Today we begin our study of a book in the Bible called Haggai.  It’s a very short book containing only two chapters, and it’s named after the prophet who preached the words written in it.

“What makes the book of Haggai especially interesting is that he was one of the three last prophets of the Old Testament period to receive God’s revelation before the coming of Christ. He was a man with a single message for the people of his day, and he preached it with persuasive force and power. … We know hardly anything about Haggai as an individual, but he must have been an inspiring preacher, for he succeeded in getting the people enthused for the work, and the temple was completed and dedicated in 516 BC.”¹Williams, P. (2008). Opening up Haggai (p. 9). Day One Publications

If you were with us last week, Keith Zachary primed the pump for where we are headed by doing an overview of the lessons from the book of Ezra.  The reason I asked him to do that is because the ministry of Haggai took place during the events recorded in Ezra; therefore, I thought it would be a good way to transition our minds out of our study of Ephesians in the New Testament and back into the world of the Old Testament, which ultimately points us to Jesus and the New Covenant!

But, to make sure we are all on the same page, let me do a quick, super-fast review of the events that led up to what we are going to read in the book of Haggai.

In 2024 we started a study of 1^st Samuel, and in it we saw that the people of Israel demanded a human king like the other nations of the world had, because they lacked the faith to truly trust God to be the only king they needed.  So, God gave them Saul, which proved right out the gate that being under a human king was a bad idea!  Then God raised up David, the most important king in the history of Israel.  God used David in very unique and special ways to point Israel and the world to the need for the greatest King with the greatest throne—Jesus! When David died, his son Solomon inherited the throne, and God used Solomon to build a magnificent temple in Jerusalem.  The temple replaced the tent known as the tabernacle, as the official place for God’s people to worship Him and meet with Him.  God has never been housed in a tent or a building, but, in a special way, God used the tabernacle and then the temple as a physical representation of His glory, His favor on the Jewish people, and the official place where He would receive offerings, sacrifices, and worship from His people and the priests who represented the people to Him.

But, after all the awesomeness of God that He poured out on the people of Israel, the foolish arrogance of the next king, Solomon’s son Rehoboam, split the nation.  Ten tribes formed the northern Kingdom of Israel, and after a couple of different locations, its capital ended up in Samaria.   Meanwhile, the tribes of Judah and Benjamin united to form the southern Kingdom of Judah, and they kept their capital in Jerusalem, and thus they also kept the temple.

To make matters worse, both kingdoms were plagued by constant horrible leadership.  Not one single king of the northern Kingdom ever led the people to repent from idolatry, because they themselves never truly repented of it either.  Therefore, after more than 200 years of constant rebellion against God and a total disregard for the covenant He made with the Jewish people, God sent the Assyrians to permanently eradicate the northern Kingdom.

Sadly, the southern Kingdom didn’t learn the lesson of the northern Kingdom, and it confidently went down the same path of idolatry.  They experienced a couple of national revivals under kings like Hezekiah and Josiah, but, painfully, they would always go right back to being ruled by an idolatrous king who practiced the very same idolatry the people were constantly drawn to as well.

Finally, in 586 BC, after Judah had consistently refused to repent of their blatant, audacious idolatry, and approximately 135 years after God sent the Assyrians to annihilate the northern Kingdom for its refusal to repent, God sent a Babylonian king named Nebuchadnezzar II to conquer and enslave the southern kingdom of Judah.  He not only conquered and enslaved the Jews, but he also stole all the instruments of worship used in the temple, and then destroyed the temple, the city of Jerusalem, and even its walls.  The Babylonians turned Jerusalem into a pile of broken rocks, burned up buildings, and the promised land that once produced tremendous wealth for the Jewish people was essentially a wasteland.

Now before all this happened, God used eight different prophets to proclaim what He was going to do to the kingdom of Judah, which not only included the total destruction of the kingdom and the people being exiled from the promised land into enslavement in Babylon, but also the eventual restoration of the people to the land and the covenant God made with them.  Despite the totally hopeless state of the Jewish people; despite the obvious outward appearance that God had washed His hands of any relationship with them ever again, God had declared that He wasn’t going to punish them forever.  In fact, in Jeremiah 25:11-12 and in Jeremiah 29:10, the prophet made it clear that God was going to use the Babylonians to destroy and enslave the Jews for a very specific amount of time (70 years), after which He would graciously restore them in a way that was clearly GOD doing it!

Furthermore, of the prophets who declared the destruction and restoration of Judah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel gave the most blunt and clear prophecies of why God was going to restore them.  In various places in Isaiah as well as in passages like Jeremiah 31:31-34 and Ezekiel 36:26-27, we see the promise of a New Covenant that God was going to establish with people from every tribe and tongue through the Jewish people living in Judah.  Ultimately then, the promise to restore the Jews to Judah and rebuild the temple was a promise to fulfill the promise He made to Adam and Eve to send one who would crush the head of the serpent and to fulfill the covenant God made with Abraham to form a nation out of Abraham’s descendants that would bring forth the promised one who would bless every nation on earth! It was a promise for them to be the people that God would use to send the One who would establish a new and very different covenant with people from every tribe and tongue that He would redeem out of the curse of sin to be His favored sons and daughters forever!

But, for seventy years, those promises seemed ridiculous.  The state of the Jewish people was in such disarray that no one in their right mind would ever even imagine that they would ever be used of God to do anything important, and much less be a geopolitical state again.  But that’s exactly how God intended things to look.  After the total destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, and after seventy years of captivity and enslavement in Babylon, from the outside looking in, the only way the Jewish people would ever be restored as a nation was if God did it.  God wanted it to be clear that it was in His holy and just will to orchestrate the punishment of the people for their persistent egregious violation of the Mosaic Covenant, and it was in His holy, steadfast love and trustworthiness that He graciously restored the Jewish people into His redemptive plan!

As God promised, after seventy years of captivity in Babylon, God graciously stirred the heart of Cyrus the Great to give a decree to allow the Jewish people to be freed from captivity and return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple!  But the decree was not to be freed from captivity for the sake of freedom, but to be freed from captivity to go back and rebuild the temple that testified to the power and glory of Yahweh!  Therefore, in Ezra chapter one we read,

1 In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and also put it in writing: 2 “Thus says Cyrus king of Persia: The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. 3 Whoever is among you of all his people, may his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and rebuild the house of the Lord, the God of Israel—he is the God who is in Jerusalem. 4 And let each survivor, in whatever place he sojourns, be assisted by the men of his place with silver and gold, with goods and with beasts, besides freewill offerings for the house of God that is in Jerusalem.” (Ezra 1:1-4)

Now this was huge! Cyrus the Great was the king of the Persians, and they invaded Babylon, the empire that had enslaved the Jewish people, and they conquered it.  Sometime after that, God used this pagan King over a pagan empire as an instrument to restore the Jewish people to the Covenant God made with Abraham and Moses, not just in a passive way of allowing it, but in a very active way of facilitating it!  If you continue reading the first chapter of Ezra, Cyrus even sent back all the instruments of worship that Nebuchadnezzar stole from the Temple!  Cyrus even encouraged the people in the Kingdom to financially support those who were going to journey back!

Once the Jews got back to Judah and got settled in, they built an altar to the Lord in Jerusalem and began offering daily sacrifices again.  They also reinstituted some of the festivals and celebrations in the Law of Moses.   The leaders then got everything organized to start rebuilding the temple.  The scene when they finally got the foundation laid was inspiring.  Ezra records,

10 And when the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord, the priests in their vestments came forward with trumpets, and the Levites, the sons of Asaph, with cymbals, to praise the Lord, according to the directions of David king of Israel. 11 And they sang responsively, praising and giving thanks to the Lord, “For he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever toward Israel.” And all the people shouted with a great shout when they praised the Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid. 12 But many of the priests and Levites and heads of fathers' houses, old men who had seen the first house, wept with a loud voice when they saw the foundation of this house being laid, though many shouted aloud for joy,13 so that the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people's weeping, for the people shouted with a great shout, and the sound was heard far away. (Ezra 3:10-13)

But soon thereafter, leaders of the pagan people who had been living in the region while the Jews were in exile showed up wanting to help the Jews build the temple and, as such, possibly put themselves in a more favorable relationship with the ruler of the Persian Empire and possibly even get blessings from Yahweh.  But, learning from the lessons of their ancestors, the Jews rejected their offer.  They refused to allow worshipers of other gods to be a part of the construction of a temple dedicated to the God who made it real clear that there are no other gods!

But, angry about not being included in the possible blessings of the temple, they turned against the Jews and began to threaten them in ways that actually caused the Jewish people to be afraid.  They even paid bribes to various leaders to interfere with the work, make it more difficult, and ultimately slow it down.  Finally, they wrote a letter to the new king of the Persian Empire insisting that it was in his best interest to shut the construction of the temple down, and it worked.  The new king issued a stoppage order that the people of the lands then brought to the Jewish leadership and forced them to quit.

In fear of man, the Jewish people then went about life, forgetting all that God had done to restore them!  They made no attempt to appeal the decision.   They just quit, and in so doing, they forgot all about how excited they were to be God’s people; of getting to do the work of the Lord; of building a testimony for all to witness God’s power, authority, holiness and glory.  Instead, they focused on building personal wealth and ease of life.  They walked away from living on mission with God and basking in the privilege of being His chosen people, to living lives with a purpose to earn as much money and material possessions as possible; of lives consumed with activities and possessions that only matter in this world, rather than the things that matter for eternity.  They went from shouts of praise and tears of joy about all God was doing to restore them as His people, and as the special testimony of His glory and power, to pursue better houses, hobbies, and vacations!  And the “they” I’m talking about included the leaders of the people, specifically the Jewish governor AND the Jewish High Priest!

Now listen.  This is key.  The irony is, under the covenant God made with Israel called the Mosaic Law, God would make them the most wealthy and prosperous nation on earth if they would put Him and His work first!  But the fear of man led them to put their love and loyalty for God on the back burner and instead try to provide for themselves all the things God said He would give them in abundance if they would just put Him first and, as such, trust and obey Him!

ENTER HAGGAI!

1. There are three parts to the story in Haggai 1:1-15 that should remind us to always prioritize God and His work first!
   In the first part of the story,A.Haggai confronted the lack of faith to put God and God’s work first. (1:1-2)
   1In 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."

   B.God clearly sent them back to rebuild the temple, but they let threats and complications be their justification to stop doing what God clearly sent them there to do! It’s a story we see over and over again in the Old Testament.  Not long after God freed the Jews from 400 years of captivity in Egypt, they started complaining and wanting to go back to being slaves in Egypt.  They had more faith in being slaves in Egypt than in being God’s people living in freedom.  While God was meeting with Moses on the mountain, the people built an idol of an Egyptian god and began to worship it instead of Yahweh.  They had more faith in the gods of Egypt than in the God who had just parted the Red Sea for them to escape the Egyptian army, then, after they crossed the Red Sea on dry land, closed the sea on top of that very same army!  As you read the Old Testament, you see it time and time again.  Every time life got hard, the very people that God had demonstrated His glory to in such powerful ways would lose faith in God and start placing their faith in political alliances with pagan nations, false gods, and just about anybody and anything other than God!C.Now this time, it doesn’t appear they began the outright worship of false gods, but what they did do was give in to the fear of man and, as such, place more faith in what man could do to them than what God could do for them. The result was that they quit trusting, obeying, and living to know and labor with God first!

   D.For those who were here in our study of Ephesians, this should bring to mind the very thing Paul told the church that Satan and his demons are trying to get us to do—quit! In the kingdom of God, winning is not quitting, trusting, obeying, and living to know and labor with God—Period!

   E.Further commentary on 1:1-2:
   1.“Sixteen years earlier the people and their leaders had set to work with great enthusiasm to rebuild God’s house which had earlier been destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar. But then came opposition from the surrounding pagan nations and a decree from the emperor putting a stop to the work (Ezra 4). Gradually, the people’s attention turned to their own private affairs, and they became used to worshipping among the ruins of the original temple. As the years passed, the vision they once had of God’s house being gloriously renewed faded altogether, and if during the general conversation someone raised the issue by asking, ‘Do you not think we ought to consider starting work on God’s house?’ the reply would be forthcoming, ‘The time has not yet come for the Lord’s house to be built.’ And then they would trot out all the excuses why that was the case—lack of funds, shortage of materials, not enough craftsmen and so on.”²Williams, P. (2008). Opening up Haggai (pp. 23–24). Day One Publications

   2.“Although the people may have been scratching around for some reasonable excuse as to why the time was not right to start building God’s house, the truth was that after sixteen years of inactivity, a spirit of apathy and indolence had crept into their thinking from which they simply could not rouse themselves. It was Haggai’s intention to break through that inertia and get the people moving again.”³Williams, P. (2008). Opening up Haggai (p. 25). Day One Publications

   3.“1:1. This superscription identifies the date, the prophet, and the addressees. That the prophecy is dated in the second year of the Persian King Darius rather than in a regnal year of a king of Judah is a vivid reminder that Haggai was ministering during “the times of the Gentiles” when Israel had no king of her own (cf. Zech. 1:1; Dan. 2; Luke 21:24). In Judah’s postexilic calendar, adopted from the Babylonian system of beginning the new year in the spring rather than in the fall (cf. Ex. 23:16; 34:22), this date was 1 Elul (August 29), 520 c. Since this was the day of the new moon, it was probably a holy festival day in Jerusalem (cf. Isa. 1:14; Hosea 2:11). This provided the Prophet Haggai with a ready audience to listen to the first word of the Lord that broke the postexilic prophetic silence. The instrumental role of Haggai as a prophet, “the Lord‘s messenger” (Hag. 1:13), is stressed throughout this brief book. The book is virtually punctuated with the “messenger formula” (“This is what the Lord Almighty says,” and similar expressions, vv. 2, 7, 13; 2:4, 6–9, 11, 14, 23). In addition, each message is identified as “the word of the Lord” (1:1; 2:1, 10, 20). There is no doubt about the divine origin of Haggai’s messages.”⁴Lindsey, F. D. (1985). Haggai. In J. F. Walvoord & R. B. Zuck (Eds.), The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures (Vol. 1, p. 1538). Victor Books

   4.“1:2. Haggai’s addressing the leaders first (v. 1) emphasizes their responsibility. The message is from the Lord Almighty (lit., “the Lord [Yahweh] of armies”). Haggai used this title of God, “the Lord Almighty,” 14 times! The reference to Judah as these people rather than “My people” implies a divine rebuke because they did not act like the Lord’s people. Their excuse for not building the temple (the time has not yet come) is laid bare in the next verses which describe their misplaced priorities.”⁵Lindsey, F. D. (1985). Haggai. In J. F. Walvoord & R. B. Zuck (Eds.), The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures (Vol. 1, p. 1539). Victor Books

   5.“The people were included in the implied address of 1:3 but this first message is initially directed to the two leaders, Zerubbabel the governor of Judah and Joshua … the high priest. Zerubbabel was the heir apparent to the throne of David, being the grandson of King Jehoiachin (1 Chron. 3:17–19; cf. Matt. 1:12, where Jehoiachin is called Jeconiah). That Zerubbabel was called both the son of Shealtiel and the son of Shealtiel’s brother Pedaiah (1 Chron. 3:17–19) is probably due to a levirate marriage (cf. Deut. 25:5–10). After Pedaiah died his brother Shealtiel may have taken Pedaiah’s widow to be his wife and to them was born Zerubbabel. Joshua’s father Jehozadak was the high priest who was deported to Babylon from Jerusalem in 586 c. (1 Chron. 6:15).”⁶Lindsey, F. D. (1985). Haggai. In J. F. Walvoord & R. B. Zuck (Eds.), The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures (Vol. 1, pp. 1538–1539). Victor Books

2. This leads us to the second part of the story. Haggai called out the worthlessness of their efforts to attain earthly wealth, success, and joy. (1:3-11)A.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?

   Note:  They were still going through the motions of offering sacrifices and prayers in the middle of the ruins of the old temple, but so far all they’ve done is rebuild the altar and the foundation.  Meanwhile, they are spending tons of money on their own houses and even purchasing wood to panel their walls!B.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.

   Note:  God used Haggai to point out their inability to find satisfaction or reward in anything!

   1.The laws of the harvest weren’t working! If you sow a lot, the universal law of the harvest is that you will reap a lot, but in their case, they would sow a lot and reap hardly anything!

   2.They never had enough to eat or enough to drink, no matter how much they ate or drank.

   3.No manner of clothing could satisfy them.

   4.Finally, no matter how much they tried to save money and increase their wealth, somehow, they kept having to spend it on other things. Many commentators believe it was inflation devaluing their money.   Either way, the point is that at the end of the day, it was as if their money bags had holes in them!

   5.The point is, in fearing man more than God, they pursued satisfaction in life some other way than trusting, obeying, knowing, and laboring with God, and it wasn’t working! As a matter of fact, nothing was working!  Nothing was bringing satisfaction in their life, not even in a part of their lives!  No matter how hard they worked, and no matter how much they tried, they woke up every day just as dissatisfied and discontent with life as they were the day before!

   6.Now, lest anybody think that what was going on could be explained by some kind of naturally occurring weather cycle or something, Haggai made it clear that what was happening was straight from God! Haggai then states,

   C.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.

   Note:  Haggai makes it really clear that this wasn’t a natural weather cycle or some other explainable difficulty inherent to living in a cursed world, but rather a direct judgment of God for their refusal to continue trusting, obeying, and prioritizing knowing and laboring with Him!  God is doing this to them because they are prioritizing their earthly houses and desires over their eternal relationship with Him; prioritizing the presentation of the glory of their earthly houses and life over the presentation of the glory of God and His life!  Haggai then quotes God further,

   D.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."

   1.Now we need to make sure we understand something. God is not against abundance!  As a matter of fact, God conditionally promised Israel an abundance of everything He was now withholding!  There is literally NOTHING wrong at all with having an abundance!  It’s become popular in Christian circles to spiritualize poverty and demonize wealth, and in doing so, people are literally demonizing what God clearly calls blessings!  People are demonizing what God withheld as PUNISHMENT, as if it’s somehow punishment from God to keep us from evil things!  Wealth, abundance, and ease of life are not evil.  God literally promised all of that to Israel if they would obey Him, and now He’s removing the possibility of it because they won’t!

   2.Furthermore, when we are in a healthy relationship with God, whatever He blesses us with is enough for us. We are blessed by receiving it rather than dissatisfied with what we didn’t get.   We are blessed by all of it and have no need for more if God chooses not to provide it, because when we are in a right relationship with God, we are already satisfied with Him … everything else is a bonus!  It’s why Paul wrote this to the church in Phillipi,

   3.11 Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned, in whatever situation I am, to be content. 12 I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. 13 I can do all things through him who strengthens me. (Philippians 4:11-13)

   E.So, because the Jews no longer lived to know and labor with God, it didn’t matter how nice their houses were, nor did it matter how much money they made; they were never going to be satisfied! But in addition, because they were also refusing to trust and obey God, God amplified their inability to be content in life with the divine frustration of working their butts off in vain! The vanity of their labor was not a God-ordained trial to see if they would be faithful to press on under adversity, but a God-ordained judgment for NOT pressing on in what they were supposed to prioritize FIRST—Him and His work!

   F.Further commentary on 1:3-11:

   1.“By now, the people were living in panelled houses. This phrase implies prosperity and comfort, and that the building of their homes was complete. … The words ruin and drought (11) are very similar in Hebrew. Rain was thought of as a blessing in Israel (see Ps. 65:9–10) and the lack of rain matched the lack of attention paid to God’s house … The people’s problem with money was not a lack of it, since they had panelled houses and earned wages (4, 6). Rather, it was that their money quickly lost its value. The damaging effect of inflation is seen here as having a spiritual origin, a fact which is often ignored today when attempts are made to deal with inflation without investigating its underlying cause … The drought even extended to the dew (see Dt. 11:10–17; 28:23). The marked effects of the curse are further emphasized ( Dt. 28:18, 38–40). The disobedience of the people had made the kind of life as described in Ps. 104:10–23 seem like a distant dream.”⁷Pennant, D. F. (1994). Haggai. In D. A. Carson, R. T. France, J. A. Motyer, & G. J. Wenham (Eds.), New Bible commentary: 21st century edition (4th ed., pp. 859–860). Inter-Varsity Press

   2.“Haggai’s accusation was a biting indictment of their inverted order of priorities as God’s covenant people. Now we must be clear that there was nothing intrinsically wrong with the people taking pride in making their homes comfortable, and in decorating them tastefully. That was perfectly in order. The trouble was that it had taken over their lives and had, to a certain extent, displaced the concerns of God’s work in their order of priorities. They had plenty of vigour and energy to spend on their own life-style, but were tired and apathetic when it came to working on God’s house.”⁸Williams, P. (2008). Opening up Haggai (pp. 27–28). Day One Publications

   3.“From the Christian perspective, this question of priorities is a very important one. When our homes, families, work, pleasures, etc., begin to displace and jeopardize the centrality of Christ in our lives, it spells spiritual danger. It means we are beginning to live our Christian life at a shallower level, and that the Holy Spirit, instead of holding the controlling place, has to struggle and compete with all these other things to have so much as a foothold in our life. We then become like those people Jesus spoke of in his parable of the sower. ‘Still others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful’ (Mark 4:18–19) … If we are not careful, our lives can easily become so cluttered with secular interests and non-essentials that there is less and less time for the things that really matter.”⁹Williams, P. (2008). Opening up Haggai (pp. 28–29). Day One Publications

   4.“God is saying in effect, ‘Where has all this concentration and effort on your own life-style got you in the end? Are you any happier or more content? You give every moment to working in your fields to increase your income and standard of living—“You have planted much and harvested little”. You are no better off; you still do not have enough food and drink to satisfy your hunger and thirst, or enough clothes to keep yourselves warm. And the little money you earn gets eaten up with inflation, like putting it into a bag with holes. And why is all this happening? Because you are neglecting my work and I am withholding my blessing. So you had better start thinking seriously about these things.”¹⁰Williams, P. (2008). Opening up Haggai (p. 30). Day One Publications

   This leads us to the third part of the story.

    

3. The leaders and the people repented and enthusiastically got back to work! (1:12-15)A.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.

   B.The key in all of this is that they stopped fearing man and instead feared God; the One we should always stand in reverential fear before! If we truly believe God to be God, then we will have no reason at all to be worried about what man thinks about us or tells us to do; only what God thinks and tells us to do!1.Now, we need to be clear; the fear we are to have with the Lord is the fear a child should have of his parents.

   2.It’s not a fear that causes us to run away but rather one that causes us to bow down and obey!

   3.It’s not a fear that causes us to dread and despise, but rather one that causes us to honor and respect!

   4.It’s not a fear of one seeking to destroy us, but a reverence for the One who is with us, and Haggai reminds them of this!

   C.We are going to get way more into the significance of God being with us in two weeks, but for now, I just want us to see that Haggai likely recognized that the people had gotten right back on the same path that landed them in 70 years of captivity! We all know what that feels like; that is when we find ourselves confronted by the Holy Spirit about the sin we already knew we were committing, but we now can no longer run from the conviction, whether because of the consequences that have crushed us or the deafening volume of the Holy Spirit’s call to repent!  Either way, when we repent and turn back around, we often immediately start wondering if God really wants us back; if He really accepts us!  We wonder if He has turned us around to punish us or welcome us home.  It’s the very thing that had to be going through the prodigal son’s mind that squandered his entire inheritance on foolish and rebellious living and then went back home to his father.  Will I be accepted?  Will I be punished?

   D.For the Jewish people, they had just been restored to the land, so they had to be wondering if God was now truly going to be finished with them. But in comes Haggai with the reminder that the Lord is still with them! God ALWAYS welcomes repentance!  Listen to what the Lord told Solomon when he finished the temple that they were now trying to rebuild:

   E.11 Thus Solomon finished the house of the Lord and the king's house. All that Solomon had planned to do in the house of the Lord and in his own house he successfully accomplished. 12 Then the Lord appeared to Solomon in the night and said to him: “I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a house of sacrifice. 13 When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people, 14 if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land. 15 Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayer that is made in this place. (2 Chronicles 7:11-15)

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Challenge

What does the use of your time, talent, and money say about how much you prioritize God and His work to prosper HIS eternal life in your family, community, and the rest of the world in and through your local church?

I preached on the Biblical doctrine of the local church in 2024 and again in 2025.  So, I’ll just state it as a Biblical fact today.  God’s PLAN A to reach the world is His church, and the only BIBLICAL way to be a part of HIS church is to live in committed fellowship with a local gathering of His church.  As such, on a granular level, God’s PLAN A to reach the world is to use the time, talents, and money He’s given to the people committed to serve with Him in and through a local church!

Therefore, you cannot say you are living in fellowship with Jesus if you are not living in fellowship with His Church.  Furthermore, you cannot say you are living in fellowship with His church if you are not living in fellowship with a local church where you are prioritizing the use of your time, talent, and money to the work God is doing in and through that local church to prosper GOD’s life in your family, community and people around the world who don’t have access to the Gospel.   For instance, James wrote,

17 So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. 18 But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. 19 You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder! 20 Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? (James 2:17-20)

In other words, it just sounds absurdly ridiculous on a theological and logical level for me to suggest that I’m committed to Christ if some of the most basic things that demonstrate that commitment (the use of my time, talents, and money) are not committed.

In the beginning of the church, people in local churches gathered every DAY to hear the teaching of God’s Word, pray and sing together, and fellowship together.  Every day they invited people who didn’t know Jesus to come with them!  They gathered in small groups in each other’s homes every single day to eat a meal together, talk about the teaching they heard that day, and pray together.   Financially, they weren’t just checking a box that said they gave ten percent of their income to the local church; they were giving every dime they could get their fingers on ... some were even selling all their land and possessions and giving it to the church!!! They saw their talents not just as ways to earn a living, but specifically looked at how they could daily use those talents to impact the cause of Christ in and through their local church!

Fast forward to 1973 … almost a couple thousand years after the birth of the church, I started going to church at the age of two weeks old!  The local church I attended was filled with blue-collar workers from the shipyard and others just like them.  That’s key to the story.  Most of the people were not college educated, and most of them had middle-income working-class jobs.

On Sunday mornings, before everybody got together to worship, they first gathered together in small groups called Sunday school classes.  Tons of people volunteered to teach kids and preschoolers and care for babies.  All the older elementary-age kids, teenagers, and adults then gathered together to worship the Lord with music and hear the preaching of God’s Word.  I’m sure it happened, but I don’t remember a single week that we didn’t hear about somebody giving their life to Christ.  The church eventually got so big that we had three services on Sunday morning!  Many people went to Sunday School at one hour, a worship service at another hour, and served at another hour.  They were enthusiastically there the entire Sunday morning because that’s what it took for us to keep reaching our families and community!

But it didn’t stop there; on Sunday night, a sizable amount came back for classes, leadership teams had meetings, and then people got together to worship the Lord and listen to the preaching of God’s Word again.

On Wednesday night, the church gathered together again!  It started with a meal prepared and served mostly by volunteers so that it could be sold at a very minimal cost per person.  The mealtime was followed by an hour where people volunteered to train students and children to serve the church with music, while other adults gathered together to hear a Bible lesson and pray for all the prayer needs in the church.  In the next hour, volunteers taught children how to live missionally as well as how God was reaching people around the world with the Gospel.  The high school and middle school students got together to worship and be taught God’s Word as well.  After everything was done, all the adult musicians and singers stayed late that night to prepare to minister to the church on Sunday.

Meanwhile, most of the people in the church gave at minimum 10% of their income (tithing) to support all the costs involved with building and maintaining buildings as well as purchasing and maintaining quality equipment to support the ministry, funding the programs and missions that facilitated the work of Christ in and through the church locally and globally, and paying a career level salary to staff that enabled their full time work for the church to be the work that financially enabled them to live life in the same place and in the same general way everybody else in the community the church was trying to reach lived.  And listen, my pastor didn’t have to beg people to tithe to the local church; almost everybody in the church just understood that if you were committed to Christ, that was the least you would financially do!

Now, fast forward again just 53 years later.  Many pastors are fighting to convince people to just come to one worship gathering a week, go to a small group twice a month, and volunteer to serve one hour a month with others to help bring God’s life to the people in their family, community, and around the world.  Many pastors have totally given up on preaching the universal Biblical principle of tithing, the giving standard that predates the Mosaic Law, and are now just trying to get people to be happy about giving any money at all to the work of the Lord in and through the local church.

Meanwhile, churches are filled with people who give little to no time or money to the work of the church to reach their own family and community, all while expecting the church to impressively minister to themselves, their spouse, and their kids!  The entitled consumerism of America has become the culture of the church!  Some studies have shown that half of American Christians give little to nothing at all to Christian causes.  Other studies have shown that the average American Christian spends more money on coffee than they do on their local church!

Meanwhile, I grew up in a church filled with blue-collar shipyard workers who prioritized their time and talents and gave at least a tithe of their income to the church, and the results: they watched God use them to build one of the most influential local churches in America that’s turning southeast Virginia right side up with the Gospel and sending missionaries all over the world!

So, Venture.  Here’s the deal.   How you prioritize your time, talent, and money in your local church is unavoidable evidence of how much you value and love Jesus and what He’s doing in and through His church.  So, what do the works of your time, talent, and money say about your faith in Christ and love for what He loves—His Church?

Our works always unmistakably show our faith and love!  So, if it ain’t adding up, repent and get to work!  God doesn’t punish repentance; He longs for you to do it.  So stop worrying and feeling guilty about not prioritizing God and His work through the local church and just start doing it!  Start tithing today. Stop making excuses for not being involved with others in a group, and tell Rhody and Logan to plug you into one.  Stop telling yourself there’s nothing you can do to help Venture prosper God’s life in others, and reach out to Rhody or Logan, have a conversation with them about things you might like to do to serve, and let them help you get plugged in to do it!

Do this!

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DISCUSSION GUIDE

-What’s your biggest distraction or excuse that causes you to procrastinate on important stuff?
-What discourages you easily?
-How do you respond to discouragement?
-What have you learned that helps you move past or work through discouragement?

1. Haggai confronted the lack of FAITH to put God and God’s work first. (1:1-2)
   -What would have to exist or be true to get you to do a seemingly impossible task?
   -What would keep you from being faithful to a task you know is important and, even, guaranteed to work out?
   -What are some excuses Christians use for not being faithful to the mission Jesus left us?
2. Haggai called out the WORTHLESSNESS of their efforts to attain earthly wealth, success, and joy. (1:3-11)
   -What is something you have been willing to, endlessly, work at or for?
   -When is earthly wealth, success and joy no longer a blessing from God?
   -How does Philippians 4:11-13 fit into the 2 prior questions?
   -How does Mark 4:18-19 (context is in Mark 4:13-20) relate?
   -How can you tell when something is valued over what God says is most important?
   -Anyone willing to admit to something you have valued over God’s work?
3. The leaders and the people REPENTED and enthusiastically got back to work! (1:12-15)
   -How do you respond to second chances?
   -What are some requirements for repentance?
   -Can you think of anything that God might be calling you back to (what you’ve slacked off on and need to repent)? 

Challenge:  What does the use of your time, talent, and money say about how much you prioritize God and His work to PROSPER HIS eternal life in your family, community, and the rest of the world in and through your local church? 

-Choose a verse on repentance (see below) and pray your group through it

Other Scriptures Referenced: 2 Chronicles 7:11-15, Ezra 1:1-4; 3:10-13, Jeremiah 25:11-12; 29:10; 31:31-34, Ezekiel 36:26-27, Philippians 4:11-13 and James 2:17-20.

*Discuss the Objective of the Month