Is It Not As Nothing? (Dr. Trey Benfield)

Scripture Readings:

Ezra 3:10-13
1 Peter 2:4-10
Haggai 2: 1-9

For the last few weeks we have been studying the book of Haggai. To recap Haggai was a prophet to the post exilic community in Jerusalem.  This community consisted of those Jews who had returned from captivity in Babylon to rebuild Jerusalem.  I have made the point that this group were the true believers who had made an arduous journey away from the place that many had known as their home and left to return to a devastated and ruined city.  The only reason for this community of Jews to make this decision to rebuild is because they believed their traditions and the land those were connected to were important.  They were the true believers, people we might think of as patriots.  This community made their decision to return to Jerusalem fueled by their belief that the end of the exile would lead to the glorious restoration of Israel the prophets had spoken.  However, as we have seen the view on the ground is very different and as such the community is suffering a spiritual depression.  

Partly to renew their focus and to break the people out of their spiritual depression, Haggai has urged the community to begin rebuilding the temple.  As we look at our passage today we learn that almost one month has passed since the people began to rebuild the temple and it is at last complete.  Already we learn something key from this information.  You see if you go back to 1 Kings 6 you learn that it took seven years to build the first temple, the one that Babylonians had destroyed about 80 years earlier.  Not only did that temple take seven years to build, but it involved material and craftsmen from as far away as Lebanon.  A huge number of people worked on the temple included 70,000 burden bearers, 80,000 stone masons all under the supervision of 3,300 of Solomon’s officers.  According to the Bible, maybe 50,000 total may have returned and in just a month they have finished the temple using far inferior materials.

So it is no surprise that when we come to verse three we find Haggai acknowledging the disappointment the Jews must have felt when they took into account their completed temple.  “Who is left among you who saw this house in its former glory?  How do you see it now?  Is it not as nothing in your eyes.”  Notice Haggai does not say its quaint, rustic, has potential like an ancient realtor.  Nor does Haggai say it is shabby or inadequate.  Haggai says it is nothing.  I find it interesting that even though Haggai urged the people to build the temple, once it is completed he does not try to sugar coat its appearance or pull any punches.  

We actually have another account that is contained in our first scripture reading, taken from the book of Ezra.  What this account tells us is that the old men who had seen Solomon’s temple cried when they saw this temple.  These men would have had to have been at least 80 years old to remember the old temple and even though they were very young they still retained an awe of the grandeur and majesty of the old temple.   When they saw this temple experienced nothing but disappointment and their only reaction is to weep.   

Once gain the hope and expectation of the people for the restoration has come crashing into the cold, hard facts of reality.  The people lack prosperity, they are still under the domination of Persia, and now the Temple though completed is a disappointment.  Though the people are obedient to Haggai’s message, it seems they still remain a spiritually depressed people.  So here, Haggai’s challenge is a bit different from most prophets.  Most prophets have difficulty getting the people to listen to their messages, Haggai does not have this problem.  Haggai’s problem is that the people listen to his message and follow his prescription but find no improvement and as a result are a beaten down and a discouraged people.

We can relate, we are an optimistic people as a whole but we are not blind to the world that surround us.  Despite our attempts to help feed people or provide them with goats or all the ways we try to make the world a better place, we know the task is an overwhelming one.  We also know that even our attempts to make things better sometimes make things worse.  What advantage does following the teachings of Christ and being part of the church gain?  Sometimes it can be difficult to answer this question.  When we look at the church, we too can look at its impact on the world and ask the question along with Haggai does it not appear as nothing?

So how does Haggai address this challenging issue that both the Jerusalem community as well as we in the church must wrestle with?  If you notice in verse 3 Haggai presents the problem after asking if anyone remembers the temple in its former glory asks how now do you see it?  To set the question in a more general context Haggai is asking in the present what  is your perception, your interpretation of God’s work before you?   In verse 4 Haggai also uses the word now - yet now be strong.  The repetition of the word now connects the two thoughts.  Verse 4 then is Haggai’s answer to this problem.  

The answer then to the disappointment and spiritual depression that the community experience is to be strong.  The civil leadership represented by Zerubbabel, the religious leadership as represented by Joshua and the entire community are all told to be strong.  They are also instructed to continue their work.  However, mere activity and a positive attitude is not the answer to the challenge.  Positive feelings and frenetic activity can alleviate disappointment temporarily but we all know this a weak and transient solution.  

If this is all Haggai had to offer the people he would be no better than the numerous self help books and management guides that pervade our culture.  Haggai though does not stop with mere platitudes.  Haggai goes further - the answer is Haggai’s assurance that God is with them.  In most translations verse 4 reads “work, for I am with you, declares the Lord of Host.”  Here the word “for” is better translate to the word because.   Work because I am with you.  In other words the answer to the people’s disappointment and spiritual depression is to be strong and work not as an end to itself but BECAUSE God is present.  Again we return to the theme of the presence of God which is the main idea the temple represents.  

Verse 5 goes on to assure the people that despite the lack of evidence God’s spirit is indeed in their midst.  This phrase “in your midst” should sound familiar with last weeks sermon, because this was exactly what Moses knew was so important for the purpose of Israel - that God would be in their midst.  This is the whole turning point of Haggai’s message.  On one hand the temple they had just built sucks compared to the old one and the people are struggling and depressed.  However, what Haggai wants them to know is that despite appearances, God is present. 

 There is even a little pun here in the Hebrew.  The temple appears as nothing or ayin but God says ani I, as in I am with you.  As a result the people are exhorted to be strong, to work, and to not fear all driven by a firm belief in the presence of God.  So Haggai does recommend stiffening their resolve, Haggai does recommend that they get on with their job, but Haggai does so not as an end to itself but because God is with them.  God in their midst is what will make the difference lifting them from their depression and allowing them to be strong and to work.  

As a result of God’s presence, Haggai instructs the people to “fear not.”   If you remember back to my series on Ruth, I preached a whole sermon on the phrase “fear not.”  One of the points I made was that command to “fear not” or some variation is found in almost every book of the Bible.  It is the single most frequent command given in the Bible.  What I find interesting about this concept of not fearing is that despite this persistent repeated command throughout the Bible, the Church is full of fear.  We fear cultural relativism, shifting cultural values, future economic collapse, the marginalization of faith in public life, atheists, militant Islam, politicians that do not conform to our views and we sit and worry and fear that one or more of these groups will crush the church.  However, John tells us the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.  As Paul tells Timothy God has not given us the spirt of fear but of power and love and self control.  If God is for us, who can be against us?  

Haggai does not stop there though again he continues to help the people in their battle against their spiritual depression as they look upon their laughable temple wondering what is the point of it all.  Haggai tells the people not only will they be able to be strong and work because they are freed from fear because of God’s presence.  Haggai goes further and helps them be free from fear by reminding them that God has made promises to His people through the solemn oaths He has sworn to us and His covenants.  Haggai then asks the people to remember that God has been true to His promises in the past and asks them to remember how He freed them from the slavery of the Egyptians.  God used the full power of His might absolutely and completely defeating the Pharaoh and his armies and leading the people to freedom.  The lesson for the people and the lesson to us is that the way we are able to be sure of God’s presence and the way we are able to live without fear is to remind ourselves over and over of what God has done in the past.   What we as the church need to do more than anything, the message we need to hear more than any other is that of God’s greatest act of freedom and covenant fidelity, whereby not only an army and a king was defeat but Christ and Christ crucified.  There not only was the greatest empire the world has ever known shown to be powerless and impotent but sin and death was defeated and Paul can ask the question O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?  Thanks be to God who give us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.  God is in our midst and so we can be strong and we can be without fear and we can go about kingdom work in this present evil age and the way we will do this is by reminding ourselves over and over of the gospel.  

Before finishing up the sermon, I do want to pause and make a very practical point from Haggai’s message.  Notice that Haggai addresses his command to be strong to three different audiences.  Zerubabbel, Joshua, and the people of the land.  Zerubabbel was the grandson of King Jehoiachin and the current governor of Jerusalem.  Joshua was the high priest.  So we have three office represented: the civic leadership, the spiritual leadership, and the people as a community of believers.  Notice that all three are subordinate to Haggai the prophet.  However, the purpose of the office of the prophet was to deliver the word of God.  So my point is that all three groups are ultimately under the authority of the word of God.

The New Testament sees the church as the true Israel and so we as the church and specifically Resurrection Church need to understand that whether we are the spiritual leaders like Chris or myself, or administrative leaders like Mason, or worship leaders like Lucia, or as members of the congregation all of us must understand that we are ultimately under the authority of the word of God.  The author of the book of Hebrews tells us that long ago God to spoke to His people in many times and many ways and spoke to His people by the prophets, but in the last says He has spoken to us by His Son.  John tells us Jesus is the word of God.  This means ultimately every action and decision we in the church make is to be guided and subject to the authority not just of the Bible but the Bible as taught to us by Christ.  

Now let us return back to our passage because I want to make one final point to tie all of this together.  There is a shift that occurs in the language of Haggai.  You have to look closely but in Haggai’s first address to the people in chapter 1, Haggai refers to them as these people.  Yet after they build the temple, Haggai begins to refer to the people as the remnant and here in verse 2 of our passage Haggai again calls them the remnant.  To us that seems like no big deal, after all they are part of a small group of Jews who survived the Babylonian conquest and an even small group of Jews that decided to return to Jerusalem.  However, referring to these people by the term remnant is highly significant.  Let me explain why.  

You see the purpose of God rescuing the people from Egypt and creating them as the nation of Israel was to form a relationship with Israel so that He would be there God and they would be His people.  This phrase is repeated over and over again throughout the Old Testament.  However, as a result of Israel continual disobedience where the people abandoned the worship of the God who brought them out of Egypt, God says in Hosea that they are no longer my people but not my people.  In Hebrew they are not ami or my people but lo ami, not my people.   However, God promises that He will call those who are not my people, “my people” again and will restore the relationship and prosperity to the people.  The faithlessness of the people will be the final word.  

So by the use of “those people” and not “my people” in verse 1 the text is communicating to us a broken relationship exists between this community and God.  There is a distance between the people and God.  The people are not in proper relationship.  The people are other.  Here is where the significance of now referring to the people as the remnant comes into play. 

Remnant did not just mean to them a small group that remains out of a larger group.  Remnant had a more specific, technical meaning in the Old Testament.  We find the term used first in Isaiah 10 & 11, where Isaiah promises that the Assyrians, the empire that had taken the northern Kingdom into exile, will be punished and a remnant of Israelite that had been captured will return.   Jeremiah continues this theme in chapter 23 where God promises that He will gather the remnant of His flock out all the countries that they had been driven, promising to bring them back to their fold where they would be fruitful and multiply.  
The concept of the return of the remnant is used in conjunction with language about the day of the Lord.  The day of the Lord refers to the time when the Lord would at last return, righting all the wrongs, establishing perfect justice and peace, and returning Israel to its place of prominence and prosperity.  It is what we might call end times language or if you are a theology nerd - eschatological language.  In Old Testament prophecy, the remnant along with the messiah function in conjunction with the Lord to bring about the day of the Lord.  

Here in our passage we have end times, eschatological language.  You see this language that Haggai that uses in this passage that once again God will shake the heavens and the earth, and the sea and the dry land is not something Haggai is telling the people out of the blue.  This language along with the treasures from that nations coming in and the temple filled with God’s glory are reference to what other prophets had already told Israel about the end time restoration.  We find similar language in Isaiah and Ezekiel.  This is all part of the day of the Lord.

So what Haggai is promising to the people is nothing less than the restoration that the people had been awaiting ever since they had returned to Jerusalem.  So lets put all these concepts   together, God promises the people that they are to be strong and to work not as an end to itself but towards a purpose.   God is reassuring the people that He will fulfill His promises just as He did in the past specifically when God freed the Israelites in the Exodus.  This once again links back to the events of the Exodus further connecting this to the new Exodus that Isaiah had talked about.  

What is significant then by God addressing the people as the remnant, is that they are now part of this end time restoration.  The people have been given a new identity by God just as Abram, whose name means “my father is great” had been en a new identity by having his name changed to Abraham meaning “father of many.”  Just as Jacob whose name means “supplanter” referring to his character as a deceiver, was changed to Israel which means “God fights. “ Here the people had been given a new identity and now have a new role and new purpose involving nothing less than the completion of God’s plan of redemption for the cosmos.  

In our second reading we see Peter exhorting us to grow in salvation by understanding the new identity and role we have been given as Christians.  Peter addresses this letter to those in exile and describes his location as Babylon.  Since Babylon is often code for Rome, it is likely that 1 Peter is written during the persecution of Christians under Nero.  These were dark days for the early Christian church.  Again we have a situation where God’s community is living a precarious existence not at all characterized by the glorious future they had hoped would come after the resurrection.  Yet Peter reminds them that they are building something and just as Christ was the stone rejected by the builders, their rejection in the form persecution and suffering means something because of who they are - their new identity in Christ.

Like the Israelites, like the Christians addressed by Peter, we too may look around at dismay at the tragedy and suffering we see all around us.  Shouldn’t the resurrection have changed this?  Sometimes as we face the overwhelming evil and oppression arounds us where it seems as though the forces of power and oppression and violence are the winners, against whom the church has at best demonstrated only mild effectiveness and at worst has colluded with.  Often we can join with Haggai in concluding that it is nothing.  Haggai does not pull punches and sugarcoat reality, nor will I.   


However, here is the conclusion and the point  -  what Peter tells us and what Haggai tells us is to be strong, to work, and to not be afraid because God is at work.  What is more, we have a very real role in this drama that God is directing.  Peter tells us to remember our identity - we in the church are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His own possession.  We are building something and the violent forces of oppression and and violence and power will not win because God is in control and He is in our midst.  As Haggai promises in verse 9 the latter glory of the house will be greater than the former.  God declares that in this place He will at last bring peace.  If we are to be strong, if we are to work, if we are to be without fear, then we must believe these promises that God is present and is at work and look to the cross where all the promises of God find their yes in Him and that is why through Him we utter AMEN to God for His glory.  
 

What Does God Need with a Temple? (Dr. Trey Benfield)

Scripture Readings:

Exodus 33:1-17
John 14:8-11
Haggai 1:12-15

So I am a big fan of Star Trek, but only the original series.  As many of you know, many years after the original series was aired a number of movies were made.  Some good, and one that was really bad.  My introduction today actually comes from Star Trek V, which is probably one of the worst movies of all time.  The plot works like this - a fanatical religious cult leader uses his mind control powers to gain control of the starship Enterprise to take it beyond some sort of energy barrier where the land of Eden is believed to be located.  While on the Eden planet, they find a powerful being who purports to be god and demands they provide him with the starship Enterprise so he can traverse the energy barrier.  It is as this moment that Captain Kirk issues one of the all time great lines in movie history.  “Excuse me!  I would just like to ask a question.  What does God need with a starship?”  

Before I look at how Captain Kirk’s question relates to Haggai, let’s recap a bit.   In our passage today, we discover that Haggai’s pleas to rebuild the temple have worked and the people together with their political and religious leaders have begun work on the temple.  However, I want to ask a very basic question that almost seems too obvious.  To paraphrase, Captain Kirk, what does God need with a temple? 

The temple is central to the whole book of Haggai.  As we have seen in chapter one, Haggai urges the people to build the Temple .  In chapter two Haggai will continue to encourage them when they begin to slack off.  Haggai will then deliver a message about ritual purity which is important because the temple’s holiness must be protected.  However, why is it so important to Haggai that the people build the temple?

The answer is not as obvious as you might think.  When David brings up the idea of building a temple in 2 Samuel 7, it is presented entirely as an initiative of King David.  God never asks or commands that a temple be built.   Furthermore, let me also read a passage from Isaiah 66, “Thus says the Lord, Heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool, what is the house that you would build for me, and what is the place of my rest?”  In this verse, God seems to mock the whole concept of a temple as a place that would somehow contain His presence.  Nor is the only place where the whole project of a temple seems questionable, Jeremiah and other prophets had spent a lot of time devaluing the temple because of the improper attitude the people and the kings of Israel had toward the temple believing God would spare them from conquest and disaster since doing so would destroy His temple.  It turns out God does not mind so much having the Babylonians destroy the temple, and Ezekiel provides a vivid description of the spirit of the Lord leaving the temple and departing from Jerusalem before its destruction by the Babylonians.  In Ezekiel 11 God tells the people that although they have been taken to Babylon He will continue to be as a temple to them.  

So if the Temple was an initiative of David, used as propaganda by the kings and as a talisman by the people, the whole concept God mocks in Isaiah, and His presence has departed from in Ezekiel and then operated as a temple for the people while they were in Babylon, what is the point of the temple?  In fact, there seems to be almost an anti-temple thread that runs through the Old Testament. So why is it so important that the people build this temple?  

See what I mean, it as not so obvious an question as you might would have thought.   However, I want to suggest three ways to answers this question of why in Haggai the temple needs to be built.  Furthermore, I think you will find that each of these three answers is relevant to our own life and how we relate to the presence of God.  

To answer this question, first I want us to look at our reading from Exodus that records a curious debate between God and Moses.  This event occurs right after the incident involving the golden calf.  If you remember Moses had just met with God on top of Mt Sinai and had been given the ten commandments. one of which forbade constructing any physical representation of God.  The people had taken all their gold that they had plundered from Egypt and built a calf, which was a sacred animal in Egypt, and worshipped it as God.  

At this point God enters into an interesting conversation with Moses, the point of which is to allow Moses to intercede for the people and to arrive at an understanding of what God’s plan is really all about.  God tells Moses that He will still bring the people to Canaan because He had promised this to Abraham.  However, although assured of success, God says that He Himself will not go up to Canaan among them, instead God would send His angel before them.  Furthermore, God would not meet with the people except through Moses in the tent of meeting which was outside the camp.  In other words, God would not meet them in the tabernacle that would contain God’s presence and that would have been located in the midst of the people.  

Moses knows the arrangement is not tenable or consistent with God’s character.  So Moses asks how will anyone know that they are God’s people?  “Is it not in your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?”  As I said, God is instructing Moses to intercede for the people and so though God is arguing, He is really leading Moses to the answer.  In education we call this the Socratic method.  God agrees with Moses statement and concludes their discussion by agreeing to do exactly as Moses suggests.  God will dwell in the midst of the people and will go with them.  He will not be relegated outside the camp and it will not be the angel of the Lord who goes before them.  At this point God renews His covenant with His people and then gives instructions for the building of the tabernacle, the precursor of the temple and the place where God’s glory and presence will reside.  

You see what Moses understands is that we cannot be the people of God and keep God outside the camp.   We cannot receive the promises of God if God is not in our midst.  The plan of God is for Him to be our God and we to be His people and that plan demands God’s presence.   You see that is what the people that Haggai is ministering to have missed.  They have forgotten that it is God going with them that makes them distinct.  The temple is a sign of the closeness of God.  They were not bad or evil people.  Remember that most of the Israelites stayed in Babylon.  The ones that returned were the true believers.  However, it was just easy for them as it is easy for us to become consumed by our daily lives, concerned about paneled houses and to hold God at arm’s length.   The temple with the presence of God will not let them have a God they hold at arms length.  The temple will not let them reduce their relationship to God to one that is merely spiritual.  

We do this just as much as these ancient Israelites.   Functionally we act as deists.  Deism is a view of God held by many early American thinkers that believes that God created the universe but once He had done so it He just let it run according to natural law no longer acting or interceding.  While many of us would reject this view as non-Biblical, we approach our lives as if this is what we believed, acknowledging God’s existence and secure in a belief that He has created the universe but content to act as though He is no longer intervening.  We believe God did some cool things a long time ago and we believe God will eventually do some cool things again but right now God is in heaven and we are here.  He has His world and we have our world.  We have practically banished God outside the camp.  It is not that we do not acknowledge Him or respect Him.  Instead we take the lessons and teachings of the Bible and relegate them to the spiritual realm and live as though Christianity is about a separate world from the one we actually live in.   That is what I mean by saying we are functionally deist.  I believe this is essentially how the community of believers that Haggai is ministering to are acting.  The temple is Haggai’s attempt to shatter this system of though, not because God needs a temple to be worshipped or to act, but because the people need to understand that if He is their God and they are His people, then He is present, and cannot be ignored or relegated away to the spiritual realm.  

It is true that God is transcendent but what the temple teaches us, and what the incarnation of Jesus teaches us, and what the Holy Spirit teaches us is that God is also immanent.  God refuses to be banished to the world of mere spirituality.  God demands to be here in the midst of His creation with His people because for God the key to His plan is the phrase repeated over and over again throughout the Old Testament - I will be your God and you will be my people.  That means a real relationship where God lives with us, experiences what we experience, feels what we feel, and suffers what we suffer.  

Nor is this a concept that is found only in the Old Testament buried in obscure books like Haggai.  When we enter into the community of God’s people, when we become part of the church, it is not through a pronouncement of words but through a physical symbol in which actual real, physical water is applied.  When Jesus gathers His disciples to explain what His coming death means, Jesus does not give them an abstract, spiritualized theology, Jesus gives them a meal.  So when we gather to experience the mystery of Christ and Christ crucified we eat real bread and drink real wine.  

Like baptism and communion, the Temple is physical and this is important for another reason.  Not only does God interact and work in the world, God is a creator God.  God created this world, the physical, material world of soil and trees, of animals and rivers and mountains.  In the ancient world a temple was considered a small model of the universe illustrating to the people the beauty and splendor of the reign of the god who inhabited the temple.  A temple was very much a model to help the people understand the true nature of this world - to visualize God ruling over His creation.  

All the promises God made to Israel were about real land and real prosperity.  We all have all heard a variation of the story about pirates or some sort of adventurers looking for treasure and the story concludes with them coming to the realization that the real treasure was in their hearts and inside them all along.   I hated that story when I was kid, it was such a letdown, and here is the thing - it is not the Christian story.  The Christian story does have an immaterial, spiritual disembodied ending.  Because resurrection and restoration is not a spiritual escape but a very real, physical, material renewal.

As a model not only does the temple represent creation it is also the blueprint of what creation is becoming.  The temple is future oriented showing the workings of God and His creation in harmonious completion.   The temple functions as a downpayment and a plan and an aspiration of a world united and perfected by the presence of God.  For the Israelites, the temple would point to the future and would leave no question as to the goal and purpose of God’s plan for His people.  The Israelites were to be a part of something bigger than the harvests, eating, drinking, clothing, wages, and paneled houses that so concern them in Haggai.   

So the temple is a picture of hope.  As Chris so eloquently stated in a sermon a few months ago, hope is not mere optimism or a solution.  Hope is a mystery and a absurdity that challenges accepted opinion and says that the world does not have to be this way.   It is about a God who is faithful despite our faithlessness.  A God who vetoes our faithlessness.  

For us who share like the Israelites the urge to see God as something remote out there in the sky far away.  For us who like the Israelites have the tendency to segregate God to a couple of hours one day a week and focus on the stresses and demands of the more immediate, how do we break out?

The answer is found in verse 13.  Look at it with me and listen to the language and you will hear the importance, “Then Haggai, the messenger of the Lord, spoke to the people with the Lord’s message, ‘I am with you,’ declares the Lord.  This verse is the central teaching of Haggai.  Haggai’s whole message to the people is summed up in four words, two in Hebrew.  I AM WITH YOU.  It is God’s presence that the temple is all about.  “Is it not in your going with us, so that we are distinct.”  

If you will notice in verse 14, God is referred to as the Lord of Hosts.  Haggai constantly uses this phrase “Lord of Hosts” to describe God.  You find God referred to as the Lord of Hosts in verse 2, 5, 7, and 9.  I am always going on and on about the importance of repetition in Hebrew.  So what is the significance of describing God as the Lord of hosts?  

The hosts are the angels.  Hosts can be thought of as a multitude implying a great number of angels, but more concretely it has a militaristic sense as if the angels are soldiers of an army.  It would almost be a better translation to use the phrase Lord of armies.  The metaphor for God described by the phrase ,”Lord of hosts” is of a conquering king leading His armies into battle.  Haggai uses this phrase because He wants the people to understand that God is not distant but near and active.  In fact, Haggai wants us to understand God is leading the host and they are preparing for an invasion.

The return of God to the temple to establish His rule, to right the wrongs of the world, to end the reign of the powerful who use their might and wealth to oppress was the very heart of what the Israelites awaited when they were at last freed from exile.  What Haggai is telling the people is  God is on the move and when He comes it will be as a conquering king leading an invasion that will make the glory of Assyria, and Babylon, and Persia look as nothing.  So God is not distant but present and with His people.  

Of course we know the rest of the story that it is in Jesus that we see the perfect presence and image of God.  Jesus who says that he who has seen me has seen the father.  Hebrews says Jesus is the exact imprint of God’s nature.  Jesus is everything the temple pointed to who breaks in from heaven and begins the invasion.  This invasion in no spiritual one but a real invasion where God’s presence comes as a baby who cries because He has is dependent on His mother for food, who gets dirty, who is hungry, and thirsty and tires.  He is crucified on a real wooden cross with real nails.  The temple, the incarnation, Jesus what they represent is a God that will not be pushed out and who is not a disinterested transcendental remote force off in the sky somewhere.  A God who comes to us with one, simple central message “I AM WITH YOU.”  That is why God needs a temple.
 

Futility and the Future Kingdom (Dr. Trey Benfield)

Scripture Readings:

Deuteronomy 28:36-40
Matthew 6:19-21
Haggai 1:5-11

Last week we began our study of the book of Haggai.  To recap, Haggai was a prophet who ministered to the small group of Jews who had returned Jerusalem after Jerusalem was sacked by the Babylonians 70 years earlier.  Much of the leadership and nobility had been taken captive and was living in Babylon to sever their link with their land making revolt less likely.  The Babylonian empire had since fallen to the Persians who controlled their empire by giving local populations more autonomy.  The great Persian king Cyrus encouraged tolerance throughout his empire and these policies were carried on by his later successor King Darius.  

At the time of Haggai, Israel was but a shadow of what it was and even its continued existence was precarious at best.  The people awaited God to restore the kingdom to a much greater glory than was hoped, but as of now those hopes and dreams seemed quite distance.  As a result the people began concentrating on rebuilding and working to improve their situation in the midst of their challenging environment.  Haggai’s message is a call to focus on rebuilding the temple instead.  

Last week, I drew a parallel between the time period that Haggai takes place and our own.  We call the time period of Haggai the post-exilic period.  The captives had returned to Israel but the glorious restoration that was promised was no where to be seen.  In a similar way we also live between two ages.  Christ has won a victory on the cross and His resurrection proves that death has been defeated.  As a result the kingdom of God has broken into our world.  However, we still wait for the full restoration and the glorious future the prophets and Jesus promised.  Because Haggai’s audience and we in the present church live in a time between promise and cold reality, we can find relevance in Haggai’s teachings to the church’s present situation.  

Today’s passage lays out Haggai’s argument for why the people should rebuild the temple.  We will learn that Haggai’s message is incredibly successful.  Unlike most prophets in the history of Israel, Haggai was actually able to persuade the people of Israel to do as God commanded.  One technique Haggai uses to persuade the people is by asking questions.  Twice in chapter 1, in verse 4 and in verse 7, Haggai asks the people to, “consider your ways.”   Haggai will continue this practice of posing questions to the people in chapter 2.     

A question is very engaging way to deal with an audience.  Instead of issuing pronouncements, Haggai draws the people into a discussion.  This allows the audience to reflect and even to help in formulating the answer.  So let’s delve into this question a bit and see what the words consider your ways mean.

The word consider is literally “set your heart.”  It means to understand, to see, to know, to give careful thought to their circumstances and experience.  To disengage from the day to day concerns of their lives and to view them objectively as an outsider.  We would think of this as engaging in self reflection or introspection.    

The term ways is a common word used for a path or a road.  We often think of ways in a more abstract way, but it is actually very concrete concept referring to a literal street.  By making the word “way” too abstract we sometimes a miss a very important point and that is that the word way implies a destination, an end, a goal.  So the people are asked not just to judge their actions but also what their actions are achieving, what they are leading to, and where they are going?  To what end is their current behavior leading them toward?  So the question “consider your ways” is not only about what the people are presently doing but goes beyond this asking them what are they really aiming for.

Haggai asks this question because the people have returned to the land and begun to build their houses but have not rebuilt the temple.  Last week I made the point that this was not because the people were selfish but because they felt the time was not appropriate.  God had promised a glorious future in which Israel would be remade and restored more prosperous and powerful than ever.  This vision of the future would include their freedom from foreign dominion and God Himself return to rule His kingdom.  The people saw none of these signs - they were few, struggling, and still under the rule of Persia and so they concluded the time was not right to rebuild the temple since God’s presence seemed more a distant promise than a reality. 

So these true believers who left Babylon, which for many of them was the only world they knew, came to Jerusalem and seeing the kingdom and restoration as something distant did what we would probably do - they got on with their lives building their house and going to their jobs.  They would even gather to worship at the site of the temple.  We know from Ezra that the altar had been rebuilt and sacrifices were offered there.  The people continued to keep the old feasts and so it was not like they had abandoned their faith.  What they had done was failed to move forward, to work toward the advancement of the kingdom.  The building of the temple as a nexus between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the earth, the place where the spirit of God resided, would be a key step in the progress of the kingdom.  

So the issue that Haggai calls out the people for is not as simple as their priorities are out of whack as we talked about last week. Nor is the issue that the people have forgotten God and have become secular materialists.  Haggai’s question is an attempt to rouse the people to remind them their purpose is greater than simple existence even if it is existence in the land promised to their fathers.  What Haggai wants them to do is see beyond their limitations to their true calling and their true purpose.

A few months ago when I preached on Jonah I made the point that part of God’s teaching to Jonah and therefore to us is to imagine a greater world.  One of the big points of the book of Jonah is for the Israelites and for us in the church is to expand our imaginations.  To imagine a world where even the violent and evil culture of the Assyrians could be reconciled to God.  Since then I have come across an Old Testament theologian named Walter Brueggemann who has written that the purpose and message not just of the prophet Jonah but all the prophets is to expand the imagination of the people.  Brueggemann argues that “the task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us.”  

A prophet’s job is to challenge the commonly held notions of what it means to be human.  By asking the question consider your ways, Haggai challenges their dominant views of what their lives are about.  Haggai wants them to understand that their return is not about simply existing in the land again while waiting for God to act.   

Haggai then fleshes this out by showing the people where there current actions are leading them.  You sow much, but harvest little.  You eat, but you never have enough, you drink but never have your fill.  You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm.  And he who earns wages does so to put the into a bag with holes.  God wants the people to understand that their current actions are leading only to frustration.  They are on the wrong road.  Again think of this concretely - if you take I-40 West you will not end up in Wilmington but Asheville.  If you are not building the kingdom of God then you will not end up with restoration but continue in the exile.  

So what does this mean for us in the church living on the other side of the resurrection where we are told restoration has begun?  It is tempting to read these words of sowing much and reaping little, of drinking and never having your fill, of clothing and never being warm and draw the conclusion that we need to have our priorities in line and if so we will experience abundance and prosperity.  This is certainly the lesson many have drawn from this text and then we create a prosperity gospel where people who follow God are blessed.  This is an easy conclusion but I think experience would show this to be a false one.  We can all recall examples of people who strive to follow God but still suffer and probably generate even more examples of people who are abundantly rich and yet live with no thought to God or His kingdom.   

To escape this line of thought, we often say that this thinking works in general but of course there are exceptions because the world is fallen and imperfect.   Another trick we use is to spiritualize the logic.  Perhaps if our priorities were correct we will reap spiritual abundance which is way better than simple material pleasures.  However, I want to suggest an alternate solution to this question.

You see Haggai is not generating his argument about sowing much and reaping little out of thin air.  This is not an original thought.  Like most prophets, Haggai is borrowing from prior scripture to make his point.  God had made a covenant or agreement with His people that they would inhabit the land of Israel and if they were loyal to Him and acted like His people by obeying his laws they would receive blessing but if they turned to other gods and disobeyed His laws they would suffer the curses of the covenant.  Throughout Israelite history, it was the responsibility of the prophet to remind the people of the terms of the covenant and then prosecute the people similar to a lawyer when they had violated the terms of the covenant. 

Here Haggai is actually quoting these words from Deuteronomy 28.  Many of the prophets quoted this passage.  In fact you can go to Micah 6:14-15 you  read almost the exact same words.  Deuteronomy 28 is a record of the curses that will befall Israel if they do not obey the voice of the Lord and are not careful to do all His commandments and statutes.  Among the curses is that the people will be taken captive by another nation which had just happened.  The people were also told that they would carry much seed into the field but gather little.  

The reason I point this out is that the people that Haggai is preaching to are operating under the Mosaic covenant.  So the consequences of the peoples actions are applicable to them as they were under its terms.  They knew this full well since they had experienced full force the consequences under the Babylonian conquest.  We however are no longer under the Mosaic covenant because it has been replaced by the new covenant that began with Christ’s death and resurrection.  The new covenant was promised in Jeremiah and Ezekiel and even back in Deuteronomy and the terms of the new covenant are different.  The new covenant is not like the Mosaic covenant.  The new covenant says that the law is within us and written on our hearts.  Our sins are forgiven and our sin is remembered no more.  Because of Christ, the Spirit is working within us to causing us to walk in God’s way and allowing us to obey God’s rule.  

We are freed from these curses and so we cannot take this passage and draw the conclusion that if our priorities are in line with God’s we will be prosperous.  We also are freed from the fear that when our priorities are out of line that we will suffer these curses.  As Paul tells the Philippians, He who began a good work in us will bring it to completion on the day of the Lord.  So the story for us is different, but that does not mean everything is perfect yet.

We still live in a fallen world.  As a result of the fall of Adam, the world we live in is broken.  Here is how it is described in Genesis, “Cursed is the ground because of you, in your pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life, thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the plants of the field by the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return the ground.”  As a result, all our work is ultimately frustrated.  

However, we have hope of a better way because Jesus’s death and resurrection brings to us the kingdom of heaven.  The kingdom of heaven is the restoration that the people looked for and were waiting for and that Jesus tell us is here.  The kingdom of heaven is the alternative to this world of frustration that the prophets were pointing to and that Haggai is urging the people to begin building.  The world, where if we have the imagination to contemplate it, will make nonsense of the consciousness and perception of our culture and our way of life.

So when Jesus describes the radical nature of this world in the sermon on the mount, He pushes the imagination of the people to consider a world where the poor and spirit, the mournful, the meek, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, the persecuted are the ones who are blessed rather than the rich and the powerful.  In this world the old ways no longer make sense.  The destination has changed, we are on a different road.  So Jesus teaches do not lay yourselves treasures on earth.  Not simply because it means our priorities are out of line, but because it no longer makes sense.  In this world moth and rust destroys them and thieves steal them.  Laying up treasures on earth is subject to frustration because this world is fallen.  Instead consider the kingdom of heaven, the alternate world, the real world, the world initiated by the death and resurrection of Christ, the future where there is hope.  

So the message from Haggai still remains to consider our ways.  As individuals and as a community of believers we need to be introspective and reflective.  We need to understand that with the death and resurrection of Christ something new has broken into our world.  We need to understand that there is an alternative to the consciousness and perception of the world that surrounds us.  This will require us to step outside our lives of work and play and to set our hearts upon our path to contemplate where our lifestyles, choices, and actions will lead us.  This will require us to use our imagination to picture the kingdom of heaven that Christ declares has come upon us.  

We need to consider our ways not in a moralistic sense of right and wrong.  We need to consider our ways in light of what destination they are leading us toward.  Are our actions leading to a place that will end only in frustration?  Are we simply providing treasures for moths and rust to destroy and thieves to steal?  Are we simply existing in our paneled houses without thought to the kingdom of heaven that is the only hope for the frustration of this present world?  Our actions should instead be directed to the future, to the world that is coming to pass.  To do this will require us to consider our ways and us our imagination and our creativity.  To ask the question what would the world look like if God were in charge.  Resting in the knowledge that the victory has been won and the proof of this world is in the resurrection of Christ.   A new world has begun and it is our task to demonstrate for the people in our lives what that new world looks like to give them a taste of the glorious vision of the wonderful future God is bringing in through His church.  

The Time Between: Expectation and Reality (Dr. Trey Benfield)

Scripture Readings:

Acts 1:6-8
Ephesians 2:18-22
Haggai 1:1-6

I want to begin a series studying Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, sometimes known as the post-exilic prophets.  These three prophets occupy a unique place in Biblical history because Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi were the last three prophets who spoke to Israel before we come to John the Baptist over four hundred years later.  

In order to understand the message of these three prophets and to see the relevance for us today, we are going to have learn a little about the historical background. If the term post-exilic does not mean anything to you, don’t worry I will explain and pretty soon you will be dropping “post-exilic” in casual conversation.   

So let us look at the big picture of Israel so we can understand exactly what context we are dealing with because it is very important and we will be referring back to it a lot.  If we go back to Abraham, you will recall that God made a covenant with Abraham promising Abraham lots of descendants who would one become a great nation.  We find that God fulfills this promise, but the descendants of Abraham find themselves slaves in Egypt.  God raises up Moses to free His people from the Egyptians and leads them to Mount Sinai where God gives the people the law.  The people are to obey the law and if they do not God tells them their land will be conquered.   After wandering in the desert for forty years, they conquer the land of Canaan.  The Israelites as they are now called will establish a kingdom ruled by great kings like David and Solomon.  After Solomon their is sort of a civil war that divides the nation of Israel into a Southern and Northern kingdom.  The kings and the people do not obey the law and the northern portion of Israel is conquered by the Assyrians in 722 B.C. and the southern portion by the Babylonians in 587 B.C.  The Babylonians completely destroyed Jerusalem including the great temple built by King Solomon.   

After the Babylonians conquered Israel, many of the people were forcefully moved to Babylon in what was known as the Babylonian exile.  The resettlement of conquered people was a common practice in the ancient world.  Breaking the ties of the people to their land made them less likely to rebel.  Most of the time kingdoms conquered in this manner ceased to become nations and disappeared from the pages of history.  However, the prophets had prophesied that God would preserve a remnant of His people and would restore Israel.  The prophets paint a picture of the restoration of Israel as an event similar to the Exodus but even better.  Israel would return from exile, a new descendant of David would return to the throne, the temple would be rebuilt, the land would be made prosperous, Israel would become not just a nation but the greatest of nations, and God Himself would come to His people establishing an everlasting kingdom that would institute a new age of peace and justice throughout the whole Earth.  Jeremiah prophesied an end to the exile after 70 years and after the Persians led by King Cyrus conquered the Babylonians, Cyrus issued a decree in 539 B.C. calling for the return of the Jews to Israel and authorizing them to rebuild the temple.  The time period after the Jews return from Babylon is known as the post-exilic period.  

I tell you this not just to impress your friends at parties with your knowledge of ancient Israelite history - trust me no one will be.  However if we look at our text you will notice that Haggai begins by given us a very specific date.  I think this is probably the most specific date we are given from any of the prophets.  Some prophets, for instance Joel, give us no indication at all as to the time period.  Yet here in Haggai we are told right at the start that it is the second year of Darius the king, the sixth month and first day.  The author tells us this because he wants us to know that the time of the events of Haggai is important.  

Now in the ancient world it was common to refer to years by the reign of the king since they did use B.C./A.D. dating system we use.  Darius was the Persian king who followed Cyrus’ son Cambyses.  We have pretty good records from the Persian period so we know that this date corresponds to 520 B.C. eighteen years after Cyrus conquered the Babylon and issued the decree allowing for the return of the Jews to their homeland and authorizing them to rebuild the temple.  So we know that we are firmly in the post-exilic period.

So if you were a Jew living during this time period, you would have had certain expectations.  The seventy years of captivity that Jeremiah spoke of was over and now was the time for foreign domination to end, prosperity to return, the Davidic monarchy to be restored, and God to come again to set everything that was wrong in the world right.  However, as the exiles attempted to rebuild, the facts on the ground tell a different story.  We learn in this passage  that prosperity has not returned to Israel - the people have sown much but harvested little, they have drunk but never have their fill, they have clothes, but are not warm.  The earn wages but put them into a bag with holes.  Persia still rules and it appears to the people as though God is not with them.  There is a gap between the people’s expectations and their reality in this sad state of affairs.  

Now typically when Haggai is taught or preached, if it ever is, there is basically one sermon you will hear.  The focus is on verse 4 when the people are told that they live in paneled houses while the house of God lies in ruin.  Paneled houses are read as a sign of luxury because they were usually cedar and that made the house smell good and look nice so the lesson drawn is that the audience Haggai is addressing have their priorities out of alignment.  They have focused on themselves rather than God.  The sermon will then make the point that we should realign our priorities and put God first and our material desires second.  I think there is some truth to this reading. However, as usual it is more complex than this. In fact, I think there is a bigger issue to which the misalignment of priorities is merely a symptom.

Here is where an understanding of history will help us.  After Cyrus’ decree many Jews, actually most Jews, remained in Babylon.  They had grown up Babylon, were comfortable in cosmopolitan Babylon, and preferred to stay put rather than to undergo a long, arduous journey to a ruined land they had little memory of.  In fact, only a small minority returned to Israel.  According to Ezra-Nehemiah only about 50,000 of them took advantage of the decree of Cyrus.  The people who did return were the patriots who took pride in the land, religion, and above all the temple.  These were people that believed it God’s promises so much they would leave the comforts of their established home in Babylon to go on a 900 mile journey.

For Jews in general the temple was super important.  In fact it is hard to underestimate the importance of the temple as a symbol of what it meant to be Jewish.  Not too long before the events of Haggai, Jeremiah had been tried and almost executed for prophesying that the people had placed too much trust that God would protect them from destruction because God would not destroy His temple and Jeremiah was telling them that God would destroy His temple.

My point is that the people who returned to Israel were the true believers and the temple would have been majorly important to them.  The people who remained in Babylon were the ones who cared about material, worldly comforts.  So why would this small, dedicated band of Jewish patriots not rebuild the temple and instead build paneled houses?  We are told the answer to this question in verse 2, “Thus says the Lord of hosts: These people say the time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the Lord.”  I am going to argue that the word time here is a little different than how we normally think of it.  

In Hebrew thought, time was understood as a joining of favorable circumstances with a particular end or purpose.  It was not something a person unilaterally decided on - the circumstances had to be in place.  So if we think back to Ecclesiastes 3, or the Byrd’s song “Turn, Turn, Turn”, there is a time be born and a time to die, a time to plant, and time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal…  You don’t just go outside and plant something anytime you want.  It has to be the right season. 

So the people are not saying, we are not rebuilding the temple because we have better things to do like build paneled houses.  The people are saying that their circumstances were not favorable to building the temple because they are awaiting the signs of the restoration that the prophets promised and they do not seem them.  What is going on here is not a misalignment of priorities, rather the people’s expectations have met the cold facts of reality and have led the people to a spiritual depression.

Now here is where Haggai has something to teach us, a deeper lesson than simply needing to order our priorities.  The misaligned priorities are a symptom of a bigger problem.   Like the Israelites Haggai is speaking to, all of us have experienced times in our faith when the expectations and promises have not lined up with the cold, hard facts of reality.  When we are true believers and yet experience suffering in ourselves or in others.  When we are faithful witnesses to a friend or family member and see no change in heart.  When we look around in the world knowing that God is working to redeem and restore His creation and yet see only evidence of brokenness.  

You see we also live in the gap between expectations and hope just as did the post-exilic community.  We are told that because of the resurrection of Christ we live in a new age where death is defeated.  According to Luke, Jesus begins his ministry by reading from the book of Isaiah which prophesies the restoration of Israel, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”  Then Jesus rolls up the scroll and says, “Today the scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”  Yet we still have the poor, the captive, the blind, and the oppressed and I would not describe the last 2000 years of history as the year of the Lord’s favor.

We are told at the end of Matthew that all authority in heaven and earth is given to Christ.  We are told that Christ watched Satan fall and that Christ has bound the strong man.  Yet for 2000 years we have seen tyrants exploit and oppress and it seems as though Satan is still at work.  If Christ’s victory on the cross is the turning point of history and if everything changed as result of the resurrection why does everything look so much the same?

You are not alone if you have experienced this gap between promise and expectation and present reality.  No less than the disciples right after the resurrection felt this as well.  Our first reading from Acts takes place on the Mount of Olives just before Jesus ascends to heaven to take His place on the throne as Lord of heaven and earth.  

Before Jesus ascends, His disciples ask Jesus a very logical question, “Lord will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?”  You see for the disciples, the role of the messiah who they identified with Jesus, was to bring the restoration of Israel that the prophets had spoken of.  The disciples wanted to see Israel freed from foreign domination, prosperity restored, their enemies judged, and God return to the temple.  Their hopes had been dashed when Jesus had been crucified, but now that he rose from the dead it seemed the right moment for this new world order that they longed for to be instituted. 

Jesus’ reply to their question seems a bit of a dodge.  The typical reading is that Jesus is answering the disciple’s question by saying that God is going to do all these thing but later and that it is none of your business when, so until that time you need to be witnesses and wait until the restoration finally happens and then ascends to heaven leaving them to wait.  I think this reading misses the point of Jesus’ answer. 

However, Jesus ascension is not an escape to heaven where he then rules the spiritual realm detached from us.  This is not how the disciples would have viewed this event.  For them there was no sharp separation between heaven and earth.  Instead the ascension was proof that Jesus is taking up the throne and His rule is extending to the whole cosmos.  What Jesus is telling the disciples is that the restoration is beginning now, but the restoration is not happening in the way you might expect.  Instead the restoration is happening because you are going to be spirit filled witnesses to me and the extent of this will be Jesus rule not in Jerusalem or even Israel but encompassing the whole world.  The new age is breaking in and the Holy Spirit present at creation and in the temple is now going to march, as the church and the believers that make up the church, as the agent of the new creation.  The church constructed of believers filled with the holy spirit is the way the restoration of the kingdom will come.  

Like the disciples and like post-exillic Jews that Hagaii is prophesying too we are caught between two ages.  The resurrection means the victory is won and the promise of restoration is sure.  Paul tells us that Jesus’ resurrection is the first fruits, meaning the resurrection of the whole cosmos will follow in kind.  Understanding that the presence of God which was manifest by the Holy Spirit in the temple now sees the Holy Spirit believers of the church as the new temple.  

If we look at our second reading from Ephesians, we see Paul flesh this out.  In verse 16 Paul starts with the premise that because we share the Holy Spirit we have access to the father.  Remember it was the temple in the Old Testament where the presence of God dwelled where the people met with and interacted with God.  Paul is explaining that because of Christ and the defeat of sin on the cross, we have direct access to God.  God’s kingdom has broken in and is being built in this world through those that make up the church.   Paul ends the passage by stating that we as the church are being built into a dwelling place for God.  Remember a dwelling place for God is the purpose of a temple. 

This is exactly what Jesus was talking about when the disciples asked him the question as to when he would restore the kingdom to Israel.   The kingdom would be partially a supernatural act involving the holy spirit, but it would also involve the disciples of God building the church as witnesses to the resurrection of Christ.  From the very beginning God has established His kingdom and for some reason God has desired that it would be built by the means of humanity.  Therefore, the kingdom of God grows by fits and starts, hidden and revealed, supernaturally powered by the Holy Spirit yet actualized in the material world.  The dichotomy we so often see between the secular and the holy is broken by the revolution Christ began at His resurrection.

Jesus taught the disciples as much when he compared the kingdom of God to the mustard seed It starts as a tiny insignificant seed.  It grows to the greatest of all herbs to the point where birds can lodge in its branches.  

So how do we live between expectation and reality?  The answer is the same for the people Hagaai prophesied to.  We are not to wait until God until the promises of God have been fully realized.  To do would be an abdication of the duties God has entrusted us to.  We are to build the temple.  To make manifest the presence of God in the church by being faithful witnesses to Christ and His work with faith and hope that God will fulfill His promises.  If we want to know what that looks like then we can turn to the ministry of Jesus who announced that God’s kingdom was here and then went about showing what the world looks like when God is in charge.  To proclaim good news to the poor. To proclaim liberty to the captives and recover sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.  Knowing that in the Lord our labor is not in vain.  Living our lives in assurance of things hope and the conviction of things not seen.