Today is one of the days I wish I could just take pictures of my Bible and add captions where necessary, because the Bible can easily speak for itself, especially with my scribbles and underlines. I credit the size of this post to the amount of scripture I want to quote, and how wild of an analogy I’ll be proposing in the very next paragraph.
Haggai was busy in the last half of 520 B.C. with a collection of messages he received from God about rebuilding the temple. The Israelites had worked on the temple a little before this, look at Ezra 1-4 for that story, under the command and blessing of King Cyrus of Persia. Unfortunately, the Israelites were discouraged in their work by outside forces, and when a new king of Persia, Darius, took the throne, he did not have Cyrus’s enthusiasm about the Jews rebuilding their temple in their own Holy City. So, the Israelites just stopped work. This is where Haggai and Zechariah stepped in, each with prophesies sent from God to Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, the governor, and Jeshua son of Jehozadak, the high priest. I want to give you a historical perspective on these prophesies, but I also want to stretch the ideas with an analogy. In the Old Testament, the Temple was where God made his dwelling, but in the New Testament, we have the Holy Spirit not beside us but within us, and the temple is us. Let’s look at how Haggai’s message could also apply to rebuilding your own personal temple for the Lord.
The Lord’s message starts in Haggai 1:4, “Why are you living in luxurious houses while my house lies in ruins?” This isn’t too hard to imagine. An abandoned construction project would look like ruins, and the with the labor and finances available to put into a temple, the Jews must have been doing OK financially. This is a layered question though, and underneath it all God is asking, Why have you built up material things instead of Godly things? Why have you stopped working on doing my will and building my house? Why are you just living a material life when you could be taking action? What’s your priority, luxury or Me? Take a look at this from the personal temple perspective: Why are we just living in our luxurious houses (most people who have the internet to read this have a very luxurious house by global housing standards) while God’s house, us, is in ruins? Why have we neglected our spiritual health, when that is the very structure and foundation of the place God has made for himself in you?
Pick up the bible again and continue on to Haggai 1:5-9: “This is what the Lord of Heaven’s armies says: Look at what’s happening to you! You have planted much but harvest little. You eat but are not satisfied. You drink but are still thirsty. You put on clothes but cannot keep warm. Your wages disappear as though you were putting them in pockets filled with holes! This is what the Lord of Heaven’s armies says: Look at what’s happening to you! Now go up into the hills, bring down timber, and rebuild my house. Then I will take pleasure in it and be honored, says the Lord. You hoped for rich harvests, but they were poor. And when you brought the harvest home, I blew it away. Why? Because my house lies in ruins, says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, while all of you are busy building your own fine homes.”
Notice the first words of the Lord in verse 5: “Look at what’s happening to you!” Notice that this statement reflects a passiveness, that the Israelites are not working, are not living life, but that they are letting life come to them, and it now has happened to come to them unfavorably. He repeats the same phrase in verse 7, and when there is repetition in the Bible, it is for emphasis. The Israelites were getting called out for their laziness about doing the work of God and developing His house. Flipping the story back to us, are we letting life come to us or are we pursuing life? Is our spirituality spoon-fed to us on Sundays, like so many people believe it should be? Or are we going to take the reigns of our faith and do God’s work, in our lives and in the world?
Verse 8 says, “Now go up into the hills, bring down timber, and rebuild my house. Then I will take pleasure in it and be honored, says the Lord.” Now, instead of letting something happen to them, the Israelites are called to make something happen themselves. They are instructed to go cut down trees in the hills and bring back timber for the temple. I’m not sure what that sounds like to you, but for me, it sounds like hard work. Taking an ax or saw and cutting down trees on hilly, probably uneven ground, and then carrying the huge pieces and loads of timber down the hill sounds like quite the chore. This is a total stretch for the Israelites, from near apathy to a huge time and effort commitment, but this is the same kind of commitment God beckons us to give him, one of hard work to improve our minds, bodies, and souls, because they are his house and we are stewards of them.
A theme in Haggai 1:5-9 that shows up a couple times is the consequences of not doing God’s work and not developing his house. It is mentioned that the work the Israelites is much less fruitful, and they are unsatisfied with their material possessions and consumptions. For all of us, the presence and work of the Lord makes the rest of our lives more fruitful, and guides us to satisfaction, because we know where to run to for true satisfaction.
So, Haggai gives this little God lecture to the people. Specifically, he gives it to Zerubbabel, the governor, and Jeshua, the high priest. Take a look at that for a second. God wants to reach his entire people with a call to action, so he gets right to two of the people most likely to get the Israelites to do something: their political leader and their spiritual leader. In your life, look for what God wants to show you through your spiritual and political leaders, and remember, God can use anyone to show Himself to you. The temple was already half-built because a pagan king, Cyrus the Persian, had been inspired by God to command God’s house to be rebuilt (see Ezra 1).
When the Israelites heard this message, they began to obey and feared the Lord, and the Lord let them know that he was with them (Haggai 1:12-13). Keep in mind that this presence of God is what humanity has longed for since it lost the spiritual-physical bond it had with God in Eden. That little reassurance is actually huge. The God of All is with you. You!
Then comes Haggai 1:14-15 which tells us three times that God sparked the enthusiasm of people of his. He sparked the enthusiasm of the governor, the high priest, and the whole remnant of God’s people. And they started to do what God asked of them, and began work on September 21, 520 B.C. (Apparently the New Living Translation people studied Jewish and Persian calendars enough to relate it to our modern calendar.) When we hear God’s word and obey, he sparks our enthusiasm. I hope you desire to live life with electric enthusiasm enough that you listen to God and obey his calling on your life.
Almost a month later, God tells the people to remain strong, despite how much the temple has fallen from glory (Haggai 2:3-4), and tells them to keep working because he is with them. I know I am often discouraged with how much my temple has fallen from glory; the life a sinner leads must look an awful lot like temple ruins to Someone who wants to live in both of those. And yet God encouraged the Israelites again and encourages us again, reminding us that He is with us and letting that alone be a reason to want to build his house, so that we can come even closer to the indwelling God.
In a brief tangent, Haggai 2:8 reads: “The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.” Keeping up with my anti-materialism readings, here God is talking about taking the wealth of the nations and giving it to the temple, and he explicitly reveals his power to do so. Keep in mind that God has power over money and things, and can move them where he wants them. He wants us to succeed, and so if we have our needs supplied by Him alone, money will not be a problem. We will have what he wants us to have, according to his will for our personal stewardship of his creation.
Today’s Psalm reading in my One Year Bible was absolutely fantastic, and I cannot help but share it with you. Psalm 139:1-24 (the entirety of Psalm 139) reads as follows:
1 O Lord, you have examined my heart
and know everything about me.
2 You know when I sit down or stand up.
You know my thoughts even when I’m far away.
3 You see me when I travel
and when I rest at home.
You know everything I do.
4 You know what I am going to say
even before I say it, Lord.
5 You go before me and follow me.
You place your hand of blessing on my head.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too great for me to understand!7 I can never escape from your Spirit!
I can never get away from your presence!
8 If I go up to heaven, you are there;
if I go down to the grave,[a] you are there.
9 If I ride the wings of the morning,
if I dwell by the farthest oceans,
10 even there your hand will guide me,
and your strength will support me.
11 I could ask the darkness to hide me
and the light around me to become night—
12 but even in darkness I cannot hide from you.
To you the night shines as bright as day.
Darkness and light are the same to you.13 You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body
and knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex!
Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it.
15 You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion,
as I was woven together in the dark of the womb.
16 You saw me before I was born.
Every day of my life was recorded in your book.
Every moment was laid out
before a single day had passed.17 How precious are your thoughts about me,[b] O God.
They cannot be numbered!
18 I can’t even count them;
they outnumber the grains of sand!
And when I wake up,
you are still with me!19 O God, if only you would destroy the wicked!
Get out of my life, you murderers!
20 They blaspheme you;
your enemies misuse your name.
21 O Lord, shouldn’t I hate those who hate you?
Shouldn’t I despise those who oppose you?
22 Yes, I hate them with total hatred,
for your enemies are my enemies.23 Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
24 Point out anything in me that offends you,
and lead me along the path of everlasting life.Footnotes from the NLT:
- Psalm 139:8 Hebrew to Sheol.
- Psalm 139:17 Or How precious to me are your thoughts
The Lord knows and examines our hearts, and knows everything about us. He knows our thoughts even when we are far away. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that this could mean physically or spiritually. He knows what’s going on inside of us, despite how physically far we may try to be from him (Jonah) or how spiritually distant we may feel. Jump to verse 12 for a second, “even in darkness I cannot hide from you.” Whether we are in physical darkness or we have darkness in our hearts because of sin, he still sees us and knows us, and his light gets down into the depths of our souls.
Verse 3 says that He sees me when I travel and when I rest at home, and knows everything I do. This is an encouragement but also a challenge for us. Many people I talked to in my residence hall right before break were fretting going on break because of how easy it is to fall away from God. Being at home resting right now, I can see how the spiritual atmosphere is different and how the devil wants to use the time while I’m adjusting back to life at home here to attack me. But even here, God sees us, and sees our need for Him, and knows what we do. He watches us, but he watches over us. For those of you on a “holiday” (Christmas) break, be encouraged that God watches over your travels and resting, and work hard to live a life for Christ that you’d be unashamed of living in front of the world, because you’re already in front of God, and that’s the most important audience member to demonstrate faithful living to.
Verse 5 talks about how God goes before us and follows behind us. God has a presence surrounding us; he is not just leading us in a spiritual game of follow the leader, and he is not just following behind us, picking up the pieces of our broken existences, but he surrounds everything we are and everything we do. He is ubiquitous, everywhere, and that makes him inescapable (verse 7). We can never get away from God and we should never want to.
Whether verse 17 actually means God’s thoughts about us, or God’s thoughts to us (as the footnote says), the magnitude of Psalm 139:17-18 is unscathed. The thoughts of God are so precious to those who follow him, and they are too many to count. He has thought the universe out, from beginning to end, and that universe includes you. Also look at the last sentence of verse 18: “And when I wake up, you are still with me!” Between learning about Godly relationships in a liberal arts class this semester and talking to various people, I have come to understand that this is one of the thrills of marriage: getting to wake up next to the person that was with you when you went to sleep. This same level of intimacy is one that God has with us, that he is with us still, right next to us, in the morning, waiting to delight us when we awake once more.
The end of Psalm 139 is delightful: “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. Point out anything in me that offends you, and lead me along the path of everlasting life.” My thoughts are most certainly anxious at times, and I need God to know me, to search me, to hold me accountable to his word, his law, and his teachings, and I need him to lead me along the path of everlasting life, for by myself I would stray from that path. Make these two verses your prayer as you strive to live better for and deeper in the Lord.
Stay dressed for action and keep your lamps burning, (Luke 12:35)
-Zachariah