Disregarding God Leads to a Lack of Human FlourishingHaggai 1:2-11

Main Idea: The people of Israel were not seeing the flourishing they expected, and Haggai reminded them that this is due to their apathy and postponed obedience.

1. The People Had a Problem of Prioritizing Their Comfort over God’s Temple (1:2-4).
   1. Postponed obedience is a consistent condition of the sinful human heart (1:2).
   2. Choosing comfort over obedience is a sign of misplaced priority (1:3-4).
2. Ignoring God’s Temple Led to a Lack of Flourishing (1:5-11).
   1. Reflecting on their lack of flourishing will point them to God’s displeasure (1:5-6).
   2. Repenting will point them to God’s pleasure (1:7-11).

The People Had a Problem of Prioritizing Their Comfort over God’s Temple (Haggai 1:2-4)

Postponed Obedience Is a Consistent Condition of the Sinful Human Heart (1:2)

The prophet Haggai was concerned with the Israelite people. They had returned to their home more than 16 years earlier, but they had made very little progress on the rebuilding of the temple. The initial return had caused excitement—in fact one could assume that it was nearly euphoria for many of the Jewish people—and that excitement had initially led them to feverishly rebuild the temple. Ezra tells us that they attacked the building of the foundation, and in fairly quick action they were able to see it rebuilt. The response to the building of the foundation was to throw a party, and at that party many of the older Jews cried and the rest exulted. This was obviously a moving moment. However, as is so often true with obedience to God’s commands, the Jewish people were pressured to abandon their task. Their neighbors, chiefly the Samaritans, apparently feared a renaissance of the power of the Israelite people and so compelled them to abandon their temple rebuilding, going so far as to pressure the controlling government, and their efforts paid off. The Israelite people stopped. They not only stopped, they stopped for more than 16 years. In the interim, however, they moved forward with the rebuilding of the rest of the city. They built homes and businesses, among other things. They established the city once again. It is no stretch to imagine that the city was a hive of activity, as business and pleasure intersected on its streets once more. However, in the midst of life being lived, the most important thing was being forgotten—namely the worship of God. In striking similarity to the behavior of Martha in the account of Jesus at His friend’s home (Luke 10:38-42), the Israelite people were busy, but they were ultimately busy with their own things and apathetic to the worship of God. Into this picture comes the voice of Haggai. In verse 2 Haggai recounts the Lord’s dismay when he says that the people of Israel had no interest in rebuilding the temple: “These people say: The time has not come for the house of the Lord to be rebuilt.” “The time has not come” is code for “I have better things to do.” This is not new for the Israelites of Haggai’s time, nor is it foreign in our day. Overlooking the things of God in favor of our own things is fairly commonplace. It is the same thing that we see in play in Genesis 3 when the serpent convinces Eve to disregard God’s words and believe that her own wisdom is sufficient:

Then the woman saw that the tree was good for food and delightful to look at, and that it was desirable for obtaining wisdom. So she took some of its fruit and ate it; she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. (Gen 3:6)

This willingness to postpone obedience or disregard it altogether has been the marker of the human race ever since Eve’s initial transgression. At the root of this sin is the nastiness of pride: the belief that our wisdom and preferences are greater than His. This is why G. K. Chesterton once said, “If I had only one sermon to preach it would be a sermon against pride” (Common Man, 246).

What Haggai desired for the people of Israel was a changed heart that would lead to changed behavior. He desired to see them prioritize God and His commands over and above all other concerns. This is precisely what Jesus sought to instill in Martha when she was so busy working for Jesus that she forgot that the greatest importance is to worship Him. The Lord told her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has made the right choice, and it will not be taken away from her” (Luke 10:41-42). This passage reminds us that God’s greatest desire for us is that we honor Him and obey His commands. Much like little children who constantly question their parents at night in an attempt to postpone their sleep, Christians are tempted to exhaust our energies on other issues and areas in an attempt to postpone obedience. This postponing is rooted in theology and history, as we understand clearly that humanity is inherently sinful and has been since the garden of Eden.

Choosing Comfort over Obedience Is a Sign of Misplaced Priority (1:3-4)

Haggai continues by offering a striking condemnation of the Israelite people. Keep in mind that at this point they were fairly established after their return from exile. They had built homes and businesses and were settled in their regular routines. In spite of that, they had abandoned their commitment to the temple of God. Haggai, therefore, raises his voice in opposition. He begins by decrying their “paneled houses.” Haggai specifically uses a word for paneled that implies “well appointed” or “comfortable.” In other words, they were not only settled in their homes, they had been to their equivalent of Pier One, had acquired all sorts of beautiful accoutrements for their homes, and were living comfortably. While Haggai is not condemning their comfortable living, he is condemning this living at the expense of obedience to God’s commands. He specifically contrasts their “paneled houses” with the temple, which “lies in ruins.” These are strong words and are intended to clarify the radical disparity between their own standard of living and the condition of the house of God. They were living in comfort while God’s house remained unbuilt and God’s will remained undone.

This kind of disparity is not uncommon among God’s people. It is similar to what the prophet Malachi prophesied about in the final book of the Old Testament:

A son honors his father, and a servant his master. But if I am a father, where is My honor? And if I am a master, where is your fear of Me? says Yahweh of Hosts to you priests, who despise My name. Yet you ask: “How have we despised Your name?”

“By presenting defiled food on My altar.”

You ask: “How have we defiled You?”

When you say: “The Lord’s table is contemptible. (Mal 1:6-7)

Like the priests of Malachi’s day, the Israelites were substantively more interested in what they could gain than they were in obeying God’s commands. The chief objection to obeying God’s commands was the cost involved in doing so. During Jesus’ life, He would again clarify for us that the cost of following Him was significant: “Then He said to them all, ‘If anyone wants to come with Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow Me’” (Luke 9:23).

Although the Israelite people had an obedience issue, Haggai understood that this was an issue of the heart. If their hearts were warmed toward God, their behavior would follow. They were disobedient because they had chosen to love themselves more than they loved Him. Ultimately this is an example of idol worship, with themselves at the center of their worship. They were, in subtle ways, mimicking the kind of worship that the American writer, David Foster Wallace, once described in a commencement speech at Kenyon College:

Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god . . . to worship . . . is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure, and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before [your loved ones] finally plant you. . . . Worship power, and you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. Look, the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they are evil or sinful; it is that they’re unconscious. They are default settings. (“This Is Water”)

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.

Ignoring God’s Temple Led to a Lack of Flourishing (Haggai 1:5-11)

Reflecting on Their Lack of Flourishing Will Point Them to God’s Displeasure (1:5-6)

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.

Repenting Will Point Them to God’s Pleasure (1:7-11)

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.

Reflect and Discuss

1. Can you think of a time that God, through His Word, a sermon, or another source, called you to obedience and yet you postponed obedience?
2. What motivates your heart to desire to postpone obedience?
3. Can you think of items in your life that are too valuable to give up, even if God required it of you?
4. If you have had times of spiritual lethargy, have you noticed how easy it is to convince others you are doing fine with religious behavior, even while you are walking further and further from God?
5. How can you resist simply engaging in religious behavior and maintain spiritual vitality?
6. What evidence do you see in Scripture or in creation of God’s general design for the world to flourish?
7. In what ways can you see a disregard for God’s plan leading to a lack of flourishing?
8. Is there an example in your life of your disobedience leading to a lack of flourishing?
9. Have you surrendered your life to God, having recognized your own disobedience and Christ’s sacrifice in your place?