Haggai 1

In the second year of Darius the king, in the sixth month, on the first day of the month, the word of the LORD came by the hand of Haggai the prophet to Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest: 2 “Thus says the LORD of hosts: These people say the time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the LORD.” 3 Then the word of the LORD came by the hand of Haggai the prophet, 4 “Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, while this house lies in ruins? 5 Now, therefore, thus says the LORD of hosts: Consider your ways. 6 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. 7 “Thus says the LORD of hosts: Consider your ways. 8 Go up to the hills and bring wood and build the house, that I may take pleasure in it and that I may be glorified, says the LORD. 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. 10 Therefore the heavens above you have withheld the dew, and the earth has withheld its produce. 11 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.” 12 Then Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, with all the remnant of the people, obeyed the voice of the LORD their God, and the words of Haggai the prophet, as the LORD their God had sent him. And the people feared the LORD. 13 Then Haggai, the messenger of the LORD, spoke to the people with the LORD’s message, “I am with you, declares the LORD.” 14 And the LORD stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and the spirit of Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, and the spirit of all the remnant of the people. And they came and worked on the house of the LORD of hosts, their God, 15 on the twenty-fourth day of the month, in the sixth month, in the second year of Darius the king.

Before I pray, I want to give a brief explanation about why I decided to preach on Haggai this weekend and next. On a practical level, I wanted to preach out of the Old Testament and I have two weeks to do it. Haggai, conveniently, is both an Old Testament book and two chapters long. It seemed a match made in heaven, quite literally. But more importantly, I love the book of Haggai for at least two reasons. First, it’s like a bottle of prophetic hot sauce. It may be small, but it can reduce a grown man to tears. Second, it’s like a jug of thick milk: it soothes a burning mouth so it’s ready for more. God’s word has that kind of spicy and silky power. It bruises and heals, and I want us to ask that God would use the prophet Haggai to both of those ends in our hearts today. Let’s pray.

Context of Haggai

The book of Haggai opens by saying that the word of the Lord came “in the second year of Darius the king, in the sixth month, on the first day of the month” (1:1). That puts us in August of 520 BC, over sixty years after Judah had been taken into exile by the Babylonians. In 539 BC, nineteen years before Haggai chapter 1, the Persian king Cyrus had issued a decree for the Jewish exiles to return to their land and rebuild the temple that had been destroyed (2 Chr. 36:23; Ezr. 1:2-4). About 50,000 went back (Ezr. 2:64-65; Neh. 7:66-67), led by Zerubbabel, the governor of Judah, and Joshua, the high priest. They built the altar for burnt offerings and laid the foundation of the temple (Ezr. 3) but soon stopped working on the temple because of discouragement and outside oppression (Ezr. 4). It is into this context that Haggai prophesies.

The Problem: Returned Israel Has Neglected to Build God’s House (1:1-2)

In verse 1, we see that Haggai is prophesying to “Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest.” The message Haggai delivers to these two men begins in verse 2: “Thus says the LORD of hosts: These people say the time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the LORD.”

Now why would they say such a thing? Well, let’s try to imagine how they must have been feeling. In years past, prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel had spoken of a day in the future when God would restore the fortunes of his people. He would gather them from the nations where he had driven them, plant them in the land of their fathers, and they would live in prosperity and security under a righteous son of David. But this kind of glorious restoration was a far cry from what the Jews experienced in Haggai’s day. A fraction of the exiles had returned, Jerusalem was in shambles, the land was sickly, and the Davidic ruler, Zerubbabel, was under the authority of a Persian king. We are dealing with a colossally disheartened people.

God’s Response: Israel’s Neglect Is a Symptom of Covenant Disloyalty (1:3-6)

In verses 3-4, however, God exposes the real issue: “Then the word of the LORD came by the hand of Haggai the prophet, ‘Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, while this house lies in ruins?’” Notice the irony between the use of the word “time” in verse 2 and verse 4. It’s as though God were saying, “You want to talk about the time of restoration? Let’s talk. You say it hasn’t come because you aren’t experiencing the prosperity envisioned by the prophets. But tell me, did the prophets envision a people who would eat caviar while the temple looks like a landfill? Don’t you see? It’s your hearts that need restoration.”

To give evidence of this, God continues in verses 5-6, “Now, therefore, thus says the LORD of hosts: 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.” The Jews had devoted themselves to food, drink, clothing, and money, but it was like chasing after the wind. What did all this mean? It meant that Israel was still under the curse of the law. They had returned to the land physically, but their hearts remained in exile. In Deuteronomy 28, Moses describes the curses that would come from forsaking God’s covenant. In verse 48 he writes, “You shall serve your enemies whom the LORD will send against you, in hunger and thirst, in nakedness, and lacking everything. And he will put a yoke of iron on your neck until he has destroyed you.” These curses hounded the returned Jews because they were still as corrupt as their fathers.

Implication: Build God’s House (1:7-11)

After exposing the inverted allegiance of his people, God calls them to repent. Verse 7: “Thus says the LORD of hosts: Consider your ways. Go up to the hills and bring wood and build the house, that I may take pleasure in it and that I may be glorified, says the LORD.” Verses 9-11 are essentially a restatement of verse 6, only here God clarifies that he had called for the drought on the land. Why? Verse 9: “Because of my house that lies in ruins, while each of you busies himself with his own house.”

So this section shows us at least two things: 1) God’s desire for a dwelling place among his people is driven by a commitment to make his name known. 2) God’s people will only experience prosperity when they see that their deepest need is God’s presence. God calls for a drought to show his people that he is their food, their clothing, and their riches.

Result: Zerubbabel, Joshua, and the Remnant Work on God’s House (1:12-15)

In verse 12, we see the effect of God’s message on his people: “Then Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, with all the remnant of the people, obeyed the voice of the LORD their God, and the words of Haggai the prophet, as the LORD their God had sent him. And the people feared the LORD.” God responds to the Jews’ repentance in verse 13 by assuring them of his presence (“I am with you, declares the LORD”), the same message he had given to Moses and Joshua generations before. Then, God stirs up the spirits of his people, and we read that “they came and worked on the house of the LORD of hosts, their God, on the twenty-fourth day of the month, in the sixth month, in the second year of Darius the king” (vv. 14-15), which was twenty-three days after Haggai had first addressed the people.

Application to Christ

So what is the point of Haggai chapter 1? Why is it in the Bible? And what does it mean for us? To answer these questions, we need to first see that this text is shot through with anticipation. God had promised David in 2 Samuel 7:13-14, “When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.” This promise was initially fulfilled in Solomon. He built the first temple, but it was destroyed and his reign came to an end. One greater than Solomon would have to come who would build an enduring house for his God and sit on an everlasting throne. Zerubbabel, a ruler in the line of David, has promise, but he presides over a disobedient people in a land not truly their own and builds a house for God that is a shell of its former glory (2:3).

So what is the point of all of this? The point is to direct our hearts to the one who would bring about the glorious restoration that the prophets foretold. In Jesus, we see the true temple where God dwells with man. John 1:14 tells us, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” In his crucifixion, we see the temple being destroyed by God’s enemies, enduring the curse of the law for the blessing of a rebellious people. In his death, we see a righteous Israelite driven into exile away from the land of the living. And in his resurrection, we see David’s greater Son building a house for God’s name that would never perish, so that all who come to him would have life to the full in their Creator’s presence. Jesus told the Jews in John 2:19, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The book of Haggai prepares our hearts to glory in this reality.

Application to Bethlehem

But how do we appropriate the message of Haggai 1 for our own lives? There are many directions we could go (some of which we will pick up next week), but I want to limit our focus to one thing: the fact that although the Jews were commanded to return and build God’s house, they busied themselves with their own houses when faced with opposition and discouragement.

What is going on here? Maybe another example will help us. Before the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, George Washington had begun a significant expansion of his home in Mount Vernon. In September of 1776, during a disheartening standstill with the British army near New York City, Washington wrote to his house manager back at Mount Vernon, “Such is my situation that if I were to wish the bitterest curse to an enemy on this side of the grave, I should put him in my stead with my feelings.” Then, surprisingly, he begins to give his manager instructions about how the fireplaces should look in the new addition to his home. Why the sudden shift? David McCullough suggests an answer in the book 1776, “If all could not be as he wished with the army, if all could not be ‘exactly answerable and uniform’ or executed in a masterly manner,’ concerning the war he was expected to wage and win, then he would at least have it so at his distant beloved home.”

Do you see what’s going on here? When we are faced with disappointment, with difficulties that seem to be out of our control, our natural tendency is to run to places where we can determine the results. So, for instance, when our marriage is on the rocks, we fantasize about Mr. or Mrs. Right who obeys our every wish. When an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico dries up our fishing business, we commit suicide. When there is trouble at work, we buy new clothes. When the doctors discover cancer, we play video games for hours. When a friend betrays us, we cut ourselves, we overeat, we fill up our schedules with activities and ministries to give the impression that we are leading significant lives when we are really languishing on the inside.

Why do we do that? The same reason the Israelites abandoned the work on God’s house and busied themselves with their own houses. We believe that we are better homeowners than God. We are dissatisfied with the way God runs his world, so we seek refuge in worlds we can run. But when we look to the cross, we see that God runs his world by sending his Son to suffer the greatest disappointment in our place so that all of our disappointments are now transformed into occasions for experiencing refuge in his presence. As we rest in the one who has raised up the temple of God in his body, we receive the grace we need to press on in hope, knowing that in God’s presence is fullness of joy and at his right hand are pleasures forevermore.