Build it, already!
What are you waiting for?
This daily blog is fueled by my morning abiding time with Jesus. As Martin Luther says (and as the sign says hanging in my office), “I have so much to do today that I must spend the first three hours in prayer.”
Confession: I do NOT spend three hours in prayer every morning. But I do try to start every day with abiding with Christ. From there, I usually get the the idea for the day’s blog. And perhaps that’s why it can appear random sometimes. Because wherever God brings me is where I bring you.
And this morning, he brought me somewhere really random.
Some days, I just open my Bible and see where it lands. If Scripture is truly rich no matter what, then whatever I read should be “God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.”
So when I opened to the book of Haggai this morning, I really put that to the test. And it delivered.
Haggai is considered one of the minor prophets. Not because of his importance, but because of the length of his book. His words, in fact, are actually quite important. See, Haggai enters the scene after the Israelites have come back from their exile in Babylon. And for about 18 or so years, they have been putting off a really important task: rebuilding the temple.
In other words, they’re lallygagging. Or better put, they’ve become enamored with lesser things over the most important thing.
We know this because of a really interesting detail in the beginning of the book.
See, in chapter one—verse four—we see a message from God that is very specific. It comes in the form of a question: “Is it time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, while this house [the temple] lies in ruins?”
Now “paneled houses” aren’t just any houses. My Old Testament seminary professor was also a biblical archaeologist that spend a lot of time digging in Israel. While we were studying Haggai, he explained to me how regular old houses of the time were made of mud. If you brushed up against them, then, you’d get dirty. “Paneled houses,” though, were something different. These were houses with some style. They weren’t “the projects,” they were the “nice neighborhoods.” See, paneled houses meant they were plastered on both the inside and out to be more ornate as well as to protect their inhabitants from getting their clothes dirty when they rubbed up against the walls.
The people of Israel, in other words, were splurging on their homes.
I like how the Life Recovery Bible’s New Living Translation puts the verse and question above from God: “Why are you living in luxurious houses while my house lies in ruins?”
Here’s the point: Israel was so focused on building their own safe, pleasurable, pretty dwellings at the expense of the most important thing and the most important person—God.
Friend, is that not what we do so often?
We are so focused on building our own little kingdoms, our own houses, our own comfortable and at times extravagant lives, that we ignore what God is calling us to do. And what’s he calling us to do?
“Build my house, already!”
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard Christians talk about the verses from Paul referring to our body’s being temples of the Holy Spirit. Most times, though, it’s to tell other people what they shouldn’t be doing. In some ways, those people aren’t wrong. But I wonder what would happen if everyone took the words of God in Haggai seriously and applied them to the work of building/rebuilding their own temples:
“Be strong … . And now get to work, for I am with you, sas the Lord of Heaven’s Armies. My Spirit remains among you, just as I promised when you came out of Egypt. So do not be afraid.”
Get to work. There’s a temple to build. And you are the temple.
