Haggai 2:10-23 'Only One Life'

On 20^th May, 2000, over 40,000 students listened to John Piper at the Passion Conference in Memphis, Tennessee.  Piper called them to put God first.  That has been the challenge that we have had from Haggai!

Piper began by telling them about Laura Edwards and Ruby Ellison.  Ruby was over 80, a single woman, and a nurse.  Laura was pushing on towards 80, and was a retired doctor.  They were in Cameroon with the single purpose of making Jesus known among the sick and poor.  But, three weeks earlier, as they travelled from village to village, the brakes of their jeep failed and they plunged over a cliff to their death.

Piper asked those students, ‘was that a tragedy?’  Two women who were serving Jesus years after many people their own age had settled into a comfortable and purposeless retirement. 

They all agreed that is was not a tragedy!

Then Piper pulled out a copy of Reader’s Digest and read an advert:

‘Bob and Penny … took early retirement from their jobs in the Northeast five years ago when he was 59 and she was 51.  Now they live in Punta Gorda, Florida, where they cruise on their 30-foot trawler, play softball, and collect shells.’

‘That’s a tragedy,’ Piper exclaimed.  ‘And there are people in this country that are spending billions of dollars to get you to buy it … With all of my heart I plead with you—don’t buy that dream … As the last chapter before you stand before the Creator of the universe to give an account with what you did: “Here it is Lord—my shell collection.  And I’ve got a good swing.  And look at my boat.”

‘Don’t waste your life!’

The he quoted a hymn, written by C. T. Studd, called ‘Only One life’.  ‘T’will soon be over, only what’s done for Christ will last’.

This morning we meet as Easter people.  The resurrection must set our agenda!

Easter is for rotten people (2:11-14)

Haggai was given God’s word for the people on December 18^th, 520 B.C.  For three months the people have been rebuilding the temple.  Now God gives a series of questions for the Levitical priests.  Part of their job was to clarify and apply Old Testament law.

These questions, in verses eleven to thirteen, centre on ritual cleanliness.  The last question has to do with touching a corpse.  Under the Old Testament law touching the dead made your ceremonially unclean.

God explains that eighteen years, from the time that they had returned to Jerusalem from exile until the time they started to rebuild the temple, they had a corpse in their midst.  It was the ruined temple that they had completely neglected.  This pile of rubble exposed the fact that their hearts were rotten.  It showed that they did not love God, that His reputation among the nations did not matter to them, and that they had no intention of obeying Him.

But God had not given up on them.  God had sent Haggai to these rotten people.  Just as one day He would send His own Son into this world for rotten people like you and me.  Jesus declared, ‘I have not come for the self-righteous, but those who know that they are sinners’ (Luke 5:32).

Easter tells us how God has dealt with our rottenness (2:14-19)

Twice, in chapter one, God had called the people to ‘consider’ (1:5 and 1:7).  The Hebrew term refers to the heart.  We might translate it, ‘consider the path your heart is on.’ 

Now we get this call to consider again (2:15 and 2:18).  God is asking them to consider the difference that putting God first has made in their lives.  They are to compare life before and after they laid the foundation of the Lord’s temple (2:18). 

The simple difference is that when they lived only for themselves God was not with them, but when they put Him first He blessed them.

Now I need to be careful here.  That could sound like a commercial transaction.  Like God was saying, ‘work for me and these will be your wages.’  But that is not what is going on.  This is God pursuing a rotten people in love because He wants nothing more than to be good to them. 

You see the reason He withdrew His blessing was to wake them up.  To call them home.  ‘I struck you and all the products of your toils with blight and mildew and with hail, yet you did not return to me,’ declares the Lord (2:17).  In ‘The Problem of Pain’, C. S. Lewis wrote, ‘God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain.  It is a megaphone to rouse a deaf world.’

It was not until the prodigal son found himself starving in the pigsty that he came to his senses and realised how much better life was at home with his father.  When we pray for our prodigal friends and children we may want to ask that God brings them to a place where they are reminded again that they need him.  Many of us only began our journey back to God when life dealt us a few hard blows.

But they had not come back.  So, what did God do?  He pursued them.  He didn’t give up on them, He sent His Word through Haggai to them.  Through Haggai God told them that their hearts were rotten.  God’s Word exposes our wickedness.  This caused them to fear God (1:12).  The remembered that God is holy.  Then God comforted them.  ‘I am with you’ (1:13).  It is like John Newton wrote in the hymn, Amazing Grace, ‘T’was grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved’.  Then God stirred their spirits so that they would do the only thing that can truly satisfy—which is to live for a purpose infinitely bigger than ourselves.

How can a holy God come among us with our self-centred, proud and rotten hearts and not compromise His holiness by touching us?  How can He take a wicked people like us and declare ‘I am with you’ without compromising His righteousness and justice?  This is where it is helpful to remember that Haggai focuses on the temple of Jerusalem.  That temple was the place where sacrifices were made for sin.  That temple provided an object lesson that said our wickedness deserves death and our only hope is for a substitute to die in our place.  That temple pointed to Good Friday!  There Jesus offers the final and only perfect sacrifice as He dies in our place to take the punishment for our guilt so that we can be forgiven and free from condemnation.

Easter points to Jesus’ return (2:20-23)

Look at the last verse of this book.  I want you to see God’s kindness.  Sixty-six years earlier God had taken the signet ring of royal authority from Zerubbabel’s grandfather because he and his people simply refused to follow Him (Jeremiah 22:24-27).  That had led to the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple.  But now the Lord says to Zerubbabel, ‘On that day, I will take you my servant, and I will make you like a signet ring’ (2:23). 

God did not give up on those people.  I can see nothing in Zerubbabel that deserves such kindness.  The timing is also beautiful—they are three months into a project that will last another five years.  These were words for Him to recall when the going got tough.  We hold on to His promises to be with us when serving Him is not easy.

Notice the reference to the shaking of the nations (2:22).  Earlier God had talked about shaking the nations that they might come to Him for peace (2:9).  Now the shaking of the nations speaks of a day of judgement.  God stands before the nations and says, ‘will you come to me and know my peace, or will you continue to rebel against my goodness and experience my holy anger?’  It’s a question He is still asking people today.

I am not sure how that day of judgement worked out at the time of Zerubbabel.  But it is clear that these promises to Zerubbabel point ahead to Jesus.  Zerubbabel is listed, in Matthew’s Gospel, among the descendants of Jesus (Matthew 1:13).  That judgement points to the judgement, and Resurrection Sunday, is a wake up call that Jesus is going to return to judge the world.  As the apostle Paul God has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed.  He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead (Acts 17:31).   

Conclusion

Easter people remember that they are rotten.  ‘Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the worst’ (1 Timothy 1:15).  We see it here.

Easter people remember the sacrifice.  Haggai focuses on the temple, but it was not the blood of animals that cleanses us from our sin, but the blood that Jesus shed as He dies as our substitute on the cross.

Easter people know that Jesus is coming again.  The resurrection proves it.  So we plead with people that they would come to Him and experience His peace, and so have nothing to fear on that day.

The whole of Haggai is a call to live in the light of these Easter truths.  My friend Brenda, a lecturer in psychology in Maynooth University, was speaking to young people on RTE and explained that if you want true happiness in life you need to live for something bigger than yourself.  She actually told them that for her that bigger thing is Jesus, but the editors cut that out.  Haggai went to a people whose happiness had been sought in their fine panelled home, and it had not worked out well for them.  He called them to get involved in God’s building project and to remember the joys of His presence and blessing.  Don’t waste your life on the wrong building project!

C. T. Studd, who wrote that hymn, ‘Only One Life’, went as a missionary to China and Africa in the late 1800s.  He was wealthy, educated at Cambridge University and played cricket for England.  He actually played in that match with Australia that was the beginning of the famous ashes’ series.  Those who saw him go off to the mission field may have thought he was giving up everything.  But he was seeking a greater purpose and joy.  He wrote, ‘If Jesus be God, and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too good for me to make for him.’  Not that it was easy, his two sons died oversees.  He had a sense of humour.  He talked about living so much for God that the devil would hold a service of thanksgiving when he died.  He knew it was infinity worthwhile’.  For ‘T’will soon be over, only what’s done for Christ will last’.