Building God’s House

Haggai 1:3-7

3 Then the word of the Lord came through the prophet Haggai: 4 “Is it a time for you yourselves to be living in your paneled houses, while this house remains a ruin?”

5 Now this is what the Lord Almighty says: “Give careful thoughtto your ways. 6 You have planted much, but harvested little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it.”

7 This is what the Lord Almighty says: “Give careful thought to your ways. 8 Go up into the mountains and bring down timber and build my house, so that I may take pleasure in it and be honored,” says the Lord. 9 “You expected much, but see, it turned out to be little. What you brought home, I blew away. Why?” declares the Lord Almighty. “Because of my house, which remains a ruin, while each of you is busy with your own house. 10 Therefore, because of you the heavens have withheld their dew and the earth its crops. 11 I called for a drought on the fields and the mountains, on the grain, the new wine, the olive oil and everything else the ground produces, on people and livestock, and on all the labor of your hands.”

This past week, we looked at the message of Haggai with VCRC Youth Group. Haggai preached at a time when Israel had returned from their exile in Babylon. As soon as Israel returned, they began setting up their own houses, eating big, and living their best lives. God responds, “What about my house?”

My wife and I just bought a house. Houses are expensive…It’s no wonder. Because we value our houses a lot. To us, it’s not just a house, it’s a home. Home is where we center our lives; the place we go to for rest and recovery. Home is where we draw much of our satisfaction from. But reflect for a minute on the degree we center our lives on our homes. In the Modern West, our homes have become more atomized and isolated from community than ever. Infrastructure used to be designed and built around a temple or church. And if each of our homes are our centers, we lack a united source of satisfaction.

The message of Haggai is that we have a home, a center, greater than our own homes. This is God’s house, his temple where he dwells in the midst of his people.

But what exactly should this be for Christians today? How do we act on the message of Haggai?

Ephesians 2:19-22

19 Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household (oikeios), 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. 21 In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. 22 And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

We have a temple. It’s not our church building. If that were the case, then there would be millions of temples. No, instead, the temple is located in Christ (Matt. 12:6). And since Christ has united himself to the church, the church is the temple of God, Christ’s own body (1 Cor. 12). It’s not just a building, a house, but a household (oikeios), a family.

Fundamentally, the church is to be the center of our lives, our new family made of fellow citizens of the kingdom. So let’s ask ourselves if we live this out. Let’s be challenged by Haggai to have our primary focus centered on building up the house of God. That’s why Paul uses house-building language (oikodoméō) in 1 Thessalonians.

1 Thessalonians 5:11

“Encourage one another, and build each other up (oikodomete).”

Taking this message to heart means we have our priorities straight. The gospel calls us to one family. When we declare Jesus as Lord, we declare one another as brothers and sisters. And our number one job is to live as if this is true; as if we belong to one household. It’s not that our blood relatives aren’t important. The Bible is clear we are supposed to care for our own. However, discipleship means we make building each other up into the household of God our one priority. By doing this, we communicate God’s presence to the rest of the world just as the temple building was supposed to in Haggai’s day.

And so that leaves us with a few key questions. What do we prioritize more? God’s house or our own? Our family legacy or the eternal reign of Christ in the Church? In reality, these don’t necessarily have to be mutually exclusive. Our homes can be places where the temple of God gathers for fellowship among brothers and sisters. In this way, Christ and his body remain the center of our lives. This is what the message of the prophet Haggai and the whole New Testament leaves us to ponder: how to build our lives so that God’s presence would be known to the nations.

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Reflections of a Family

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Peace with a Purpose