A Look Back

Looking Back on a New Year Through Haggai

Open your Bibles please to Haggai chapter 1. Just a couple of prophets back from Matthew in the New Testament. Haggai chapter 1. We'll look at verses 1 through 11 in a moment. On this January 1st, the first day of the year 2023.

A year where we traditionally often look back on the year past and make what we call resolutions to correct things from the year past for the year ahead. You know January is named for the Roman god Janus.

And Janus was always pictured as having a mask with two faces. It was also used in theaters where they're looking in opposite directions. And that's sort of what we do in January. We have nothing to do with that Roman pagan god of course.

But we look back and say what happened last year? How did things go for me? Did I accomplish my plans? Did I do well? And then we look forward to how we might correct things. We make resolutions. Well this morning from Haggai chapter 1 and the first 11 verses, I hope to give you a way to frame things as you look to the past year.

Now the companion message to this where we look forward is going to be this afternoon. And that would be from Zechariah who was Haggai's companion as a prophet as we'll see in a few moments. But for this morning from Haggai 1, 1 through 11, we're going to learn to look back and to look back properly and godly and in a biblical manner.

Are you anxious for that? Are you prepared to hear that word of God? To have that framework for looking back that would meet with God's scripture? We'll stand as I read God's word. Haggai chapter 1, verses 1 through 11.

In the second year of Darius the king, in the sixth month, on the first day of the month, the word of the Lord came by the hand of Haggai the prophet to Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua, the son of Jehoshadak, the high priest.

Thus says the Lord of hosts. These people say the time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the Lord. Then the word of the Lord came by the hand of Haggai the prophet. Is it time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses while this house lies in ruins?

Now therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts, consider your ways. 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. Thus says the Lord of hosts. Consider your ways. Go up to the hills and bring wood and build the house that I may take pleasure in it and that I may be glorified, 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.

Therefore, the heavens above you have withheld the dew, and the earth has withheld its produce. And I have called for a drought on the land and the hills, on the grain, the new wine, the oil, and what the ground brings forth on man and beast and on all their labors.

God bless the reading. And now the proclamation of his word. Please be seated. Let me pray, and then we will look to this text. Our Heavenly Father, thank you again for bringing us together and for your word and for your spirit.

I pray that you would open our eyes to the wonderful truths of your word, that it would be proclaimed clearly and understandably, that you, Father, by your spirit, would bring this word home to hearts, and that we would be changed thereby.

Father, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable and pleasing to you, Lord, and edifying and useful to those who hear. And may Jesus Christ receive the praise and the glory.

In his name we pray. Amen. So how do we frame things as we look back on 2023? Because I would guess that all of us have done that because it's just sort of a cultural thing. It's a habit. It's a good thing.

There's a marker we have. It's this first day of the year. In many senses, it's no different than yesterday, though we have sunshine right now, and it was raining yesterday, so it's different in that sense.

But in all substance, today's really not that much different from the last day of 2022, any more than it's going to be much different from the second day of 2023. But it is a day. It's a marker, a line in the sand, if you will.

And how many of us look back on last year and say, well, this has to be corrected? I said in 2021 and that last day I was going to start something, and I look back at 2022 and I didn't. Now in 2023 I'm going to.

We make these resolutions. How many of us do that? I imagine we all at some level, some more formally than others, do that. Some of us just make a note in our minds and we forget it by the second. Others of us make a note on paper and we lose it in a month.

Others make notes in our keep notes on our smartphones, and we've got it so we can ignore it for six or seven or eight months. But we do make those resolutions. We look back and we say, I want to correct.

I want to pick up those habits, those things that I was going to do and were going to be good for me. Haggai chapter 1, verse 1 through 11, which I read, might help us frame the way to look back. So we can look back in a way that would bring us closer to Christ's image, that we look back in a biblical way.

God Knows the Hardships of His People

Haggai 1, 1 through 11 is the prophet's first oracle in this book, and he's speaking to a people who are in very hard straits. I mean, they had been exiles in Babylon. They've been forced into that land after Nebuchadnezzar's army had sacked the temple and brought them from Judah to his land, to Babylon, as captives.

Not much longer after that, Persia conquered Babylon. That was under King Cyrus, and this King Cyrus, king of Persia, soon decreed that they could return and build the new temple for Yahweh. And you heard that in the preaching about this temple, this house that lies in ruins.

It was ruined by Nebuchadnezzar about 70 years before they were able to return under Cyrus, who conquered Babylon. That's all the backgrounds, all the history we're going to get. We're not going to complicate it with all the dates that are intertwined in all that.

But note that this oracle, this first oracle from this prophet, confirms the harsh conditions. It's God who knows what they went through. As they look back on this year, or as I should say better, as Haggai, speaking for the Lord, turns them back to the past and they look that way, the harsh conditions they live under are fully known by God.

He tells them, I know how hard it's been. I know what's going on with you. And Haggai does something very important. And it's very important for us to hear this. Haggai tells them the cause of their suffering.

Why were conditions so hard for them? Well, I read it to you. The Lord blew away the fruit of their labors. It was the Lord God who commanded the clouds to keep going and keep the rain locked up as they sailed past Israel.

And he tells them why he did this. Why did he do this? As we look back on 2022, as I'm sure many of us have, and try to look forward in that context to 2023, we need to hear this word. They had put their own needs ahead of their commitments to the Lord.

They had put their own needs ahead of their commitments to the Lord. They turned back on the Lord and they looked to their own needs first. They worshiped God. They did worship God. They worshiped the Yahweh, who is the subject here in this book.

But you would never know it if you saw how their priorities played out in their lives. While the Lord's house sat in ruins, their homes were made comfortable, some of them even pleasant. Cyrus's commission to build was ignored.

He released them and he said, anyone who wants to build this house, you may go. So this king, under whose control they were, let them go, released them for that one purpose, to build the house of the Lord.

And worse yet, worse than ignoring that, the Lord's entire purpose in having effected their return was neglected. You can read at the end of 2 Chronicles 36, in the beginning of Ezra's book, that it was the Lord God who stirred that pagan king's heart to release them in the first place.

All that set aside. Well, may this message this morning help us to look back on 2022 with the eyes of faith and give us repentance for our misaligned priorities and give us renewed vigor for 2023. Well, let's look back and analyze things correctly, because the first thing to do when you look back is to analyze things correctly.

If there's a problem, how do you solve the problem except by knowing the cause? I speak to a room full of many engineers and scientists, and so this sort of discussion should be very much in your line.

That you look for causes of things when a program doesn't work or a project doesn't go the way it's supposed to. You don't just jump in and start fixing things, do you? No, you look back and you find the cause of the result that wasn't good.

So we need to look back and analyze things correctly. This is what Haggai gets these people to do. Stop complaining. Stop trying to fix things. First, let's find the reason things are as they are. Verse 5, he says, Consider your ways.

Consider your ways. In Hebrew, it's something like put to your heart. In other words, put to your inner man. Bring to your spirit, to that deepest part of yourself. Put to your heart the path you are on.

Look rationally. Look honestly at your circumstance. So what was their situation? What was this circumstance that they were in? Verse 6, You have sown much, but harvested little. They're working their tails off in the field, and there's just not much coming up.

I mean, have you ever worked hard and made all the right moves and choices and got nothing from it? That happens to me all the time at home, especially when I work on electrical things. I always find I'm grabbing the wrong wire, I turn the wrong breaker off, and I get warned about that.

And I'll just work so hard, and I find out that I didn't even have the right tool in my hand. But I'm exhausted, so I have to do it the next day. Have you ever worked hard like that and gotten nothing from it?

Well, these people knew how to farm. They knew how to sow. They knew how to reap. But like the Lord's vineyard in Isaiah 5, or the fig tree that Jesus cursed when he approached it when they looked for the harvest, what was there?

Little. Not nothing, but not enough. He goes on. He says, You eat, but you never have enough. You drink, but you never have your fill. They had food, but not enough food to stave off hunger. They sat down every night for dinner.

They ate, and then what happened? They went to bed hungry. Not starving, but not satisfied. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm, like the people we see so often in the streets. Every stitch of clothing they had was on their person, but it wasn't enough to protect them from the cold, from the rain, from the heat, or anything else.

They were in tatters. And he who earns wages does so to put them into a bag with holes in it. It could be inflation. It could be other kinds of economic distress. Most likely it was the taxes, which, like in the Romans, the day of the New Testament, Jesus' day in the first century.

Roman taxes were very high. You remember Matthew was a tax collector. Persia, like Rome, nothing could bring down their wrath more quickly or more brutally than tardy taxes. So they'd work, and they'd go into commerce, and where would it go?

A bag with holes in it. Where did it drop? On the ground? No, it dropped and went off to Persia. They worked, they sold, they earned, but after taxes, after inflation, after living, the net was pretty paltry.

So God knows the situation they were in, just as he knows what we're in. Be it good or bad, know this, that God knows. God is aware. More than aware, we will see in a moment, God is sovereign. He's not just watching and saying, okay, I know what's happening.

He's sovereign over it. We'll get involved in that in a moment. But God knows. God looks at the whole world, and most especially his church, that his son Jesus Christ bought on the cross, and knows our situation.

He knows what's going on. Well, they didn't need a prophet from God to tell them that things were tough. I mean, they knew that. They were living it. And most of us, especially the engineers and the scientists among us, are pretty good at assessing things, aren't we?

And we do so technically. We do so factually, objectively, logically, right? We put together a metric that will help us to solve the problem or get to where we want to go. But you can't solve the problem if you don't know the cause.

It's not why we go to doctors. I feel bad. I'm sick. Something's going on. What's wrong with you? I don't know. I'm going to go to Harvard Medical School. They're going to tell me what the cause is. Then they're going to fix it for me.

If you have cancer, you don't take aspirin. That's not the cause. You don't have a headache, and that's not what's causing you to feel bad. You have something deeper. You have to know the cause before you can fix the problem.

What was the cause of their problems? Why was the harvest so poor? Why was their food so little? Why were their clothes in tatters and their wallets full of holes? What was it? What was their priorities?

Misplaced Priorities and Broken Commitments

Priorities, verses 2 through 4. You can look at those again. Thus says the Lord of hosts. These people say the time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the Lord. Let's stop for a moment and remember.

Now, we didn't go into all the context. It would take too long, but just remember that the Lord moved Cyrus' heart and gave them a commission to build the house of the Lord. It was God's doing that they were released from exile.

And so when they took up that commission, which included much Persian wealth from the personal treasury of the king, and what was returned to them was all the implements from the temple that Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, whom Cyrus had conquered, Cyrus gave it all back to them so the temple could be restored.

They'd have the chalices. They'd have the altar. They'd have everything they need. So they took all this, they took that commission, and then didn't do it. So when he says the time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the Lord, remember that this people, as it were, signed a contract.

Yes, released from Persia or Babylon. Per the Lord's special working in that king, we signed this agreement that we will go and take advantage of all that by building the house of the Lord. But they said the time has not yet come.

Then the word, verse 3,. Then the word of the Lord came by the hand of Haggai the prophet. Is it time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses while this house lies in ruins? Well, that needs but little explanation.

What is the problem here? Well, there's two errors. There's two real causes. First, they'd consider their own comforts in their homes as more important than the Lord's honor. Second, they turned their back on the commission they had, what they had promised they would do.

They said, yes, we'll build, but yes didn't quite mean yes. Remember what Jesus said about yes and no. What is yes? Yes is not very complicated, is it? It means yes, affirmative. It's a handshake. Let your yes be yes.

Do what you agreed to do. Let your no be no. Don't do what you agreed not to do. No is no more complicated than yes. And they said, yes, we will. And then they didn't. Sometimes it's hard to keep those commitments we make.

But you know, God cares about the integrity of His people. He cares about your integrity. He cares that when you say you will do something, when you make a commitment, when you put your word on the line, which is really who?

It's Christ's word that you're bringing because Christ is in you and Christ brought you on the cross, and you say yes, that it means yes, and God cares about this, just as He did then with this people.

He cared that they said they would do it. He cared that they took Him up on His offer that He made through Cyrus to send them back. We have to remember as we go through life, as we look forward to 2023, that God doesn't just know.

He's deeply concerned with the integrity of His people. And they said, yes, we will build. We like getting out of Babylon. We don't want to be around these pagans anymore. We like traveling with Ezra and Nehemiah.

You read about that in those books and seeing all the gold of the temple restored, but hammer and nail? Come on. I was only kidding. God doesn't take either of these offenses lightly. Offense against Cyrus, who let them go for this purpose, and offense against Him, who moves Cyrus to do that.

God takes neither of these realms of offense lightly. When He worked in the heart of the king to the peace and the good of His people, it was not something just to be ignored. When He works in the heart of a brother or sister, now this applies to us.

When He works in the heart of a brother or sister, for example, to apologize for something, it's not something to be taken lightly. We have to remember that if something like that happens, if a brother or sister comes to us with a need for prayer, most especially to resolve an offense, what does Jesus Christ say?

It's the Spirit of God that is making this move. It's God who has done this, and we need to see it that way. These people would not remember or intentionally forgot that it was God by His Spirit who got them where they were.

You know, I've had the intervening cases where a person, I believe stirred by the Lord, went to a brother they'd offended, and they were rebuffed by that brother because they went and said, I need to apologize to you for something.

And the person said back, Oh, no, I don't want an apology. I need a repentance because I'm biblical. I must have repentance. Well, that's what I'm doing. No, but you said apologize. And then this battle of words, 1 Timothy 6, 4, 2 Timothy 2, 14, a waste of time, controversy about words.

But what was he really doing? He was not even acknowledging the possibility that it was God who worked in this brother and brought him to Him and got worried about words. I apologize rather than repent because people was doing much the same thing, and we need to take that to heart.

And we need to recognize when the Lord is moving in this way, not just in matters of repentance and reconciling offenses, but God truly works amongst His people. If a stranger came in here, they should be able to leave saying, God is truly among this people.

And why? Because of the words of our mouths, because of the work of God that He did in our hearts that we acknowledge and that we remember and that God has commissioned us to be a certain ethical and can I even say polite people to one another.

Now they didn't need a prophet to tell them that the times were tough, but they did need God to get them like a Janice, like us on New Year's Day to look back and assess things accurately and spiritually and assess things from the Lord's perspective.

So how was 2022? How would you personally assess the year that went by? Would you look back and see it through God's eyes? I wonder how many of us were near to His grace, but blind to its power. That's Hebrews 6, 4.

These people were near to His grace, goodness. They were productive. They were valuable to Babylon and later to Persia, but read the book of Daniel and see how valuable and see how much good they did for that nation.

To be released from there was not a light thing. That was a grace of God. To have all the implements of the temple released with them so that they could worship properly, that's the grace of God. To be so near the grace of God and yet immune to its power, not even recognizing God who's working.

Their dire straits were the direct result of the misaligned priorities. They put the cares of the world before the things of God and so they were an early picture, if you will, of the seeds that Jesus spoke about, the seed that goes into the heart and it grows very quickly.

It grows joyfully. Do you remember that in the parable of the seeds? And that's the one that happens when things get hard, the one who falls away when the cares and the trials of this world are allowed to overtake it.

Did you have a good year last year? How was last year? I want to suggest to you that if you had a good year, if your portfolio was doing well, your job's secure, your relationship's solid, just everything went wonderfully, well, thank God.

Praise God for that. But open yourself up to the possibility that that might put you in a more dangerous situation than you ever imagined because that good year might just make you complacent. That good year might just make you think, look what I've done.

Boy, my metrics sure worked out well. My technical and logical plans really have done well and I'm going to give my, whoop, not me. I'm going to give it to God. But that's an afterthought. It could be one of the most dangerous situations you would be in.

Well, they still needed to know from Haggai why nothing was going right for them. If you've had a tough year, why? If your portfolio went the wrong way, if your relationships have faltered, if things just haven't worked out, why?

I think Haggai 1, 1 through 11, as he talks to his people, helps us. Their misaligned priorities were clear enough, but what had that to do with poor crops and poor nutrition and poor clothing and a poor economy?

Where were their hard-earned benefits? We'll look again at verse 9 as God acknowledges what was happening, but listen to what he says about it. You look for much, which is logical, isn't it? They were good farmers.

They knew how to do carpentry. They knew how to do commerce. They made all the right moves. They had the right metric. Their plans were good. Their plans were solid. The trajectory was correct. You look for much.

Why did they look for much? Because much should have been expected from their good, well-laid plans. And behold, it came to little. And when you brought it home, I blew it away. Unabashedly takes full credit.

When you brought it home, whatever it was you thought you were going to have, all these benefits that you planned for and you metricized, if you will, 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.

Therefore, that's why. Here's the reason things didn't go well. The heavens above you have withheld the dew. It's like, wait a second. We knew that. We're down here. We knew there's no rain. Is this telling us anything?

And the earth has withheld its produce, right, because there's no rain. These farmers can figure that out. But why? Why? Logic and experience would tell them, no rain, no crop. I work hard. Little comes up because no rain's coming down.

We can figure that out, even if you're a lousy gardener like me. Why? And I called for a drought on the land and the hills, on the grain, the new wine, the oil, everything that you would sell to keep your wallet full so that the holes would not be, the money going in would keep up with what's going out, the oil, and the things that the ground brings forth on man and beast and on all their labors.

As well as their plans were laid out as hard and properly as they worked, why were things not working? God says. Oh, it was me. Unabashedly. Without apology. I called for the drought. He takes full credit for having blessed them.

Hear my word. He takes full credit for having blessed you with drought and malnutrition, with rags and economic distress. Why? So you will look back and see it through God's eyes if it's been a tough year for you.

You'll look back and you'll say, God has done this. He's blessed me with these hard things. Just as Haggai is telling me he's blessed them with those hard things. Why? So you'll see things logically. See things clearly.

Most importantly, see things scripturally. Through God's eyes. Now we're not going to say that God will surely give ease of life to his children who do make him their top priority. We're going to sit down.

We're going to get on our laptops. We're going to make up a spreadsheet. We're going to list out everything we're trying to do in 2023. And we're going to be sure we wrote God's name up on top. God, Jesus Christ, follow the Holy Spirit, and so forth.

I'm not saying when you do that, and even if you follow it consistently, that that means that God is now committed to blessing you with all ease and looking at the rest of your metrics and saying, okay, because he put me here, I'm going to make all these things happen.

We're not saying that. God's our top priority regardless of how he works, how he blesses us, whether he's blessing you with plenty or blessing you with some harder things. God is not number one. God is everything.

He's not our top priority. He's our all. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your strength, and all your might. Jesus says all your mind. Everything you are is to emanate from God.

When things don't go according to our plans, when the metrics, the data points, all point to success and we have failure or results less than expected, what do we do? What do my engineers and scientists do?

We gather up more data points, don't you? You analyze them by the metric. You say, okay, well, this is the way I was going to analyze it and here's what happened. Therefore, I've got to change the formula over here a little bit.

I've got to tweak it. We feed all this into our algorithms. We punch it into our smartphone. We get spewed out a number and we compare that to our expectations, reassess our metrics, carefully go over our regression analyses, realign our trajectory and away we go into 2023.

Hallelujah. Happy New Year. Now, here's God's metric. Because of my house, which lies in ruins, while each of you busies himself with his own house. Now, you don't earn God's favor by working on his house.

You have God's favor because of Jesus Christ, he in whom God is well pleased. But Jesus said, whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me and he who loves me will be loved by my father and I will love him and manifest myself to him.

So why does God love you? Because of Jesus Christ. And where'd you earn God's love? You didn't. Christ and Christ only earned it. So we're not going to put God on the hot seat to do anything. So we don't earn his favor by putting him first, nor does that make us really fit for salvation.

That's what Jesus did on the cross. You know, as much as I admire people who can plan well and then stick to the plan, what's really behind the success or the failure? Is it our metrics? Or is it God?

Clearly, it's God. He brought the hardships. He blessed you with hardships if it's been a hard year for you. And it's he who can reverse them. He brought the bounty and it is he who can bless you by blowing it away.

You remember Jesus' parable of the talents? It was in the New Testament reading this morning. One man got five, one man got two, another got a paltry single talent. The rich man pleased the Lord by gaining another five.

The middle class guy also doubled what Christ had given him and both got the same commendation. Well done, good and faithful servant. Well, wait. I just gave you five. He only gave you two more. Don't I get a better?

No. For both. Well done, good and faithful servant. It wasn't the money. It wasn't the money. Without delving in totally into this parable, one lesson in it is the same as we have in Haggai. Are our roofs secure while the Lord's house leaks?

This man went and buried it. He made himself secure. He was sure when this harsh master came back, he was going to give him what is his. He wasn't looking at the Lord's priorities. He wasn't looking at what the Lord gave him the talents to do.

Are our roofs secure while the Lord's house isn't leaking? And we don't have a temple of brick and wood. There's a wonderful building we have here. Comfortable. A few years ago, we got the air conditioning completely replaced so it's warm today.

And in July, we have every reason to believe it's going to be cool when we turn on the air conditioner. It's a little noisy, a little hard to talk over, but we're pretty comfortable, folks. But this is not the temple.

This is our church. This is a building. This is a property. This is an asset. Where's the temple of God? Where's this temple to which we need to put our priorities and our work and our efforts? We are the temple.

The Apostle Paul says, do you not know that you are the temple of the living God? He's speaking to the church corporate and to each of you individually. The temple of the living God. So we can spiritualize that text a little bit and ask whether the things of God have been our priority or the things of ourselves.

Have you taken care to not forsake the assembling together of ourselves? That's Hebrews 10, 25. Have you been building your own estate and ignoring God's? Listen, Ephesians 2, Ephesians 2, verses 11 to 22, likens us to a building because we're being built up into a dwelling place for God.

In Christ, you're being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. Ephesians 4, 29 goes on to say that when we speak to one another, we either are tearing down this place or we're building it up.

You're either working to destroy or you're working to build. It says that when we speak to one another, if we tear down, if the eye comes before Christ, if our priorities are for ourselves and getting our point across and our agenda and for somebody to say that you are correct, you're tearing down or we can build up.

Words that are good and necessary for edification to build up this temple of God. Jude 20 says, but you, beloved, building yourselves up in the most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God.

That's what builds up the temple. That's what puts our priority on Christ. That's what shows that God's honor is most important to us because we're building up this temple. We're building up this house of God.

We're building up individually through prayer, through attendance to the preaching, through personal devotions, through time spent in reading the scripture, looking what it says, repenting of the difference between it and us, which are many, and praying to God to grow us more and more in that image, to set aside those old ways.

We build this place up, not with hammer and nails, but with words, with prayers that edify, that build up the others. No less than the Jews in Haggai's days, we have a building that demands our attention and priorities.

Not a roof that leaks, but a brother who needs encouragement. Not a wall that needs paint, but a sister who needs prayer. A member who should hear words that would propel him on his right course, or maybe one who needs to hear rebuke that gets him on that right course and that better trajectory.

Personal Application for 2022 and 2023

2022. Has it been a year of success or a year of hardship? I don't mean the hardship that the whole world suffered. We all were affected. The entire planet was affected by COVID. All of us are being affected by inflation right now.

I remember a few weeks ago when gas was just over $6 a gallon and I had to fill up my truck. My old 1995 pickup truck that runs on premium and has this huge gas tank. I drove home. I think I told my wife, but I was at least thinking it.