Haggai 1:6-8: “Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages earneth wages [to put it] into a bag with holes. Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Consider your ways. Go up to the mountain, and bring wood, and build the house; and I will take pleasure in it, and I will be glorified, saith the LORD.
Does Haggai 1:6 strike a cord with you? Of course in this country and century we have enough to eat and drink and we have warm clothes. Yet, we relate to this passage because it is basically saying we work very hard and we seem to have so little, we just live pay check to pay check. It is that feeling of never having enough, the end of the month glance at our bank accounts and wondering where it all went. Could the problem be because we are not building God’s house? Can we relate this to the church (God’s house) and our tithes (building God’s house)? I think that is how most of us read this passage.
Let’s consider the context for a moment. Israel had returned to their homeland, only to find it occupied by squatters, refugees from other displaced people as a result of the Assyrian and Babylonian conquests. They had settled in Palestine and started to make a new home for themselves when in walks the former owners, the Israelites, ready to reclaim their land and if the squatters didn’t like it, the Jews had the power of the Persian Empire to back them up. So these foreigners carried on a war of attrition, sort of like today in Israel. In 1948 Israel was declared a nation and allowed to reclaim their homeland, only it was already occupied. Not that the Jews kicked out the occupiers, they were willing to share the land with them, it is just the occupiers like in Haggai did not want them there to begin with and would not share. So while the Jews were off building their temple these foreigners would destroy their crops. While they were rebuilding the walls they would invade their homes and steal from them. More and more the work on the temple would be delayed while the Jews were off protecting their land and homes until they were not working on the temple at all. They were too preoccupied with just surviving and making it through each day to be bothered with secondary matters like rebuilding the house of God. It only makes sense, your first responsibility is to your family, home and matters of God come secondary, like building His temple. Yet to God that was primary.
As a result God allowed them to sow much ground but the invaders destroyed much of their crops so they had little to eat. They had enough livestock and resources to make their clothing but that was also stolen. They earned wages but all their wages went to just protect themselves and survive that they never had enough to really enjoy them. The more they stood up to their enemies at the neglect of building the temple the more their enemies took from them until no matter how much they had they ended up with very little.
Why did God want a temple in the first place? Is God that egotistical that he is demanding that we neglect our families and our responsibilities just to build Him an earthly building? Is God telling us that when our church starts a building program we give to that before taking care of your own home and family? Not only that but his is the reason you are in financial difficulty because you did not give enough tithes to build your church building or more commonly give enough money to pay the maintenance of that building? I mean verse 6 is enough to scare anybody into tithing. Yet, does not God demand that we tithe out of love and not fear? Does He have to threaten us into tithing? Should we not give out of a heart of love?
I think the answer is in verse 8: “Go up to the mountain and bring wood.” Good grief, not only does God expect His people to abandon their homes in lieu of building His temple but they have to climb up the mountains to get their wood as if the trees in the valley were not good enough.
I had a guy on my bus the other day who said he just did not bother to read the Old Testament because he could not understand it. So many things did not make sense to him. I agree, so many things do not make sense to me and the reason is that I live in a complex society. We are such a precision, mathematical, technical society that we can only process one complicated thing at a time. For instance, just driving a car requires our complete attention to the operation of that complex piece of machinery. In ancient times riding a camel did not require attention to speed limits, other camels that might collide with you, staying on a narrow road etc. People in ancient time were just as smart as we are today only they did not have to process so much information to accomplish one task, but they still had sharp minds and they could process a lot of information. Thus in the Semitic mind, it was not unusual to read two three messages in the use of just one word.
For instance when God says “Go to the mountain” that could carry a number of messages other than just actually going to a mountain. The word mountain in Hebrew is harar. You put that into a feminine form harah and you have the word for a pregnant woman. Not because she is as big as a mountain, but it was felt that when on the top of a mountain you are closer to God and a pregnant woman was believed to be very close to God to bear a living child. With an attitude like that abortion was not an issue. One went to the mountains to draw close to God. Samson Hirsch the great Jewish linguist traces the word harar mountain to be a break in the continuity of the earth. Hence the word mountain has the idea of breaking the continuity. You go to the mountains to break away from you normal routine in life. I attended a prayer meeting this morning with a group of men. One man related how he starts his day off really go with God but as the problems and cares of his job takes over he forgets about God and things just go crazy. It is during this time that you must harar, break the continuity of your life and get back with God.
The people were told to go to the mountain to retrieve wood, not trees or stones just wood. The word wood in Hebrew is ‘aets which means firmness as wood creates a firmness in buildings. It also bears fruit which gives pleasure and life. Thus we find that ‘aets is also used in extra Biblical literature for life and pleasure.
I asked a friend why God demanded that the people build the temple before they even cared for their own needs and she suggest that it was to build a community first, work together in unity. When the people went home to protect their own interest at the cost of not supporting the work to build the temple, they became isolated. Yet there is strength in numbers and going to the mountain to retrieve wood would require the work of the entire community and it is there that they not only find ‘aets (wood) but also the other renderings of ‘aets (concentration on God and happiness).
You see, the message of Haggai is not to drop everything to give God an earthly building, but to not become so focused on yourselves and your own little world and cares of the day that you stop thinking of God and others. It is true, we need to be a village of believers to raise the young believers (for the sake of you Hillary fans), we need to take our focus away from ourselves, let God handle those little things and keep our minds stayed on Him. Then with the other believers we will have strength. The temple was not to feed God’s ego, God didn’t need the temple, His people did, it was to unify His people and thereby create strength so that when they sow much, they will have much, they will eat and drink enough and will have enough warm clothes and their wages will not fall through holes in bags because they are watching out for each other, they have each other’s backs. The church exist today not to feed God’s ego but to create a unity and fellowship of believers so there is a family out there to watch our backs.
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