Disregarding God Leads to a Lack of Human Flourishing

The danger for the Israelite people was not that they had abandoned the building of the temple, it was that they had abandoned God. Their comfort rose in importance, their fear of the Samaritans, among others, was greater than their fear of God, and they succumbed to the pressure of self-preservation. Sadly, as Haggai would go on to point out, their attempts at self-preservation, or human flourishing, would backfire. What they believed to be critical to the advancement of their comfort actually served to accomplish the opposite. They desired to flourish and instead they were failing, all because they had rejected God as the primary object of their worship.

Haggai follows up his condemnation of their abandonment of God by pointing out that their behavior was ultimately a failed experiment. They had stopped building the temple because of pressure from outside their community and idol worship inside the community. They thought that this path would lead them to satisfaction and happiness. They were tired of the resistance and attracted to a future that seemed more appealing. Haggai points out that they were wrong. Instead of satisfaction and happiness, they were experiencing a lack of flourishing, a lack of satisfaction.

Haggai begins in verse 5 by calling them to consider their lives: “Think carefully about your ways.” He wanted them to engage in some self-examination. This same word that he uses in verse 5 he will again use in 2:15 and 2:18 to establish this point: they will be able to trace their flourishing to their obedience to God’s commands. It matters that they consider that connection. Now, this is not some early version of a prosperity gospel. It is not a promise that if they scratched God’s back, He will scratch theirs. Instead it is a basic principle that God has designed the world so that it functions best when we are aligned with His commands and His purposes. Human flourishing generally occurs when we honor God and follow His commands. The Israelites had not honored God, nor had they obeyed His commands. Haggai wanted to draw a clear and decisive connection between their lack of obedience and their obvious lack of flourishing, so three separate times he invited them to consider where they found themselves in light of their obedience or disobedience.

This is an important lesson for us in our own lives. Far too often we fail to consider where we are or where we have been. Taking stock of our lives is challenging and can at times be painful, yet this is exactly why it is so important. When we consider own lives, we are challenged to consider whether or not we have been—or are—walking in obedience to God’s purposes and His commands.

Haggai goes on in verse 6 to clarify their lack. He says they planted but did not harvest like they anticipated. This lack of harvest was leading to a lack of satisfaction and provision. He goes on and on with other illustrations like drink, clothes, and income. All these things were less than they expected, and the shortfall was a result of their delayed obedience. The unfortunate reality is that God generally desires us to flourish and to be a blessing to the city in which we live. The prophet Jeremiah declared,

Build houses and live in them. Plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters. Take wives for your sons and give your daughters to men in marriage so that they may bear sons and daughters. Multiply there; do not decrease. Seek the welfare of the city I have deported you to. Pray to the Lord on its behalf, for when it has prosperity, you will prosper. (Jer 29:5-7)

Jeremiah’s declaration is a reminder that God’s design is for His people to prosper and for us to seek the prosperity of the place in which we live. God wants the Israelite people to prosper, but their delayed obedience had led to their lack of flourishing.

Haggai’s point in these verses is that our actions have consequences. It sounds a lot like the wisdom our parents offer us as children, but it is an excellent point. Our actions never happen in isolation and always lead to consequences. Sometimes those consequences are encouraging and life-giving, and sometimes those consequences are painful and challenging. In particular, and for the purposes of this passage, the Israelites’ sin had consequences. The prophet Isaiah has said, “But your iniquities have built barriers between you and your God, and your sins have made Him hide His face from you so that He does not listen” (Isa 59:2). This is a reminder that while all of our behavior has consequences, our sin has serious and even deadly consequences because it creates separation between us and God. When we disregard God so that we can please ourselves, we place ourselves in the precarious situation of being outside of God’s intended order and therefore susceptible to a lack of flourishing, but we also place ourselves in the crosshairs of God’s wrath and therefore in danger of God’s judgment. In the case of the Israelites in Haggai’s day, they were desperately in need of obedience.

Of course, this passage reminds us that we are incapable of providing the obedience that God requires. God is perfectly holy, and as such He requires perfect holiness from us. When we are unable to comply, we must either face God’s wrath or appeal to a mediator. In order to escape the wrath of God, we need someone who is able to redeem us. Of course, this is pointing us forward to Jesus. Every generation, both those before and those after these Israelites, would face the same problem—a lack of flourishing and the presence of God’s wrath. We all are in need of a redeemer. The author of Hebrews reminds us, “it is appointed for people to die once—and after this, judgment” (Heb 9:27). Unless intervention is applied, we all are in danger. Thank God that He has provided the needed intervention: “He made the One who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor 5:21). This passage serves to point us to Jesus as it reminds us that we, like the Israelites, are guilty of disobedience and are under the wrath of God, but because of Christ’s sacrifice in our place, redemption is available.

In response to the people’s delayed obedience, and ultimately to their idol worship, Haggai now moves on to begin charting the way forward for the Israelites. As he did in verse 5, Haggai once again reminds them to “think carefully.” He is asking them to consider their response. Previously they considered their behavior and what they had to show for it. Now Haggai is calling them to consider their response. So, what is this response that Haggai is calling them to? Repentance. Repentance, as you are aware, is defined in a number of different ways by a number of different people. For our purposes here we will define it as a turning of the heart that leads to a turning of the behavior. Haggai is calling the Israelite people to decisively turn their hearts Godward, and when their hearts have turned away from their sin—their delayed obedience—and turned toward God, their behavior would also be pleasing to God.

Throughout Scripture we see this pattern: heart change leads to behavioral change. God expects our behavior to change, but He is clear that behavior is simply a reflection of the heart. When our hearts change, our behavior follows. We are reminded in Proverbs, “Guard your heart above all else, for it is the source of life” (Prov 23:4). Looking to the New Testament we see Jesus Himself, during the Sermon on the Mount, teaching that the action of murder and the action of adultery are both indicative of sinful hearts long before the behavior itself actually occurs (Matt 5:21-30). Haggai understands that rebuilding the temple is a heart issue. He desires to see their behavior change, but he understands that behavior follows desire. The Israelites, as we said earlier, had a desire problem. They needed to repent, and their repentance needed to identify their misplaced affection. When their idolatrous affection was confessed and rejected, right behavior would follow. Verse 8 describes the behavior that would follow in incredibly simple terms: “‘Go up into the hills, bring down lumber, and build the house. Then I will be pleased with it and be glorified,’ says the Lord.” This repentance would be complete when they built the house of God, the temple. They could not walk rightly before God until they repented, as Haggai called them to “think rightly” and “build the house.” This repentance is first internal and heart-focused, and second external and hands-focused.

Our repentance must be the same. Sadly, far too often we find it easy simply to acknowledge wrongdoing and hope that we can just behave our way out of a situation. I say this is sad because to those around us it can appear to work. We can conform our behavior, pleasing those around us, yet still be far from God. Our hearts must be the starting place, or our behavior is essentially meaningless action.

Finally, in verses 9 through 11, Haggai points out that they do have the opportunity to reject repentance. They can choose to continue walking as they have already been, but if they do they will continue to experience God working against them, keeping them from flourishing. The choice is simple, then. They can repent, follow God’s way, and flourish as they find themselves in harmony with the world as God intended it; or they can reject repentance and risk God’s wrath as He actively works against them, keeping them from flourishing.