Mapperley Monday Mail - Haggai 1

Yesterday we began a new short series in Haggai. It's one of the less-famous books in the Bible, but it's still got a really powerful message for us today. It helps to understand the context.

For hundreds of years, God's people had been an independent country, living in the kingdom of Judah, with its capital at Jerusalem. The Temple (as built by Solomon) was the centre of their society – it was where they met together to hear God's word; it was the one place on earth where God had promised to be; it was where they went to pray; it was where the sacrifices happened so that they could be put right with God when they had messed up; it was at the centre of all their festivals as well. Because this was before Jesus, it was much more important even than church is today.

But then in 587BC, disaster struck. Nebuchadnezzar, emperor of Babylon, captured and destroyed Jerusalem. The temple was in ruins; the people were deported to Babylon – a period known as the Exile. But God stayed faithful. He promised he would bring the Jews back from captivity, and in 539BC, he did.

Babylon fell to the Persians, under Cyrus the Great, and Cyrus told the Jews that they could return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple. Thousands of Jews returned, led by Zerubbabel, grandson of the king, and Joshua, grandson of the High Priest, and they made a start on rebuilding Jerusalem. It was a time of immense excitement, but it proved short-lived. Ezra 4 tells us how their enemies set out to discourage them and stop them from rebuilding the temple. After a while, the building work stalled, and so it stayed for another 20 years.

And then, on 29^th August 520BC, Haggai showed up. The people had a priest – Joshua. They had a man with the right ancestry to be king – Zerubbabel, but what they needed was a prophet to speak God's word to them – Haggai (and his friend Zechariah).

God's first message through Haggai can be summed up like this: God won't settle for half-hearted worship. And he shows this by the way he shakes up the complacent (v2-11) and the way he encourages the timid (v12-15).

The people had got complacent. The temple – the centre of their whole spiritual life – was a ruin. And over time they'd got complacent about that – they just concluded that it wasn't the right time to rebuild it – kind of like the way we can get complacent about a job that just seems too big to get done easily. Actually, they had the time to do it – they showed that because they'd finished the DIY on their own houses – but they were ok with putting off working on the temple.

I guess that's similar to a lot of us. I know that I can put off taking the next step in getting to know God better – whether that's committing to come to church regularly, joining a homegroup, making regular time to read the Bible and pray, dealing with an area of sin in my life or whatever. It's easy to get complacent with not putting God as number one in our lives.

So God shakes them up. He stops them from finding satisfaction even in things like food and drink and earning a decent wage that should normally give them pleasure, because he knows that their deepest satisfaction can only be found in him (v5-11).

Once the people realise the problem, they are scared. So God comforts them with these amazing words "I am with you" v13. God doesn't wait for them to finish building the temple. As soon as they decide they want to sort it out, he is with them to help them do what it takes to come back to him.

How are we half-hearted in the way we worship God? What is he calling us to do to come back to him this week?

May we know God's presence with us, shaking up our complacency and encouraging us when we are scared, helping us do what it takes to find our real satisfaction and joy in him!

God bless,

John