Sermon for MHBC (25 April 2021). You can listen on Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo, or our website. Live at 11:00am on Sundays. Also available as a podcast here or by searching “Monument Heights Baptist Church” in your favorite podcast app.
When the Lord issues the Ten Commandments to Israel, he begins with these two:
“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
“You shall have no other gods before me.
“You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God (Exod 20:2–5a).
So these are the first two commands: (1) You shall have no other gods before me and (2) You shall make no images for worship.
Notice both of these commands concern what we call worship. Worship quite literally means ascribing worth to someone or something.
The problem in the book of Haggai is a failure to prioritize worship. We are going to see that clearly in our text this morning but let me give you a brief background. Judah returned from exile in Babylon in the 530s. They began rebuilding the temple. Now the temple was the central place of Israel’s national and religious identity because it represented the presence of God. The temple was always meant to be temporary, and by the end of this series in Haggai I hope to show you that. So Judah began rebuilding the temple, but due to threats and fear, they stopped building the temple. Haggai and Zechariah all call for the temple to be rebuilt. Haggai is writing around the year 520. Ultimately, the temple will be completed in 516. But at this point, Judah is apathetic and indifferent. They are failing to prioritize worship, so the Lord sends the prophet Haggai.
And the key to Haggai’s message is the title for the sermon: Consider your ways. We see this phrase repeated several times in the book. It is prominent in chapter one. Consider your ways.
I’m convinced this is a word to us. Consider your ways.
About a year ago, I came to the conclusion that there are three big areas that churches in need of renewal need to address. Let me share one of them with you now because I think Haggai’s call to consider our ways is especially concerned with the first one. So here is one nonnegotiable key to church renewal.
The church must make an absolute and unwavering commitment to the worship of God. Now you might say, “Easy, no problem.” But it’s not as easy as it sounds. Many churches are entertainment venues. Many churches aren’t interested in talking about God. Many churches are prone to feeling good and positivity and sappy sentimentalism and political endeavors. They aren’t interested in the God of the Bible, and as a result, their roots are very shallow. So, a key priority is an absolute and unwavering commitment to the worship of God. This is what the whole series in Haggai is about—prioritizing worship.
Let’s get into Haggai, starting in v. 1: In the second year of Darius the king, in the sixth month, on the first day of the month, the word of the LORD came by the hand of Haggai the prophet to Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest.
The second year of Darius is 520. He’s the king of Persia. The word of the LORD comes by Haggai to Zerubbabel, the governor of Judah, and to Joshua, the high priest. These are our key characters. We will talk more about them in upcoming weeks. For now, just note that they are important and that they ultimately point ahead to Christ.
Here’s the word of the Lord in v. 2: Thus says the LORD of hosts: “These people say the time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the LORD.” Now this is a rebuke. The LORD refers to these people rather than to my people. And notice the problem. They are lazy in spiritual matters. This is apathy. In fact, Christian tradition has a name for this. It’s sloth. Sloth is spiritual resistance. It is a refusal to be bothered by God, to answer God’s calling. It is refusal to grow and deepen in the things of God. It is what makes us always run out of time for Scripture or prayer. It is what makes involvement and participation in the church so difficult. It is what makes us resistant to change. It is what makes church services feel so cold and lifeless.
Prioritizing worship means putting sloth to death. Look at the continued accusation from the LORD in vv. 3–4: Then the word of the LORD came by the hand of Haggai the prophet, “Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, while this house lies in ruins?
Pay attention to what’s happening. They live in paneled houses. This word paneled is pretty rare in the OT and it often applies to the first construction of the Lord’s temple in 1 Kings. So the people are living in homes that are luxurious and reflective of worship while the LORD’s temple lies in ruins.
Here’s the reality. We are always worshiping. What we prioritize and what we value reflects what we worship. For the people in Haggai, they are prioritizing their own comfort, their own homes, their own agenda. They are not worshiping the LORD. The warning for us is the same. What do we give our time to? What gets the majority of our attention? How about in the church? What things take the place of worship? Are prayers and Scripture boring? Would we rather celebrate a secular or national holiday? As a congregation, we must prioritize worship.
And here is what the LORD says to his people. Verse 5: Now, therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider your ways. Consider your ways. Take an honest assessment of what you are doing. Put the questions to your life. Why do your priorities look the way they do?
And he goes on to point out that their lives aren’t flourishing. They aren’t experiencing the blessing of the Lord. To use an English idiom, they are spinning their wheels. You have a job, but it’s not satisfying. You have stuff, but it doesn’t bring joy or peace or comfort. You’ve put a ton of time into that relationship, but it’s still crumbling. Look at v. 6: You have sown much, and harvested little. You eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm. And he who earns wages does so to put them into a bag with holes.
Let’s say we are looking at our priorities now. We are assessing our life. We are assessing the life of our congregation. And our eyes are starting to open to some difficult truths. What do we do next? Verse 7: Thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider your ways.
Then Judah is given this instruction: prioritize worship. Radically reorder your life so that worship is the central. Look at v. 8: Go up to the hills and bring wood and build the house, that I may take pleasure in it and that I may be glorified, says the Lord. Pay attention to the commands. You may even want to underline them. Go up. Bring wood. And build the house. Get up. Gather the materials. And build. It’s almost as if the Lord would say to us, “Wake up. Don’t slumber. Don’t persist in sloth and resistance. Put things in order and prioritize worship.”
So maybe take a moment and consider what that would like for you. What does your devotional life look like? Is there prayer? Is there Scripture? Does the Lord get your sustained attention? Do you prioritize gathered worship with the congregation? Parents, grandparents, do you have family worship?
Our first statement of faith has this helpful line on how we grow in holiness. “Sanctification … is carried on in the hearts of believers by the presence and power of the Holy Spirit … in the continual use of the appointed means—especially the Word of God, self-examination, self-denial, watchfulness, and prayer.”[1] Those five categories are especially helpful to think about your devotional life: (1) the Word of God, (2) self-examination, (3) self-denial, (4) watchfulness, and (5) and prayer.
There’s more to life than security and comfort and what we typically call happiness. I never thought I would do this, but I’m going to quote one of Justin Bieber’s recent songs. He says, “I’ve had everything in life that people strive for Just to ask the question: ‘What are we alive for?’”[2] By every measure of modern society, he has been successful. And yet, he knows that there must be more. We were made to worship God. Anything less will leave us unsatisfied and searching. The Westminster Shorter Catechism asks: What is the chief end of man? To glorify God and to enjoy him forever. The Heidelberg Catechism famously asks: What is our only hope in life and death? That we are not our own but belong to God. Jesus says it this way in John 17:3: And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. What is eternal life? To know God. This calls for us to consider our ways, to take a look at our personal priorities, and to take a look at our congregational priorities.
Everything else will come up short. Look at v. 9: You looked for much, and behold, it came to little. And when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why? declares the Lord of hosts. Because of my house that lies in ruins, while each of you busies himself with his own house. Why should we expect blessing or happiness or satisfaction as long as we reject the Creator?
Verses 10–11: Therefore the heavens above you have withheld the dew, and the earth has withheld its produce. And I have called for a drought on the land and the hills, on the grain, the new wine, the oil, on what the ground brings forth, on man and beast, and on all their labors. I just want to quickly point out the word play here. The Hebrew words for ruins in vv. 4 and 9 shares the same consonants with the word for drought here in v. 11. The connection between Judah’s failure to prioritize worship and their lack of blessing is enforced.
So, church, if we are seeking God’s blessing, we must prioritize the worship of the Lord so that he might be pleased and glorified by us. And we can’t just slap the label of worship on anything we want. Just as the LORD gave Israel directions regarding the temple, he gives us directions for worship. Scripture must regulate our worship. I’ll come back to that after we finish the passage and I make some final application. For now, let’s see the response of the leaders and the people.
Verse 12: Then Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, with all the remnant of the people, obeyed the voice of the Lord their God, and the words of Haggai the prophet, as the Lord their God had sent him. And the people feared the Lord. Notice this is all about what we saw last week. Hearing the voice of the Lord and obey it. And they feared the Lord. I pray that we will be able to say this as a church. We obeyed the voice of the Lord and the words of Scripture and we feared the Lord.
And look at the result. Verse 13: Then Haggai, the messenger of the Lord, spoke to the people with the Lord’s message, “I am with you, declares the Lord.” The LORD is present with them as a result.
And the obedience follows. Verses 14–15: And the Lord stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and the spirit of Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, and the spirit of all the remnant of the people. And they came and worked on the house of the Lord of hosts, their God, on the twenty-fourth day of the month, in the sixth month, in the second year of Darius the king.
Now I want to make sure our application is really sharp this morning. It’s easy to preach a message like this and say, “We need to prioritize worship,” and all of us say, “Yes, that’s right we do.” But what do we mean? What does that actually call for? Why did I begin by reading the first two commandments? Well as usual I think our Baptist forebears give us some guidance. I want to focus on two applications—both have been alluded to throughout the message.
First, corporate worship must be regulated by Scripture. The Lord directs us how to worship. Yes, Scripture tells us what things belong in worship. When we allow other practices to intrude on the worship service, we are not prioritizing worship and we are committing idolatry.
Look at what question 56 in the Baptist catechism (a very old Baptist training document) says:
Q56: What is forbidden in the second commandment?
A: The second commandment forbids the worshipping of God by images, or any other way not appointed in his word.[3]
I won’t spell out the ways we can violate this principle, but let’s just say, “They are all too common in Baptist churches.”
Second, we ought to prioritize the Lord’s Day as an act of worship and counter-cultural expression. In the early days of the Church, people thought Christians were bizarre for getting up early on the first day of the week for worship. Sunday wasn’t a sacred day until the 300s. But they did it. Later, many Christians objected to calling their day of worship Sunday because that is, after all, the pagan name—the sun’s day. They insisted on referring to the Lord’s Day. Now we’ve certainly lost any sense of prioritizing the Lord’s Day. But I would argue that if we are serious about prioritizing worship, then it begins in the obvious place of prioritizing our corporate gathering on the Lord’s Day. Again, John Broadus, an important southern Baptist, the second president of the Southern Baptist Seminary, includes the following questions in his catechism:
What do we find the first Christians doing on the Lord’s day? They met for public worship, heard preaching, took the Lord’s Supper, and gave money for religious objects.
Ought we to keep the Lord’s day as the Sabbath? Yes, we ought to keep the Lord’s day as a day of rest and holy employments.
Ought we to keep the Lord’s day as the first Christians did? Yes, we ought to keep the Lord’s day as a day for public worship, with Bible study and preaching, for religious gifts and ordinances, and for doing good in every way.[4]
Now I’m not trying to be dogmatic but consider the impact such a practice might have. What impact would prioritizing the Lord’s Day as a day of sacred devotion have on your life as an individual? What impact would it have on your family? Your neighbors? Your coworkers? Your fellow church members? In generations past, we have wondered why our children have left the church. One rather obvious reason is that we haven’t taught them to prioritize worship.
Part of being a Christian in the culture we now live in is prioritizing the Lord’s Day, making it a day devoted to the Lord. This doesn’t have to be a downer. You can have special meals and light candles and say family prayers and sing songs and read Scripture and talk about the Lord.
“I am the Lord your God who brought you up out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.” Consider your ways. Consider your priorities. What are you worshiping? Have you prioritized the worship of the Lord? Have we done so at Monument Heights?
[1] New Hampshire Confession of Faith, X.
[2] “We’re In This Together”
[3] https://founders.org/library/the-baptist-catechism/
[4] http://www.baptisttheology.org/baptisttheology/assets/file/acatechism-broadus.pdf