Sermon Tone Analysis

Haggai 1

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Introduction

Read Haggai 1.1-15

The story is told of a man  driving down a street and the stop light turned yellow in front of him, so he stopped rather suddenly in order not to run the light.

There was a lady in the car behind him who assumed he was going to continue through the light and her following close behind.

Instead she had to slam on her brakes and endure waiting through a light she felt she could have made.

Needless to say, she was not happy.

She honked her horn at the guy, shook her first at him through the window, and screamed out the window at him.

As she was sitting in her car ranting and raving, she suddenly hears a knock on he window and there stands a police officer.

The officer proceeds to arrest her and take her down to the station.

She is fit to be tied.

She complains and she questions and she threatens.

He throws her into jail!

She sits there for an hour or so, and then the officer comes to the cell and opens the door and says, “Ma'am you are free to go.

I have to apologize.

I was behind you as you had to stop for that light and I saw you honk your horn and shake your first and yell at the guy in front of you.

Then I noticed the “Choose Life” sticker on your bumper, and the fish sticker, and the “Jesus Loves You” sign on your back window, and naturally I thought the car had been stolen.”

How we live says something about us.

It is a simple fact of life.

The way we live our lives says something about our values and beliefs, and if we are Christians it says something about our God.

This is the message of the first chapter of Haggai.

God tells the people, “How you are living is not glorifying me.”

A half-built temple does not glorify God.

!! Historical Context

Let me briefly set the historical context of the prophecies of Haggai.

The northern ten tribes of Israel are carried of into exile by Assyria in 722 B.C.

The southern tribe of Judah lasts until 586 B.C., when Babylon conquers Jerusalem for the last time and carries off much of the population into exile.

In 538 B. C. Cyrus, king of Persia, which had conquered Babylon, issues a decree of return.

Any Jew who wanted to return to his homeland was able to do so.

According to the book of Ezra, 50,000 exiles returned in this first wave of returnees, including Zerubbabel, who will become the governor of Judah, and Joshua, who will be the high priest.

The people begin rebuilding the temple in the second year of return.

Unfortunately, political opposition and plotting by those who are living in the land prevent them from continuing the temple.

Those who oppose rebuilding the temple get Cyrus to rescind his decree and the building stops, somewhere around 535 B.C.

This decree is extended by Cambyses, the son of Cyrus, who follows Cyrus on the throne.

In 521 B.C. Darius, who is a distant cousin of Cambyses, seizes the throne.

Darius promptly rescinds the edict against rebuilding the temple.

We have the actual decree in Ezra 6, where Darius tells those who would mettle in the rebuilding, Let the work on this house of God alone.

Let the governor of the Jews and the elders of the Jews rebuild this house of God on its site.

(Ez 6.7).

A truly remarkable decree.

This gets us to Haggai 1.1.

Haggai plants his prophecies firmly in history, and we know that this first prophecy came around August 29, 520 B.C. the second year of Darius.

So we have a group of exiles who have now been in the land for 18 years, who have started the temple, been forced to give up the rebuilding, and through a combination of political opposition and simple inertia, allowed the building to languish over the years.

Now, even though they can rebuild the temple, the general argument, as found in Haggai 1.2 is, “The time has not come to rebuild the temple.”

So Haggai brings this message from God, from, as Haggai repeatedly refers to Him, the Lord of hosts.

And the simple message is, “Listen Judeans, finish the temple.

Finish the temple, because a half-built temple, does not honor God.”

So we take up this passage with a couple of key questions in mind.

The first question is, “Why did God want the Jews to finish the temple?”

What was so important about that?

The second question we hope to answer is this, “What difference can it make to us?”

We do not have temples anymore, we are not Jews, does this little book have any message that has meaning to 21st century believers in a culture and land far removed from that of Judea 500 years before Christ?

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Crucible

The first thing we see from this passage I want to call Crucible.

We see God putting the returnees into a crucible.

A crucible is a place or occasion of severe trial, and this is where we find the people.

Look at verse 5, /Now, therefore, consider your ways.

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.

Then go to verse 9, You looked for much, and behold, it came to little.

And when you brought it home, I blew it away.

Why?

Declares the Lord of hosts.

Because of my house that lies in ruins, while each of you busies himself with his own house.

Therefore, the heavens above you have withheld the dew, and the earth has withheld its produce.

And I have called for a drought on the land and the hills, on the grain, the new wine, the oil, on what the ground brings forth, on man and beast, and on all their labors/.

So we see that God has brought difficulty into the lives of the people.

And this is a pattern we see very often with God.

When he wants to get your attention, God puts you into difficulty, into a pressure-cooker you might say.

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The reason he does this is because we generally do not listen to God, unless He has our attention.

It is sad to say, but if we look at our lives, it is a truth we see again and again.

Plenty, whether it be money or goods, slowly, but inevitably tends to draw our hearts away from the Lord and we get more and more deaf until we cannot hear him any more.

We quit listening.

We cannot be too hard on the returnees here because when we look at them, building up their own houses and lives, while neglecting the temple, we see ourselves.

Plenty, sufficiency, having our needs met, tends to make us tone deaf to God.

I say that to our own shame.

So God has to get our attention.

It took Cherie awhile to figure me out, after we got married.

If I had a book in my hands and she talked to me, I generally did not hear what she said.

She would complain that I was not listening to her, so I would tell her, “listen honey, if you want to say something to me, you need to get my attention.”

One night we were lying in bed, and I was reading a book, and she said, “Did you set the alarm clock?”

Absorbed in my book, my only response was, “Huh?”  “Did you set the alarm clock?”  “Huh?”

All of the sudden, Cherie reaches over and knocks the book, and … bang, my book went flying out of my hands and off the end of the bed.

“Did you set the alarm clock?”

Startled, but having my full attention, I said, “Yes.

Yes, I set the alarm clock.”

And after a pause, “see, when you get my attention, I listen to you.”

God often puts us into difficulty in order to get our attention.

In order to get us to listen.

He does that in many ways, but we find two of them here in Haggai.

He does it by insufficient supply.

Vs.

9, You looked for much, and behold, it came to little…the heavens above you have withheld the dew, and the earth has withheld its produce.

God gets their attention by ensuring that they do not have what they need.

When we do not have what we need, what do we do?

We cry out for help.

We begin to say, “I do not have what I need.

Why not?”  and we go to God and say, “How come you promise to supply all my needs, and  yet I do not have sufficient supply of, whatever,” and God says, “Now that I have your attention, I have been meaning to tell you something.”