About this sermon
Seventeen years after the exiles returned, the Lord’s house still lay in ruins while the people built paneled houses for themselves, and Haggai called them to consider their ways. Jesus calls his people to lay up treasures in heaven and to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. The Lord who stirred up the remnant to build his house is with his people in Christ, and he supplies all they need as they serve him first.
Sermon transcript
The scriptures come to us from two passages, Old and New Testament alike. The first reading is from Haggai chapter 1, the entire chapter, which is not long. And then from the New Testament, from the words of Jesus, Matthew chapter 6, from the Sermon on the Mount, verses 19 through 34. First then, the book of Haggai. My Bible more or less automatically turns toward that general address within the Bible because I have written and published on this particular book and on its companion book, the book of Zechariah. So that Hebrew text is exceedingly well known to me and I’m grateful for what the Lord has done in my life through the study of this particular text.
Let’s then pay close attention to the word of God as it’s found in Haggai chapter one, verses one through 15. In the second year of King Darius, on the first day of the sixth month, the word of the Lord came through the prophet Haggai to Zerubbabel, son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua, son of Jehoshadak, the high priest, thus says the Lord of the heavenly armies.
These people say the time has not yet come. for rebuilding the house of the Lord. The word of the Lord through the prophet Haggai continued, is it a time for you to dwell in your paneled houses while this house lies in ruins? Now those says the Lord of the heavenly armies, consider how you have fared. You’ve sown much and brought in little. You eat without being satisfied. You drink without getting your fill. “‘You clothe yourselves, but no one gets warm. “‘And he who earns anything earns it for a leaky purse.’
“‘Thus says the Lord of the heavenly armies, “‘Consider how you have fared. “‘Go up to the hills and get timber and rebuild the house. “‘Then I will look on it with favor “‘and I will be glorified,’ says, The Lord, you have been expecting much and getting little. And when you brought it home, I would blow on it. Why? Asks the Lord of the heavenly armies. Because of my house, which lies in ruins while you all hurry to your own houses.
That is why the skies above you have withheld their moisture in the earth as we held its yield. And I have summoned fierce heat. upon the land, upon the hills, upon the new grain and wine and oil, upon all that the ground produces, upon man and beast, and upon all the fruits of your labor.
Then Zerubbabel, son of Shealtiel, and Joshua the high priest, son of Jehozadak, and all the rest of the people gave heed to the summons of the Lord their God, and to the words of the prophet Haggai, since the Lord their God had sent him. The people feared the Lord. Then Haggai, the Lord’s messenger, fulfilling the Lord’s mission, spoke to the people, I am with you, declares the Lord. Then the Lord roused the spirit of Zerubbabel, son of Sheol, told the governor of Judah, the spirit of the high priest Joshua, son of Jehozadak, and the spirit of all the rest of the people. They came and set to work on the house of the Lord of the heavenly armies, their God, on the 24th day of the sixth month in the second year of Darius the king.
So far, the reading of God’s own word from the Old Testament, and now from the New Testament, the Gospel of Matthew chapter six, verses 19 through 34. The words of our Lord Jesus Christ himself, Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is that darkness indeed.
No one can serve two masters. He will either hate the one and love the other, or to be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money. Therefore, I tell you, do not worry about your life, about what you will eat or drink or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food and the body more important than clothes?
Look at the birds of the air. They do not sow or reap or store away in barns. And yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? And why do you worry about clothes?
Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God closed the grass of the field which is here today and tomorrow was thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothed you, O you of little faith?
So do not worry, saying, what shall we eat? Or what shall we drink? Or what shall we wear? For the pagans run after these things, and your heavenly father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness. And all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. So far the reading of God’s own word. Thanks be to God.
Well, my title today is whose kingdom are you building? And we see two passages that both address issues of food and clothing and wealth and poverty. And in our Haggai reading, we see two particular divine addresses. The first might be described as law, commandments. The second might be described as gospel. A gift. What’s the law? Well, okay, go up to the mountains and bring back wood and build the house. What’s the house?
Temple. It’s 520 BC. Jerusalem is being rebuilt after three generations of devastation. The burnt stones and the charred timbers of Solomon’s temple still inhabit the building site. An altar has been restored as the book of Ezra tells us. And a little bit of work was done, but that was 17 years before. And the people laid off building. They pay attention to their own houses. They built their own places. And 17 years after the first returnees to rebuild Jerusalem, the temple of the Lord still lies in desolation. and ruin. Burnt timbers, charred stone. All right, so go to the mountains and bring back wood and build the house that I may take pleasure in it. Okay, so far a command. And often in scripture we forget that commands are always for the people of God. What’s the right word? graced by promises. And what is the promise in this text? It is already a reality for those who experienced this text back in 520 BC.
It’s found at the end of verse 13. Haggai, the Lord’s messenger, fulfilling the Lord’s mission, spoke to the people, I am with you. And that line is gospel. That line happens even before a single new day of labor happens in the building site called the temple. The next paragraph talks about how the Lord then roused their spirits and work began. But notice how the gospel comes before. Before the work, because this is the way of God. God takes us where we are. God grants us his gospel promises. God lifts us from our spiritual death, or for these people, since they were believers already, lifts them from their spiritual depression and assures them, I am with you.
That particular line is the shortest oracle in all the Bible. By oracle, we mean a divine speech spoken by someone other than the deity. Angels occasionally speak oracles. Judges chapter two has one of those. Sages and priests sometimes speak them. The book of Job has one. The Psalms have a few. Most oracles are spoken by prophets.
And so the book of Amos, the book of Hosea, the book of Isaiah, filled with pages and pages and pages of divine speech, but speech spoken by the prophet. And the I, the me, the my, is not Isaiah or Amos or Hosea. The I, the me, and the my is God himself. Yahweh, the God of Israel.
The one, the King James version says, the Lord of hosts. And in this text, I translated hosts differently. We forget that host means armies. Lord of hosts is the Lord of the heavenly armies. Is the Lord of hosts able to bless his people with strength and grace? Absolutely. The Lord of the heavenly armies has all the power.
Judah in that time has none. For let’s consider who these people are, and where they are, and when they are. It’s 520 BC, and the text is dated to the second year of Darius. We start with a date form, chapter one, verse one, second year of Darius, first day of the sixth month. That is something like August 29th. 15, I’m sorry, yeah, 15, listen to me, I’m still thinking Luther, okay.
520 BC, the Persians have been on the throne over places like Jerusalem since 539 BC, when Babylon, by what must have seemed miraculous to that world at that time, when Babylon fell on a single night to the armies of Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Persian empire.
They had dammed up the Euphrates River 20 miles north of the city of Babylon. A party was happening in the city. It was a great festival. The river flowed through the double ring of walls, 60 foot high walls, the greatest defended city in the world, the richest city in the world. They thought they would never fall.
But the Euphrates River flowed through the outer wall, then the inner wall, and then beside the palace, and then out the inner wall again, then out the outer wall again. And on a single night, Cyrus the Persian’s great engineers, brilliant engineers, diverted the water flow to an extinct riverbed. And now the Euphrates did not flow through the water gates. Cyrus’s army did in the dead of night.
And on a single night, the greatest city in the world with the best defenses of any city in the world fell to the Persian Empire. It was brilliant. It stunned the world. And now we have a changing of the guard over the entire Near East. It is no longer the Babylonians who rule with their methods of terror. It’s now the Persians who rule and reversing the methods of terror.
They send 20 exiled peoples home to rebuild cities and temples and to restore their deities and to restore their local customs. And for the city of Jerusalem, yes, to restore the temple of Yahweh by Persian decree. And to restore the Torah of Moses as the law of the land inside Judah by Persian decree. and eventually to re-fortify that city by Persian decree. It’s astonishing that pagan kings could be the sponsors of the restoration of the people of God, but such was foreseen by the prophets.
Isaiah 44 and 45 even names Cyrus as the Lord’s anointed who will do all my will, says the Oracle of the Lord through that prophet. And so in 538, The first full year of Cyrus upon those now Mesopotamian thrones. That first full year, Cyrus issues a decree of mercy, of clemency.
Exiled peoples, 20 some peoples who the Babylonians had ravaged, go home, rebuild your cities, rebuild your temples, reestablish your ancient religions. And in those temples, pray for the life of Cyrus the king. and for the life of Cyrus’s sons. We have the decree on at least six different clay barrels about yea high and good Acadian that had been found scattered through the near East so that people in all these wide different places can read the decree that sent them home. And we see the decree in Aramaic and in Hebrew within the Hebrew Bible. The end of Ezra has, I’m sorry, the end of second Chronicles has part of it. The beginning of Ezra has all of the Jewish version of the decree. And we find it elsewhere in the Bible too. What? Go home. The Lord of the heavens has made me king of all the kingdoms of the world. And he’s appointed me to build a house for him in Jerusalem.
So says Cyrus, an Iranian, a Persian, a person from more than a thousand miles away. and the people begin to come home. In 537, maybe 536, the first trickles of returnees arrive. Ezra chapter one and two tell that story. And in 537 or 536, they restore the altar. But no success in building a temple. One reason for this not discussed by the Bible, but clear to historians is this.
That when Jerusalem was absent from the trade route, as it was for three generations of time in its destruction, Samaria got rich because it had set up the toll booth on the international trade route. Jerusalem had been the best toll booth. Now Samaria is. 30 miles north on the same road. Build a toll booth at Samaria and Samaritans get rich. Now restore a toll booth at Jerusalem, a better site. And Samaria opposes it. And Samaria got its local allies together. We see this, especially in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah.
And with those local allies somehow prevent and conspire the continuation of building God’s temple. They accuse it of being a fortress to inspire revolt against Persia. A massive building. Must be a fort. They’re rebels. And with that kind of insinuation and others, perhaps building comes to an end. 17 years go by, maybe 16, and still no progress on the house of God.
But God had mandated that his temple be rebuilt. Isaiah the prophet himself said it, and Cyrus’s decree had said it. In Isaiah the prophet, he is the one who says of Jerusalem, it shall be rebuilt. And of God’s temple, its foundation shall be laid. Isaiah 44 and 45, remarkable text.
And now, 16 to 17 years later, still no temple. And so the prophet speaks with review by the word of the Lord. Verse four, is it time for you to dwell in your paneled houses while this house, namely temple, lies in ruins? Consider how you fared. That is, they thought they ought to be under the blessing of the Lord. They thought they ought to be enriched. They were, after all, God’s marines, right?
Most Jews never returned to rebuild. Most Jews remain behind at Babylonia and Persia, the other places to which they’ve been scattered. We have immense Jewish communities in Egypt as well. And most Jews never returned. Books of the Bible speak about that circumstance. The book of Esther is about the hundreds of thousands of Jews in the Persian territories, in Persia itself, who did not return. And Esther and Mordecai are among them in the 470s BC. Most Jews did not return. The book of Ezra will eventually count 50,000 Jews that return. But hundreds of thousands of Jews live in that world.
Jerusalem itself in the days of Nehemiah, a little bit later. Yeah, Nehemiah comes in 444 BC. He’s got a draft one family in 10 to compel them to live inside Jerusalem. It’s such a terrible place to live. Broken stone, blackened beams, ruin and destruction still in 444 BC. The failure to restore the city with diligence. Yeah, there’s a functioning temple by Nehemiah’s time, but not much else. So these are God’s Marines. Yes, they are. They are the repentant remnant that returned. Yes, they are. but consider their experience. They might register what sound like good excuses.
After all, it’s an 800 mile walk from Babylon to Jerusalem. It’s 600 miles as the crow flies, but you follow the crows and you die of thirst about 200 miles in because the oases no longer happen. 400 miles of no oasis. All right, maybe the crows perish too as they fly across that desert sand on the due west trek. Babylon’s almost the same latitude as Jerusalem. Okay, follow that latitude line drawn on your maps in ancient. Map making. No, they don’t have those lines. Okay. But follow due west and you die of thirst. Okay.
Follow the rivers 800 miles and you live. But the 800 mile journey will take four months on foot. Some might make it faster, they have something to ride on, like a camel or something. Horseback is scant, and of course horses take a lot of water and grass, and you’re not gonna have that much. All right, so foot travel, ox carts, donkeys pulling carts, but most on foot. In the old days of American wagon trains heading out from Independence, Missouri to the Oregon Trail, 10 miles a day was a good day. That’s a good day. So we’re gonna be on the road for four months, maybe longer.
And if you were middle-class when you left Babylonia, what happens after four months of restaurant bills and hotel bills and tolls on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, what happens to you and your wallet when you finally arrive in Jerusalem and Judah probably you have nothing left. Those who’d reach middle-class in Babylon would arrive impoverished. Those who were impoverished in Babylon would arrive still impoverished. And the few who were rich might maybe, maybe, maybe arrive middle-class. So those who succeed in actually reaching Jerusalem will do so amid great poverty.
What are the resources of this community? Not much. Sounds like a fine excuse not to build God’s temple, eh? You can’t squeeze blood out of a stone, right? All right. That might be how a lot of them feel. They tried, it didn’t work. All right, so let’s now pay attention to our own houses. And maybe after 17 years, we might get some nice ivory paneling for that particular bedroom wall, you know? So the text refers to paneled houses. Each of you is paying attention to his own paneled house, while this house lies in ruins, says the Lord.
And so in 520 BC, late in August of that year, a new prophet arises, the first prophet in rebuilt Jerusalem that we know anything about, Haggai. We don’t even know his father’s name. He’s just Haggai the prophet. A whole lot of biblical folks, we know the name of their father, sometimes the name of their grandfather, sometimes even seven generations, sometimes more. All we know for this fellow is Haggai, Haggai the prophet. Who is he?
No news about anything further. We have five messages from him, five oracles spoken by the word of the Lord, spoken over about three months of time, and then he’s gone. We have no birth story, no death story, no story of his deeds. All we have is the story of his messages. And then he disappears. So the man is not especially important.
We might call him a minor prophet, And that doesn’t mean that he was only 18 years old or only four feet high. That means the books are short. Minor is from Latin, minore, which means small. So the minor prophets are smaller books. But you know, the persistent joke from people like me is that, you know, major messages from minor prophets. And I’m quoted often at Geneva on campus with this particular sentence, was I stay in my lectures with sternness, far be it from me to call any of the Lord’s prophets minor. Have you heard that quoted? Yeah, okay. All right. Yeah, okay. I’m famous for that sentence. I’m famous for nothing else, but I’m famous for that sentence.
Major message from minor prophet. And what is the message? It’s the same as the message of Jesus that we heard in Matthew 6. Seek first. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. And all these other things will be added to you as well. And so these people heed the rebuke of Haggai the prophet. They respond with faith because they are after all persons of faith. They arrived there by faith. They left Babylon because they believed. They’re God’s Marines. You know, the few, the proud. Okay, God’s Marines, maybe not proud, but certainly few.
And at this time in Jerusalem’s day, Maybe a couple of thousand people live in that city. The enclosure of that city, or I should say the boundary of that city is tiny indeed. Geneva’s campus is about 55 acres, I read somewhere online. Jerusalem in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah is smaller. Smaller than Geneva’s campus. You surprised? Okay. It’s smaller than Geneva’s campus.
This is not a rich or powerful or large place. And yet they have the task of building the temple of God, which is of course the centerpiece of the world in redemptive history. Consider their resources again for a moment. Go to the hills and bring back wood and build the house that I may take pleasure in it and be glorified, says the Lord of the heavenly armies. But let’s think about those hills around Jerusalem for a moment.
And remember that Jerusalem was besieged three times by the Babylonians. 605 BC, that’s the time when Daniel was taken captive. And that’s when Jerusalem first came under Babylonian rule when Jehoiakim, that nasty fellow who hated Jeremiah, is king. Then Jehoiakim will rebel, and his son becomes king, Jehoiachin.
He’ll continue the rebellion only three more months. And in 597, March of that year, that 18-year-old boy king will march out of Jerusalem with his mama and his advisors and his royal court and surrender after a failed rebellion. And Nebuchadnezzar in mercy does not destroy the city. He takes 10,000 exiles to Babylon. Ezekiel is in that list.
Now consider each time there’s a siege by Babylon at Jerusalem, what happens to the wood? It gets cut for firewood for the troops at night. It gets cut to build the siege machinery of the Babylonian encirclement of the city because you build a wooden fence all around the city you besiege and you guard the fence so no one can get out or in and you starve the city. Even if you can’t break its wall, you starve it into submission. And then you build wooden machines on wheels with bronze battering points to bring down the walls and the towers.
And most of that is wood too. And so by the time there’s a third siege in 588, 587, maybe 586, those hilltops are denuded of all their standing timber. And how long does it take to restore a forest? If I started now in my backyard, my great-grandson might enjoy the shade pretty well. Go to the hills and bring back wood means that the best trees are going to be maybe 40 years old. And the wood is not much. This is not the cedars of Lebanon that Solomon used. This is paltry, paltry material.
So when the new temple was at last dedicated as it is in 516, do you remember how the old people greeted the dedication? They wept because they remembered Solomon’s temple. The youngsters cheered and rejoice. The oldsters wept because they remembered the glory of Solomon and they had nothing like it. And so in our exhortations from the prophet, they are to build God’s Old Testament version of the kingdom.
Okay, Jerusalem with a temple. Bear in mind, of course, that church buildings are not temples, right? And we’re not really talking about this building here in all this. Two days ago, I saw one of my students wearing a t-shirt. It said, the church has left the building. I think the sentence is based upon the old thing from the 60s. Elvis has left the building, okay. The church has left the building. Buildings are not, properly speaking, okay, but by way of extension, all right, we can call a building a church, all right, yeah, all right. But the church is the people, right?
Inhabited by the Holy Spirit, blessed by God. Haggai’s hearers have to build the kingdom of God in their midst. In that time that did require a physical temple. because the altars, the sacrifices, the priesthood, these were the institutions of Moses that prepared the way for the Christ. Without the institutions of Moses, Christ cannot come to fulfill the law of Moses. And so there is the necessity then of physical architectural work. But before even another stone is taken to the site, before even a single log is hewn on the hillsides. What does the Lord say? I am with you.
The shortest oracle in all the Bible. It’s four syllables in Hebrew. Ani itkem. Recognize it? Okay, my Hebrew student here. Ani, I, itkem, with you. I am with you. And the you there is plural. I’m with y’all. If we were in Alabama, it might be how it was said. I am with you. And in this, we have a promise from God, not dependent upon their work, but dependent upon God’s kindness. So let me wade through a thousand alligators if I know that God is with me. God had declared that he was with them.
And so in our story, what are the applications then? The application is of course, to build the church. To build, not necessarily building such things, which, you know, buildings come and go. Buildings are something like engines by which certain things can be done well and not other things. All right, build a building and certain things can happen there for a very long time. And that’s a very good thing.
When was this building built? I have no idea. I first darkened the door here, when? Okay, I think I first darkened the door at about 1976 in this building when I was a senior at the college. All right, the building was here. All right, so buildings do contain the possibility of decades and generations of something happening. Okay, a church building does that and that is good. But churches exist with and without them. And we noticed then in verse 14, that yes, they came and they began to work on the house of the Lord. And they did so on a certain date given there in the text. And the date is the 24th day of the sixth month, the second year of Darius. Some time had gone by and their obedience began. But notice the crucial point that Andi itken, that I am with you, that gospel promise comes before a single stone is carried and before a single tree is healed.
Because God’s blessing does not depend upon our work. God’s blessing does not depend upon our work. And the work they would do would be poor indeed. In chapter two, verse nine, we have this amazing promise, quote, the glory of this present house will be greater than the glory of the former temple, declares the Lord. How is that going to be so? Because architecture is not the glory. Something far deeper than architecture is the true glory. Jesus himself would arrive at that temple. 512 years later or so. Jesus himself.
And so if we pretend that we have nothing to give to God, if we spend all that we have on ourselves, we demonstrate that we do not have God’s kingdom firmly in view. It’s easy to put God off, especially when things are poor and difficult. It’s easy to put God off. We’re more apt to love ourselves than to love God.
Oh, that’s true. And if we have time or money or resources, it’s easy to spend them upon ourselves, especially if things are scant. These people had it scant. But God is ever more willing to bless than we are willing to obey. And God’s blessing does not depend upon our obedience. Obedience does not produce everlasting life. That life is a gift to those who believe. But disobedience to God, even by Christians, all right, Christians disobey. Disobedience to God will often in this life issue in disappointment and even disaster. Go the wrong way and what happens? What happens? You know. And in the books of Proverbs and the wisdom books of the Old Testament, you bring early death upon yourself by going really, really, really the wrong way. And you bring honor and happiness upon yourself by obeying the Lord.
But even that might be other than God’s providence for your life. Sometimes God withholds his material blessing to those who are most ardent for him. And sometimes God grants prosperity even to those who despise him. as we heard of in Psalm 73 earlier today. But God is ever waiting to show himself gracious.
One of the most lovely things in this whole story is what happens in verse 14. Did you notice it? God roused the spirit of the governor, Zerubbabel. He’s the grandson of the last surviving Judean King, Jehoiachin, which means he’s the descendant of David, which means also that he’s the ancestor of the Christ. God stirs him up, says verse 14. And God stirs up the spirit of the high priest, Joshua, the son of Jehozadak, two who had come from Babylonian exile in faith and repentance. And after years of spiritual depression, God stirred them up to acts of concerted obedience that brought them joy.
And one more God stirred up. God stirred the spirit of all the rest of the people. Imagine the spiritual depression of Jerusalem in 521 or 522 BC, when no temple is among them, and oppression by all their would-be neighbors all around, and resources scant, scant, scant, scant, scant. Even help the Persians had promised never came. But now what happens? God stirred up the spirit of all the rest of the people.
And they came and worked on the house of the Lord on the 24th day of the sixth month, the second year of Darius the king. And in their work, they found joy. It is a joyful thing to serve the kingdom of God. It is a joyful thing to have our priorities right, to put God first, to love God above all.
And so we find the blessing of the Lord at last for these people after 17 years of, dare I say, spiritual depression. But we must not forget that the blessedness is announced not because of the work. The blessedness is not announced only after the work has begun. The blessedness is announced before. when they worship the Lord with reverence. And so in the book of Zechariah, we have this wonderful saying from chapter four, verse six. How is this restoration going to be done?
Okay, there’s no great army. There’s no great wealth. There’s no great arsenal. There’s no great treasury. There’s no great population. How will this thing be done? Here’s the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel, that governor, quote, not by might. Do you know the sentence? and not by power, but by my spirit. Says the Lord to the heavenly armies. How does God restore his people in the world? Not by might, and not by power, but by my spirit.
May we then join then in blessing the Lord. Shall we pray? Father, you were good and you were great and you love us with an everlasting love and a love that will never let us go. So bless us then with your encouraging word to us today that you are indeed with us and with us in your son, who is the Emmanuel, who is indeed God with us. And in knowing him, Lord, grant us great joy and peace. Joy and peace in the midst of this life, serving you first and best. and receiving them from your hand, all else that we might need for life and godliness.
Hear our prayer, Lord, we depend upon you for it. And we ask it through the bounties of our Lord Jesus Christ, who lived and died and rose again, that we should be blessed in the faith of the gospel. Amen. The hymn is I Love Thy Kingdom, Lord, number 280. Let us stand and sing these stanzas to the glory of God.
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