Focus passages: Ezra 1-6, Haggai, and Zechariah
We start, but don’t finish. How many half-finished projects do you have around the house? Maybe there is a sewing project that was supposed to be done for last Christmas. Maybe there is a yard project that is hoping to be done next spring or summer. We all have them. We started something and just didn’t finish it. Why is that churches have the same problem? We say that the parking lot needs to be fixed, but just never get around to it. We say that someone needs to organize Sunday servants, but no one ever does. Churches today are not the only ones that have half-finished projects. As the people of God came back from Babylon, the temple needed to be rebuilt and the project got bogged down for fifteen years.
537 BC They started, but then they stopped Ezra 4:24 The exiles return from Babylon to Judea and after a short time, they begin to rebuild the altar and the foundations of the temple. Yet, the people around them did not want God or a rebuilt Jerusalem in their midst. They wanted the Jewish people to go back to wherever they came from. Rather than fighting for what they thought was important, the people just gave up. They had a letter from King Cyrus that they could build a temple, but they found it too hard and started doing other things.
520 BC You forgot God as you cared for your own needs Haggai 1:4 Fast forward about fifteen years. God sends two prophets named Haggai and Zechariah to the people to lecture them and give them hope. God is tired of waiting and knows that the people will never become a Jewish nation if they don’t start putting God first. The people have paneled homes, that is finished homes that are warm and snug. God’s house is still a pile of rubble. It is past time to get busy.
520 BC Putting God second has given you less Haggai 1: 6 What the people have failed to notice is that putting God second or twenty second in their life has had a negative impact on their lives. They work hard to harvest or pay the bills and they never have enough. They are never warm in their fancy clothes or paneled homes. The prophet reminds them that their priorities are wrong and that they have taken away the great advantage that they should have compared to their neighbors.
520 BC God fulfills His promises Ezra 5:5 The messages of the prophets spurred on the people and the work began again. Immediately the workers again faced opposition from the nations around them. Yet they did not stop working, but continued to build the temple. After four years, the temple was rebuilt in Jerusalem and the people celebrated the dedication of the temple. God was now at the center of the kingdom because the people trusted the Lord to remove the obstacles.
Do we see the value in ministry? The people let the building of the temple slide because it just didn’t seem important. It was more important for them to have warm homes and fields full of grain. From the earth’s perspective that would make sense. From God’s big picture, we see that it is short sighted. I see that the stress people feel and many of the problems they face come directly because God gets put last. They expect him to fix their lives and make things easy while they pursue happiness and prosperity outside of God. It doesn’t work. God won’t fix lives we don’t give Him. Even more important is whether we include God in our plans. How many ministries have not been undertaken or have stopped because we didn’t think that we had the money or the people to do them? If the church would spend as much time asking God for help and for direction as we do in making excuses or in wringing our hands, the church could do the impossible.
No comments:
Post a Comment