Sermon Tone Analysis

I’m not a hunter.

Never have been.

I am not opposed to it; in fact, I love to eat venison and rabbit and turkey and just about anything else the hunters here might shoot.

I just never got into hunting as a young person, and now that I’m older, I don’t want to be the one shooting at Bambi.

I’ll leave that to others.

But I know that some of you are hunters, and some of you are — or were — married to hunters, so you might appreciate this story I heard recently.

A group of men had gone out hunting for the day, pairing up in twos, and at the end of the day, as they were gathering back at their trucks, one of the hunters returned alone, staggering under the weight of a six-point buck he had slung across his shoulders.

“Where’s Harry?” he was asked.

“Harry had a stroke of some sort.

He’s back up the trail a couple of miles.”

His friends were incredulous.

“You left Harry stranded on the trail and carried that deer all the way back here?!”

“Well,” said the hunter, “I figured nobody was going to steal Harry.”

Everybody’s got their priorities.

For some of us, it’s that six-point buck.

And priorities are the focus of today’s message from the book of Haggai.

Some of you will recall from last week’s historical introduction to the book of Haggai that the prophets of Israel would have been unnecessary if that nation had been serving God as they were supposed to do.

Some of you will recall from last week’s historical introduction to the book of Haggai that the prophets of Israel would have been unnecessary if that nation had been serving God as they were supposed to do.

Today, as we begin our study of the book itself, we are going to take a look at what, exactly, had gone wrong with this remnant of Jews who had returned to Jerusalem from exile under the decree of Persian King Cyrus II.

Remember that about 50,000 people had returned to the land of promise and that they had started out well — rebuilding the altar and starting the foundations of the temple that had been destroyed when Nebuchadnezzar had ransacked the city and taken the people into exile nearly 70 years earlier.

But they had faced opposition from the Samaritan people who had lived in the land in their absence.

Slanderous letters had been written to at least two different Persian kings warning them that the Jews would rebel against them if they were allowed to rebuild the temple and the city of Jerusalem, and the kings had stopped the work.

But a new Persian king had come onto the scene, King Darius.

So what would this returned remnant of believing Jews do with this new opportunity?

Let’s take a look.

We’re going to be studying the first chapter of Haggai today.

You’ll find this shortest of Old Testament books near the end of the Old Testament, the third from the last — so Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi.

Let’s stop there.

Darius the Great ruled over the empire of Persia from 522 to 486 B.C., and Haggai’s opening verse allows us to date his prophetic period with great accuracy.

The events of his book begin in September, 520 B.C., after the king had been in power for two years.

The other thing to note from this verse is that Haggai’s first message from God is directed to Zerubbabel and to Joshua.

Zerubbabel was the governor appointed by Persia to be in charge of the political affairs of this Persian province, and Joshua was the high priest, the one who was over the religious affairs there.

In other words, God is speaking through Haggai to the political and religious leaders of this Jewish remnant.

God is holding these men responsible for the status of their people.

But what was that status?

Remember that the presence of prophets among the Jews suggests there is something wrong in their relationship with the God who had made a covenant with them that He would be their God and they would be His people.

And if there’s any question about the status of the relationship, God settles the matter right off the bat.

“THIS PEOPLE says.”

Not “My people say” or even “THE people say.”

There is a note of derision here that is also present in other prophetic writing when God is chastising His people for their waywardness.

And here we see also the reason for God’s displeasure with the returned Jews.

They have not been working to rebuild the temple.

“The time has not come,” they have said.

They had allowed a temporary setback to become an excuse to turn to other things.

temporary setback to become an excuse to turn to other things.

“There is an aptness in us to

Writing about this verse, Matthew Henry said: “There is an aptness in us to misinterpret providential discouragements in our duty, as if they amounted to a discharge from our duty, when they are only intended for the trial and exercise of our courage and faith.”

[Matthew Henry, Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible: Complete and Unabridged in One Volume (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1994), 1564.]

Matthew Henry, Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible: Complete and Unabridged in

One Volume (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1994), 1564.]

misinterpret providential discouragements in our duty, as if they amounted to a discharge from

Sometimes God allows us to face difficulties in doing His will simply as a means to test our faith.

Will we press on through the difficulty, knowing that He will provide the resources and the means for us to be successful doing what He has given us to do?

Or will we give up, demonstrating the weakness of our faith in Him?

In the case of this returned remnant, their failure to work to rebuild the temple didn’t just show that they lacked faith that God would enable them to overcome their adversaries.

It also showed that they had a low view of obedience to His commandments.

our duty, when they are only intended for the trial and exercise of our courage and faith.”

There are 613 commandments for the Jewish people in the Torah and in Jewish tradition.

Nearly 200 of those commandments cannot be kept without a temple.

The people simply could not worship God in the way that He had commanded if the temple remained unfinished.

Furthermore, “the temple was more than a building.

It was the site of the people’s meeting with the living God, the symbol of the abiding presence of the Creator of the universe.

If the people ignored the physical ruin of the temple, they were ignoring the spiritual wreckage in their souls as well.”

(Radmacher, Earl D., Ronald Barclay Allen, and H. Wayne House.

Nelson’s New Illustrated Bible Commentary.

Nashville: T. Nelson Publishers, 1999.)

The temple was more than a building.

It was the site of the people’s meeting with the living God, the symbol of the abiding presence of the Creator of the universe.

If the people ignored the physical ruin of the temple, they were ignoring the spiritual wreckage in their souls as well.

Radmacher, Earl D., Ronald Barclay Allen, and H. Wayne House.

Nelson’s New Illustrated Bible Commentary.

Nashville: T. Nelson Publishers, 1999.)

God’s priority for His people was that they rebuild His temple so they could walk in obedience to Him.

But their priorities were different.

They had given up on building God’s house, but it seems that they had continued right along with building (and, perhaps, beautifying) their own houses.

Their priorities and their energies were focused on themselves and not on the things of God.

So God calls them to think about the results of their misplaced priorities.

had given up on building God’s house, but it seems that they had continued right along with

building (and, perhaps, beautifying) their own houses.

Their priorities were focused on

Consider your ways.

Think about what you’ve been doing, and think about the results you’ve been seeing.

The people had been planting much but harvesting little.

Their vineyards were unproductive.

Their clothing was insufficient.

And even the money they saved seemed to disappear.

These people must have felt that they were cursed, and indeed they were.

These curses come right out of , in which God had laid out for His nation, Israel, the blessings they would experience for obedience and the curses that would follow their disobedience to the covenant they had made with Him.

Famine and locusts and failing crops were three of the curses that nearly all of Israel’s prophets had pointed to as evidence of the nation’s disobedience to God.

An abundance of wine was one of the signs of God’s blessing on His people.

That’s the point of Jesus’ first miracle, changing the water to wine at the wedding in Cana.

He was demonstrating that the Kingdom of Heaven had come and calling the people of Israel to enter that Kingdom through humble repentance.

But these people to whom Haggai prophesied seemed to be laboring in vain.

They surely were not experiencing the blessings of the Kingdom of Heaven.

The very hardships the people had pointed to as evidence of the need to focus on their own needs were a result of their misplaced priorities.

“It was no surprise to Haggai that for all their hard work the people found no satisfaction, and that their money disappeared like flour through a sieve.

God was speaking to them through such circumstances as rising prices and inflation.”

(Baldwin, Joyce G. Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi: An Introduction and Commentary.

Vol.

28.

Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries.