Consider Your Ways

The Lord commands the people through Haggai to quit worrying about their own houses and get the temple – His house – rebuilt. “By means of a specific instance (the rebuilding of the temple), the book of Haggai is a relevant and timeless book on the need to put God's work first in one's life. For the prophet's society, rebuilding the temple would be the visible sign of the people's determination to put God first.” [ESV Study Bible, p. 1743]

The Old Testament temple was a building, a physical place. There was Solomon’s magnificent temple and Herod’s temple that Jesus knew, destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD. We can also include the portable Tabernacle with Moses in the wilderness. For Christian believers, however, there is no special building or particular location for the temple. For us the temple is a spiritual construction.

About Himself, Jesus says: “I tell you, something greater than the temple is here” [Matt. 12:6] (All Scripture quotations from ESV)

Paul tells the Athenians: “The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man.” [Ac. 17:24]

Paul tells the Corinthian church: “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? . . . God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.” [1 Cor. 3:16,17]

Paul further asks the Corinthians: “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?” [1 Cor. 6:19a]

Paul tells the Ephesians—“In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.” [Eph. 2:22]

What shall we say then? The universal church of Jesus Christ and each of us as individual believers is the temple, God’s house. God resides in us everywhere and always. But what have we done with Him?

In Haggai the Lord asks: “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?” [Hag. 2:3]

Anyone 65 or 70 years old might remember when America was still nominally a Christian nation, with our “house” in reasonable repair. We recited the Lord’s Prayer, sang some hymns, and observed the real Christmas and Easter, not the winter solstice and the vernal equinox. Today, of course, a teacher would be fired and a student suspended or expelled for practicing what was once customary. The church no longer signifies. Jesus Himself no longer signifies. The worst is celebrated. The best is suffocated. Kids cannot share Jesus in public schools, but they can learn to put condoms on cucumbers and get pregnancy (abortion?) “counseling” if they forget how. Employees cannot share Jesus in the workplace, but they can lie, cheat and steal for the bottom line or for some political cutthroat.

In the August 1999 issue of American Family Association Journal, AFA President Don Wildmon wrote a quiet, but scathing indictment titled “That’s What Christians Do Now.” In it he outlines some of the major cultural outrages against Christian morality including abortion, pornography, no-fault divorce, homosexuality, illegitimacy, gambling and the dumbing down of the schools and TV. The article is spiced throughout with the refrain: “Me? I go to church, the minister preaches, I go home. That’s what Christians do now.” And he concludes, “[D]on’t blame me, I didn’t do anything.” You can find the complete article at the Journal. The pews are full; the people are empty. Most of us didn’t do anything and have not done anything to advance God’s house if it meant any personal risk. What did Jesus do? What did Paul do? What did the martyrs do? What part of “Go, teach and make disciples” don’t we understand? Scripture says we will be persecuted and hated anyway.

Here is a headline pulled from today’s newspaper, albeit written 2,600 years ago: “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.” [Hag. 1:6]

Sound anything like our economy today? Could it be because we have forgotten God, put Jesus on the sidelines, and turned everything over to the atheist, secular humanists? Suppose we had kept the temple in good repair and followed the Christian virtues of honesty and thrift all along? Things might look a bit different. And talk about a bag with holes, I give you Washington, DC and Sacramento, CA. There’s more hole than bag. Is anybody on a fixed income? How do you like us so far? It helps to understand a distinction: charity is when you give voluntarily; altruism is when others take it out of your pocket and give it to whom they please, usually to get votes or pamper special interests.

Furthermore, says the Lord: “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.” [Hag. 1:9] Looks like the Israelites suffered an economic downturn also, but it was clearly the judgment of God. We know because He says so Himself. Some, if not many, will argue that our current disastrous condition is the judgment of God. There is really no way for us mere mortals to know for sure, but consider – God is omnipotent. He can make things happen or He can just allow things to happen, particularly when we are doing it to ourselves. Draw your own conclusions.

God created everything by speaking it into existence. Certainly he could have spoken a new temple into existence for Haggai’s people and He could do it for us. But, no. He wanted them, and He wants us to work for it, in spite of our prayers for some miraculous intervention. Why do we pray for things we should be doing for ourselves? “Work, for I am with you, declares the Lord of hosts” [Hag. 2:4b] Hark back to Ezra and Nehemiah and see how difficult it was in that day. It will be difficult for us, too. Nobody wants to be hated. It is easier to go along and get along, to show our toleration. However, the ABCs of “tolerance” in America these days amount to Anything But Christian.

“’Thus says the Lord of hosts: These people say the time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the Lord.’”[Hag. 1:2] That was then, this is now. Guess what? Same, same. It really is time for us to get busy rebuilding our temple. Unfortunately, the kinder gentler, GAGA, personal piety brand of Christianity won’t get it done. We need up close and personal, in-your-face Christianity, using all the resources allowed us by Scripture and the First Amendment to the Constitution.

Like those in Nehemiah’s day working on the wall, we need to keep the trowel in one hand and the sword in the other.