessing that’s not what the Bible is talking about and encouraging.

I drink because I’m thirsty. Most basically, we drink because we’re thirsty. And you know what?

They were drinking, but they were never able to be satisfied. Whatever need it was they had, they were never able to be satisfied. They were never able to find what they needed.

With the eating or the drinking, they were not able to provide the needs that they had because they had put those things ahead of God. They were unable to clothe themselves. He says, you clothe you, but there is none warm.

They were putting on their clothes as a protection from the elements. We wear clothes for many reasons. One of those being protection from the elements.

We also wear clothes because it’s the law and because it’s a good idea. I would wear clothes even if it wasn’t the law, thank goodness. But they wore clothes as security because he here specifically points out, he doesn’t say you clothe yourself and yet you’re unable to reach the heights of fashion.

He doesn’t say that. He says you clothe yourself and yet you’re unable to be warmed. They were talking about these clothes specifically as protection from the elements.

A lot of our clothes are designed that way. They’re to keep us warm. They’re to keep the sun off of us.

Sometimes we have special clothes for when we work to keep ourselves from getting hurt. Clothes are a form of security. It’s not as strong as a house or a wall to keep elements out, but that’s what they’re for.

And he says they were wearing these clothes, but they couldn’t be warmed. Folks, they lacked even basic security. They couldn’t even be secured from the elements.

And he says he that earns wages, earns wages to put it into a bag with holes. They were working hard to make money. They were working hard to make money, but it was going out as fast as it was coming in.

It was like earning money to put it in a bag with holes, the Bible says. A lot of people in our world feel that way. Earn money just to put it in a pocket with holes, because as soon as it comes in, it goes right back out again.

That’s the way a lot of people live. It’s the way I’ve lived a lot as well. As soon as you get the money, there are bills that come in.

You just, from time to time, feel like you can’t get ahead financially. You can’t get ahead financially or otherwise. And that’s what they’re talking about here.

They were unable to do anything to better themselves financially. They were unable to do anything to provide any kind of security for themselves. Now, why am I telling you all these five things that God says they were trying to do and weren’t able to do?

The reason I’m telling you these things is because these were the things that they were putting ahead of God. Not just the money, not just the eating, not just the clothes and all these things, but the things that these represented, their basic needs, their security, their betterment. All of these things were things that they were putting ahead of God.

These were not bad things, but they were things that had gotten out of order and had become idols for the people of Judah. Shame on the people of Judah. Look, shame on us today.

It tells me something about human nature that we really don’t change from time to time. It tells me something about the people from the Bible that even 3,000 years ago, they were dealing with a lot of the same problems and struggles that we deal with today because these are the same idols that we see in America today. As I mentioned, we don’t live in a country where people go and sacrifice things to statues.

And that’s unfortunately the idea we have of idolatry, when idolatry all too often is things like this, good pursuits that have gotten out of order. And especially this time of year, especially this time of year, the focus turns so much to material possessions. It turns to things and gaining and material, which is especially bad at this time of year that’s supposed to be set aside to reverence something else.

set aside to reverence someone else. And I didn’t intend this as a Christmas message, but it applies. Folks, we as Christians cannot allow ourselves to get caught up in the materialism and idolatry of the society around us.

I’m not anti-Christmas. I don’t want you to think that I’m anti-Christmas. I told you this morning that it probably wasn’t in December, and now I’m telling you materialism this time of year or any time of year is bad.

I don’t want you to think I’m anti-Christmas. I enjoy Christmas. I would enjoy buying gifts if there was no one else there buying gifts at the same time.

If it was just me in the store, I’d enjoy that. I can’t even tell you how excited I am about when Benjamin gets to open gifts for the first time. I’m so excited.

Christian and I are going to have to watch each other, or there’s not going to be anything left for him to open on Christmas Day because we’ll be giving him stuff before then. I’m not anti-Christmas, and there’s nothing wrong with having things. There’s nothing wrong with giving things and getting things.

What I’m talking about is when that becomes the pursuit of this time of year, or any other time of year for that matter, materialism. Materialism is the most vile, I’m convinced, is the most vile of all the religions. Materialism is a religion.

The God is stuff. The God is our money, our security. All of these things that they were worshiping, and they’re the same things that people are still worshiping today.

We all know that those of you who were out with me like crazy people on Black Friday, you know it firsthand. You saw those people. Hopefully none of you were those people.

Nothing wrong with being out on Black Friday. I’m talking about the people who are beating the tar out of each other over DVDs. That’s materialism.

The people that don’t stop to give a second thought to what the season means because it’s the pursuit of stuff. Folks, not even just at Christmastime, but throughout the year. How many times when we make decisions about our involvement at church, our involvement with our family, our ability to serve God.

How many times do we put those things on the back burner because I’ve got to do this to get ahead? I know a lot of you are retired, and so you don’t go off to work every day and worry about chasing the dollar, but we worry about other things such as security and status. None of us are immune to it, but we all run the risk of saying, well, I know God wants me to do this, but this is what’s in my financial plan.

God wants me to do this, but how would that look to other people? God wants me to do this, but that’s scary. I’d have to step out on faith and do that.

And we say, God, I’m not going to worry about. . .

We would never say it in these words, I know. But what we ultimately say is, God, I’ll worry about what you want later because I’ve got this here that I’m focused on. Folks, it’s idolatry.

And I’m not just yelling at you. It’s idolatry when I do it too. Folks, we as Christians cannot get sucked into this trap.

We must not get sucked into this trap because the very things that we say, okay, I’m going to leave God aside and I’m going to work on this over here take care of this and get this accomplished, and then come back to God, this will never be accomplished. They would eat and never be filled. They would drink and never be filled.

They would be clothed and never be warmed. There was no accomplishing the things that they were set out to do because there was always more to do. There was never enough.

And the very things that they set out to do, they couldn’t do because they had set themselves in opposition to God. Verse 12, we’re almost finished. After Haggai says these things to Zerubbabel, it evidently had some effect.

Verse 12 says, Then Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and Joshua the son of Josedech the high priest, with all the remnant of the people, I love this, obeyed the voice of the Lord their God, and the words of Haggai the prophet, as the Lord their God had sent them. And the people did fear before the Lord. Then spake Haggai the Lord’s messenger and the Lord’s message unto the people, saying, I am with you, saith the Lord.

When they were trying to build their own kingdom, God was at opposition with them, and it was coming to nothing. But when they got serious about God, put their idols aside, and said, we’re going to be about the Lord’s business, God said, I am with you. And they were going to be able to accomplish what God had set out for them to do.

And the Lord stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and the spirit of Joshua, son of Josedech, the high priest, and the spirit of all the remnant of the people. And they came and did work in the house of the Lord of hosts, their God, in the fourth and twentieth day of the sixth month, in the second year of Darius the king. So after hearing God’s word and this reminder from them, see, I don’t even know that the people of Judah had done it on purpose.

Because what we see a lot of times in the Bible is that when people have on purpose wandered away from God, when they’ve on purpose set up other gods, and God confronts them, they get even more hard-hearted and even more determined to do what they’re going to do. But what we see here is that a rebuke from Haggai the prophet on God’s behalf, that, folks, you need to consider your ways, what you’ve been doing, what you’ve been putting ahead of God. They hear this, and the Bible says that Zerubbabel and Joshua, not the same Joshua as the battle of Jericho, by the way, but Zerubbabel and Joshua and all the remnant of the people, their hearts suddenly were changed, and the Bible says they went to work on the house of God.

Again, this is not a message on you need to give more money to the church. You need to worry about the house of God being this temple, or being this church. It’s not the parallel I’m drawing here.

What I’m talking about is considering our ways and making sure that we don’t fall into the same traps that we look at the Israelites and say, my goodness, they were stupid. How did they always fall into these things when they are just like the society around us? And we’ve got to constantly consider our ways and make sure that we don’t fall into the same idolatry that they did.

Because it’s so easy. It’s so easy. I hope you see that tonight, that we think idolatry is something other than it is.

And that’s how it always gets us. We think, oh, I’m not like them because I don’t have these statues. I don’t have the Buddha up in my house, or I don’t have these statues of dragons or whatever.

There are people that have these things and use them in religious practices now. We think, I’m not one of those, so I’m not involved in these practices. When the most dangerous idols are the ones that we don’t think of as idols.

They’re the things that are good pursuits otherwise. They’re the things that are good pursuits otherwise that we allow to get out of order. And we’ve got to consider our ways and take to heart what we’re doing and make sure on a regular basis that we’re serving God and that we’re putting things in the right perspective and that we let nothing, absolutely nothing, take the place that rightfully belongs only to the one true God.