Haggai's First Sermon (Continued Some More)

In Haggai's first sermon, he was dealing with inverted priorities. The people had no time to build the temple of God, but they had plenty of time to build their own nice, ornate homes. Their priorities were themselves, not the will of God. And aren't all inverted priorities really idolatry? Aren't they really putting the creation ahead of the Creator? God said in Exodus 20:3, "You shall have no other gods before Me." Then God said in Deuteronomy 6:5, "Love the Lord you God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength." Yet, they loved themselves more than God. They loved their comforts more than God.

Do you? My friend, are you you talking about serving God, and planning to serve Him; but not actually serving Him? Are you allowing other priorities, good priorities, to get in the way of the best priority - building the temple of God - or in our case, building the church of Jesus Christ?

Now before you get some misconceptions, let's put this into perspective. Some of you might be thinking, "Oh, I get it. The pastor is just preaching this so we will get behind a building program. He wants to build a new church building." Not so! A building program is the least of our concerns. But we do want to build the church of Jesus Christ.

Let's think about the purpose of the Temple and see if there aren't any grander themes. What was the purpose of the Temple? From 1st Kings 8, during the dedication of the first Temple by Solomon, I gleaned these two purposes. The first is this: As the house of God, it was the place where the people came to meet God. We can see this in 1st Kings 8:38-40,

"Whatever prayer, whatever supplication is made by anyone, or by all your people Israel, when each one knows the plague of his own heart, and spreads out his hands toward this temple: then hear in heaven Your dwelling place, and forgive, and act, and give to everyone according to all his ways, whose heart you know (for You alone know the hearts of all the sons of men), that they may fear You all the days that they live in the land which You gave to our fathers."

After the dedication ceremony, the glory of God came down and resided in the temple. The Shikineah glory was only there in all the earth. So that was where the people went to meet God and to worship Him. If there was no Temple, there was no worship. So by not building the Temple, they had made a priority statement. They would never admit it, but they didn't care about their relationship with God as a people.

"God, it is good to have a relationship with you, but we will put it off until we get these other parts of our lives in order."

"I've got things to do God. I don't have time to pray, or read my Bible, or attend the services of the church. Maybe next year things will lighten up."

And our relationshipw with God gets put on the back burner.

The second purpose of the temple is evangelism. We see this in 1st Kings 8:41-43,

"Moreover, concerning the foreigner, who is not of Your people Israel, but has come from a far country for Your name's sake (for they will hear of Your great name and Your strong hand and Your outstretched arm), when he comes and prays toward this Temple, hear in heaven Your dwelling place, and do according to all for which the foreigner calls to You, that all the peoples of the earth may know Your name and fear You, as do Your people Israel, and that they may know that this Temple which I have built is called by Your name."

Solomon said that when the foreigner came (translate that as unbeliever), he could learn about God at the temple. God would reveal Himself. So ignoring the Temple was to ignore outreach and evangelism. "But it isn't time," they said. It isn't? It's not time for God? It's not time to reach out to others?

God is saying, "Don't you care about your relationship with Me? Don't you care that your neighbor has no relationship with me?" "We do care!" the responded. "Then why don't you build the temple?" He askled them. To us, He would be asking, "Why don't you build the church?"