“In the second year of Darius the king, on the first day of the sixth month, the word of the LORD came by the prophet Haggai to Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, saying, “Thus says the LORD of hosts, ‘This people says, “The time has not come, even the time for the house of the LORD to be rebuilt.” ’ ” Then the word of the LORD came by Haggai the prophet, saying, “Is it time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses while this house lies desolate?” Now therefore, thus says the LORD of hosts, “Consider your ways! You have sown much, but harvest little; you eat, but there is not enough to be satisfied; you drink, but there is not enough to become drunk; you put on clothing, but no one is warm enough; and he who earns, earns wages to put into a purse with holes.” Thus says the LORD of hosts, “Consider your ways! Go up to the mountains, bring wood and rebuild the temple, that I may be pleased with it and be glorified,” says the LORD. “ You look for much, but behold, it comes to little; when you bring it home, I blow it away. Why?” declares the LORD of hosts, “Because of My house which lies desolate, while each of you runs to his own house. Therefore, because of you the sky has withheld its dew and the earth has withheld its produce. I called for a drought on the land, on the mountains, on the grain, on the new wine, on the oil, on what the ground produces, on men, on cattle, and on all the labor of your hands.””
— Haggai 1:1-11 NASB1995
If you didn’t know the rest of the history of Israel, this chapter and the next would make the Lord sound like one of the regional idols/false gods of the pagan nations. (Whoa, don’t get upset! Stay with me! I’m not saying that as a skeptic but as a biblical literalist resting on the authority of the Word to know the One and only God! Okay? We good? Alright... keep reading.) Here, the Lord is saying nothing His people do actually prospers BECAUSE they haven’t rebuilt the temple to the Lord. Does this sound familiar, from pagan cult practices? “Let’s honor the gods so the rains will come, our land will produce, and the wombs of our women will give us sons to continue our family line!” The fickle and vengeful false gods of the Greek/Roman pantheons (etc.) were little more than “origin stories” for where crops and rain and fertility and seasons come from. The gods were like the petty and needy among us, but with power. In short, these “gods” were made in our image to explain things we couldn’t understand, and in an attempt to explain things like why some years were sparse and others had bumper crops. “Oh, it’s because we angered the gods, so let’s sacrifice to this god and that god and maybe things will get better!”—and so idolatry blossomed into a cottage industry that even Israel got swept up into! We see the evidence, and the effects, of this idolatry in almost every book in the Bible.
Now does it make sense? Do you recall that the Lord told Israel, “When I bring you into the land I swore to give your forefathers, do not adopt the pagan worship of the inhabitants of that land, because it is FOR THOSE EVIL ACTS THAT I AM EXPELLING THEM FROM THE LAND. THIS is how you are to worship Me,” He instructed them, for the Lord told His people that He alone is God and EVERYTHING ELSE is a worthless idol, the work of man’s fickle imaginations and skillful creation. When you worship these idols, you’re going to suffer. All the work you do will come to nothing. You’ll daily strive because of you don’t you’ll die. There’s no one out there to help you or guide you, so you make your own future. Religion is just the fiction you tell yourself about a world that can take you or leave you — you don’t ultimately matter — so your difficulties are easy to live through.
And they’re right (in part)... because the idolatry of the people has infected every sphere of our cultures in our world. Yet the living God is not a fictitious, regional, pampered, and whiny deity we’ve created. In fact, this living God mocks the same foolishness that skeptics mock. He calls people to return to the God who IS, even as their ancient, and our modern, skeptics mock Him and place Him together with what is false. He repeatedly tells us He doesn’t need ANYTHING from us, and HE made the heavens Himself (without seeking our counsel, I might add, in it) so no temple we can build can “house” Him — as though He’d be homeless without it!
And THIS is where the message of the great God of Christianity differs markedly from any other faith. This book of Haggai isn’t speaking like the foolish people of those pagan cult worship practices, but highlights Israel’s apathy toward the Lord. God chose His people not to be the only ones saved, but to be the Lord’s ambassadors to the whole world, so ALL nations would be freed from their idolatry... which is WORTHLESS. It’s of no effect. So, is this book about the people’s NEED for a temple so God won’t be homeless and maybe die from exposure to the elements?
Heavens no!
Haggai is about God confronting His people for their apathy toward Him. In a way, they’re treating the Lord like a fourth cousin, three times removed, who lives in another country, and whom you never see! In a word, unnecessary. Sure, we KNOW He’s there, but unless He refuses to bless us, we have no need for Him. He’s the heavenly dad we expect to just give us some money when we want to go out and do something, and we’re then mad at when he says, “no.” The living God who gave them life is like the water pipes in our homes—they do what they do and we don’t think about them... until our ambivalence toward them leads to a burst pipe and a flooded floor! Then it’s all, “How could you let this happen to us, God! ... What? Oh yeah, sorry... this is Carl. You don’t know me and we don’t talk, but I’m now horribly aware of how You have failed to uphold YOUR side of this relationship, Lord!” 😐🙄
How does this connect with me today?
Who knows? (YOU do, right?) Some were raised by faithful parents, which may have led to you being faithful as well. But it’s not a given either. Or maybe you were raised by unbelieving parents, or parents who worshipped some other god, which may have led to you following their example. Or not. None of these things are a given, despite the weak arguments of atheistic skeptics. Whatever situation YOU find yourself in is no excuse to reject the God who gave you life. And yet we often use those circumstances as the reason for our choices — our excuses — for worshipping gods made in our image, or nothing at all.
Maybe a loved one was hurt or killed by someone who claimed a certain faith, and that was enough to show the evil of that faith, if not the god who would let it happen. Maybe it’s a struggle in your business, region, family, marriage, or peer group that (again) hurts you enough to ask whatever god “why?” but still not care enough to look for the answer. Maybe you’re struggling emotionally, physically, or a host of other possibilities and you think you’ve got to figure that out, fix the problem, before adding this to your plate too.
Or maybe you’re “technically” a person of some-kinda-which-way-faith-or-whatever in this or that religion, but you don’t need that much encouragement to bow out of participation: I’m working on stuff right now and will get into that when I’m older, my friends are doing something, I’m on vacation, the kids have a game or activity, it’s a beautiful day to fish, I’m on a business trip, someone from there hurt me, I don’t like the one who speaks/teaches/preaches/leads meetings, the music is bad, I’m bored by it, I’m seeing someone and they’re not into it, that’s my only day off, they’re too judgmental, I leave feeling bad about myself or something I’m doing, or I just don’t want to go. “Plus,” you reason, “I can worship anywhere and don’t have to go to a certain place to be close to god.” Excuses abound, but the fact is we don’t even know much about the gods we claim to serve.
Many Christians believe they’re “good with God” if they can do enough to appease Him, but they know next to nothing about what this God has revealed about Himself, and what He calls us to. Many of these Christians are actually pagans themselves, serving a false god they’ve created and thinking themselves close to the God who spends His entire Bible rebuking people just. Like. Them.
This God — the Lord, Creator of heaven and earth, the beginning and the end, the only true and living God — is not calling His people to engage in pagan worship in Haggai. Far from it. He’s confronting their apathy. And we, too, need to listen up!