Haggai 1:1-11 Consider Your Ways

And good morning, welcome to Recast Church. I'm Don Felsick, I'm the lead pastor here, and I'm really glad to be back after a couple of weeks of summer vacation. Actually, it's been a little sketchy. Those of you that have been attending here regularly notice that I've been out for, I think, three of five weeks recently, but I'm eager to be back here.

I really do feel a sense of belonging here, like this is where I should be. And whenever I'm away, I get a chance to visit other churches, and I always miss you guys. I really miss Dave when I'm away, and so I just really appreciate you guys, and I'm just glad to be back.

Some of you may be curious about noticing that we've shifted gears a little bit here this morning, and we're gonna be shifting gears for the month of August, so it might be curious to you. Wait, Don, weren't we in 1 Corinthians?

And then all of a sudden, whiplash, we're gonna be talking about the Old Testament book of Haggai, however you pronounce that. I say Haggai usually, and then I've been corrected a couple of times, and here we are, Haggai.

And I was told by somebody this week, if you just say it with confidence, nobody questions you except when they do, so there's that, but Haggai. And we're gonna be in that for the next four weeks. There's a rhyme to that.

There's a reason for that. You might go like, Don, 1 Corinthians, I was enjoying that series. I wanna keep going. We are gonna pick that back up in September, but over the next four weeks, we have all of the littles with us, kindergarten through fifth grade, are in here with us to give those teachers a break back there, just kinda take the month of August, let the kids be in here and worship together with us as we kinda march toward the busyness of September and all of that, even going to two services in September.

But the content, if you wanna take a moment sometime this week and read 1 Corinthians 6 and 7, that's where we are in the book. That was like, whoa, wait a minute. We wanna talk about that with everybody in here?

I don't think so, so we're gonna do Haggai. And if you read that, you'll actually be thankful after the fact, so maybe you're not so much right now and then go back and read that and go like, oh, that would've been kinda rough to talk about with kindergarten through fifth grade in here with us.

But to be honest, Mike, I've got a pretty strong commitment, and I think those of you that have been around for a while, those of you who know me more personally, I've got a really strong commitment to the 66 books of the Bible as God's holy word, and that makes me comfortable just grabbing a book and saying, let's go through this one next, and especially if it fits.

I was with a pastor friend this past, a couple weeks ago, and I said, oh man, I've got this conundrum. I've got all the kids in there, 1 Corinthians 6. It's gonna be a bit rough. I've got four weeks that I need to do something with.

And he said, well, I did a series in Haggai, and it only took me four weeks. It's two chapters, and I said, oh, let me try that. I didn't realize how much it could potentially come off in the wrong direction as a church that's considering expanding our facility a little bit.

We are at a point in our church history where tonight we're gonna talk a little bit about expansion plans, going to two services in September, all of that kind of stuff, and the goal of eventually building, maybe knocking this wall out and expanding out that way, adding some classroom space.

And so it could look like a book about the building of the temple could kind of be misunderstood as that's what I'm trying to do. So I wanna be clear about two things this morning as I kind of introduce this book to us.

The first is that I didn't pick this passage in order to spiritualize its content and make it all about expanding our facility, despite the fact that we do indeed hope to expand our facility, and many pastors will use Haggai as a church-building, church-expanding project kind of book, but that leads into the second thing I wanna make clear to us, and it's even more important.

This text is not written so that pastors have a passage to preach when they're hoping to expand the facility. The theme of our text and the theme of this book is about realigning our priorities toward the worship of God.

Full stop, that's what we're gonna be talking about, the realigning of our priorities toward the worship of God. It's not a passage that's merely about giving or merely about building, this is a passage about considering the place that God has in our day-to-day lives, not just here in the gathering, but in the way that we live and move and do the things that we do, worship being more than singing songs, more than just the things that we do here on Sunday morning, but worship being the everything of our lives given over to God.

So the setting for our text is the people of God living in opulence while neglecting the central worship of God, and they're experiencing misery while having their material needs met. Let me say that again, they're experiencing misery while having all of their material needs met.

And the fundamental call of this text will ring out loud and clear, to us as God's people, consider your ways, that's the title of the message this morning, consider your ways. Peace and joy and gladness are found in a life of seeking the pleasure and glory of God.

The life that is seeking its own pleasure and its own glory is a small and insular life of dissatisfaction and constant hungering for more and more, but it is as we seek His glory, as we seek His pleasure, as we live for that which is more than us, that's where joy and gladness and thankfulness and peace and hope and purpose begin to settle on our lives.

And so our text this morning is a very contemporary message considering it was written a bit over 2 ,500 years ago. We know very well, and actually it's very refined, those who do numbers like I don't, those who are able to kind of delineate between the solar calendar and the lunar calendar and study history and dates and documents and all of that stuff, we can get this really, really down to a pretty precise date like as in August 29th of 520 B .C. is when the opener of our verse 1 is here.

So let's open up to Haggai chapter 1, verse 1 through 11, and let's let the ancient text speak so clearly into our contemporary moment. He wants to talk to us here 2 ,500 years later through the prophet Haggai.

I'll give you a chance to get there. We will read this. God's holy and precious word, church. This is what he desires for us to hear this morning because this is spoken by God. Haggai 1, verse 1. 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 Jehozadak, 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 have 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 look 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 on what the ground brings forth, on man and beast and on all their labors.

Let's pray as the band comes to lead us in worship. Father, I pray that you would use this ancient document to realign our priorities. We have so many things that grab and war for our attention, for our time, for our resources, for our energy.

And I believe that many of us in this room could testify to a dissatisfaction in our hearts that we can't quite pinpoint. We can't quite tell where it's coming from, but it seems as though we have plenty to eat.

It seems as though we have warmth in the winter and cool air in the summer. We have vehicles and iPhones and family and people to reach out to if we want to. We have so many resources around us, and yet there's a dissatisfaction that grows.

Particularly in our culture, we see this, and it's as if Haggai would seek to speak, or though you would seek to speak through this ancient document to right where we live here in America in 2023. So, Father, I pray that you would press on us the thing that is most needful for our souls, which is what we're about to do in singing.

We're about to praise your name. We're about to lift you up and exalt you, and that in the exalting of you, not just in song, not just in this gathering, not just here today, certainly in those things, but in the way we drive, in the way we work, in the way we love, in the way we relate to others, Father, that in all of these things, we have the opportunity to identify you as most, you as highest, you as permeating all of these things, all of our strength, all of our energy, and everything focused to you, so that in lifting you up, we find the very purpose for which we were created.

We find joy. We find gladness. We find hope. We find help in worship to you alone who are worthy. So, Father, I pray that that would fuel us even as we have an opportunity to sing this morning, but even more so as we have an opportunity to leave this place and do all of these things for your glory and honor, all that we do, all that we are for you and you alone, in Jesus' name.

All right, go ahead and be seated, and you can reopen your Bibles or your devices to Haggai chapter 1, verses 1 through 11. If at any time during the message you need to get up and get more coffee or juice or donuts, take advantage of that.

If you already had too much coffee, the bathrooms are down the hallway on the left-hand side if you need that, too. Those are there for you, but you're not going to distract me if you need to get up at all during the message.

Our goal in the remainder of our time is going to be to hear from God, and that's what we're trying to do, not just hear my voice, but to see the things that God has said here. I'm trying to explain that, bring it into our context, and explain how this text has hit me.

And I just want to start off with a question. Do you know what it means, do you know what it means, or have you experienced what it means to have plenty of good without the good life, to have satisfactory provisions without being satisfied, to have plenty of content without contentment?

I think it's quite possible that the Spirit through Haggai wants to speak very directly to us this morning, to us here in this gathering. I want to encourage any of you who love history and enjoy backgrounds to read the history and the introduction to this book, the book of Haggai in the ESV Study Bible.

If you don't have one of those, I highly recommend it to you. We actually have copies of that out at the welcome table that anybody wants to take, you can for a suggested donation there, but if you don't have a Bible, take one of those with you today.

But I really like the introduction and what it has to say there for the different books and some of the maps and charts and stuff in there are very valuable. When I was a kid, that's what I loved, was the maps and charts.

Anybody ever kind of like when you're literally just kind of going back and forth over there? But it got me looking at the Bible, that was kind of cool. But I think sometimes history lessons, I could talk a lot about the history of Haggai.

We could almost never get to the content today by just talking and catching up with the things that have gone on that lead us to the opener of this book. But I think sometimes the history lessons can take us down rabbit trails that kind of detract from the main points of the text itself.

You see, this is indeed an ancient text and we could talk about that ancient context all day, but it's a very contemporary problem that we must get to. It's a very contemporary problem in an ancient text.

The Jews, I mean, I'll give you a little of the history, but this is gonna be a thumbnail sketch of what's going on so that you have at least the bare bones to be able to understand what's going on here in the text.

The Jews have been coming back in waves after being exiled in Babylon. There's a lot of history about how they got exiled and all of that, but God is restoring them to the land. After the temple had been destroyed, the walls were torn down around Jerusalem and the king and his family were carted off to Babylon around 586 BC.

Yeah, I just set a date and some of you just zoned out because I set a date and you're like, is this on the test? It's not gonna be a test, so don't worry about that. But 60 years has passed now since Jerusalem has been destroyed, since Judah has fallen, and Babylon has been now conquered by the Persians.

So the ones who conquered Israel have now been conquered themselves and the Persians have come down and descended on them and one of the Persian kings has issued an edict that's allowing those who were conquered by Babylon, many of those peoples, to go back and resettle their lands, go back and rebuild their cities, go back and particularly even worship their gods.

So 20 years prior to Haggai chapter one verse one, 20 years prior to this, a first wave of Jews came back into Jerusalem under a dude, you would recognize his name, you should recognize his name, it's Ezra and his compatriot Nehemiah.

Ezra, the one tasked to help rebuild the temple, Nehemiah, the one retasked to help build the walls of Jerusalem. And they had the express purpose, they were put back into the land with the express purpose of rebuilding that temple, reestablishing the worship of God there in that place and they got as far as the foundation of the temple and they stopped.

And the text here is going to give us some indication why they stopped. They got caught up in other pursuits. They found the busyness of taking care of themselves to start to get in the way. Anybody that would just raise your hand and say, I think I know where this is going, I think I know, I think I can start to see it.

The busyness of life and the pressures of taking care of numero uno are starting to get in the way of the things that God has told his people to do here in this text. Contemporary problem, how many of you would raise your hand and say, sounds like a contemporary problem to me.

It is. It might be a different scenario, might be a different situation. Obviously we're not tasked with the building of a temple, that's not our task, but the worship of God is indeed on us. So I'm summarizing a lot of history here but it's amazing that in verse one we're able to narrow down the context to the fall of 520 B .C.

That's what's going on here. This is a real historical account. Verse one references August of 520 and again when you start translating from their lunar calendar, they followed the moon, we follow the sun in our calendar, you end up with a date of August 29th referenced in verse one, August 29th of 520 B .C. before Christ was born.

And chapter two verse eight is the last date given in this book and I'll share that here at the start it's gonna be a date in December of 520 B .C. So all of this happens in the autumn of 520 B .C. Now we're reading a document that took place in a real location a bit over 2500 years ago and that's amazing.

When you think about how we're able to understand it, we're able to translate it, we're able to get it in our language and we're able to understand the very things that Haggai wrote. And here's the rough outline of what he says in our text this morning.

Rough outline if you're taking notes. The first is neglecting worship verses one through four. He's gonna define that and explain that, the neglecting of worship verses one through four. The second is a call to return to worship verses five through eight.

And the third is the consequences for neglecting worship verses nine through 11. So neglecting worship, a call to return to worship and the consequences for neglecting it. And so we'll start right here at the beginning in verse one with the neglecting of worship.

Verse one introduces us to the context. I've already kind of covered that a little bit. But Haggai has been given the word of the Lord to share with the Jewish governor of Judah and the high priest over the people.

Verse one establishes this book as revelation from God and not only does it give us the date and the context and all of that but it says this is from God. It was delivered through the prophet Haggai from his hand, given to the individuals.

Obviously then therefore a written document. But it deserves our attention and for our understanding of who God is. It's worthy of our attention because it even declares to be God's word and it has the power to transform us from the inside out.

Understanding who God is, what God says and what he desires is the purpose of this book. In verse two he jumps right into the neglect of worship on the part of his people. The title that God uses in verse two for himself, you can look at it there, thus says the Lord of hosts.

It's a significant title that God gives to himself here as he begins to talk about the neglect of his worship. It speaks directly, this title speaks directly into a tumultuous time of clashing civilizations.

Okay, well I mean civilizations but not necessarily sports. Oh that was supposed to be funny you guys but it's just everybody's like I don't get it. Okay, it's not fall yet, I don't know. Clashing civilizations, more like think Babylon has conquered Israel.

Okay, so Babylon conquers Israel. Then Babylon themselves are conquered by a northern group of people, military minded called Persia. Then Persia sweeps all the way across Israel and conquers Egypt and then Egypt is in the middle of fighting back against Persia.

All of these massive clashes of armies and God says I am the Lord of hosts. Now you're going whoa, he said that? He called himself that? No, it doesn't really rest on us the way it would have in their time and in their era where they're observing all of these cataclysmic things going on around them and who's gonna conquer us next and who's gonna own us?

He's the Lord of hosts. He is the almighty captain of the armies of heaven is what that phrase means. Lord of hosts, the captain of the armies of heaven. It's a military word, hosts. The massive armies and the legions and all of the rank and file and the cavalry and all of them are under his charge and many have even interpreted this as angel armies.

There's a contemporary song that uses that phrase in it about the God of angel armies is on our side. That's referencing, it's a translation of this phrase here. Lord of hosts. He is more powerful than Babylon.

Church, that's what he's getting at when he identifies himself here as Lord of hosts. More powerful than Babylon, more powerful than Persia, than Egypt, than China, than Russia, than the United States of America.

More powerful than any world power is our God, amen? That's to bring us encouragement right off the bat. Why worship this one? He's the Lord of hosts. He is over it all with full and supreme power. But his people have returned from exile under his grace only to neglect what the Lord of hosts has asked of them.

In Ezra 1 .3, so that you can see it with your own eyes, I think it's gonna be up here on the screen, you can jot that reference down. You don't need to turn over there, but it is helpful to see that they were given explicitly instructions to build the temple.

Ezra 1 .3, under the decree of Cyrus, the king of Persia, God told the people this. Whoever is among you of all his people, may his God be with him and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and rebuild the house of the Lord, the God of Israel.

He is the God who is in Jerusalem. This is a pagan king that God is using his voice to dictate scripture, Ezra, the book, and he's using him to say, go back to the land, rebuild the temple, and reestablish the worship of your God.

This is the instructions that were given to the people. The purpose for their restoration to the land was the reestablishment of the worship of God in Israel. Yahweh, their God, sometimes pronounced Jehovah.

What we need to understand in this context is that by putting off the building of the temple, putting that off means that they were rejecting the worship of God in the way that he had told them to worship.

He's given them instructions. It can be confusing in our minds, but you know the temple was a big deal in the Old Testament. Raise your hand if you knew that. The temple's a big deal in their understanding of worship and the things that God had given them to the covering of sin and the bringing forward of sacrifices, and when you sin, go and bring a lamb and all of that stuff that was there in the Old Testament.

I'm so glad we don't live in that old covenant now. My hands are not bloody this morning. You're not bringing your sacrifices to me, amen? I'm so glad that we don't live in that era and that time, but in this sense, he's given them instructions.

He said, go back to the worship of me and the way that I have set forth for you, and in this sense, they're neglecting of that. In this sense, it has some parallels to an increasing phenomenon of self-professed Christians in our era rejecting church.

God has told us to gather in this new covenant. He has told us to come together, in thick or thin, through difficulties, through relational strife, through hardship and pain and working and bearing with one another, but also through the joys and the gladness and the celebrating together and all of these things, God has told us to gather.

What did he tell them? He told them to bring sacrifices to the temple, a temple that is not built, a temple that is just in ruin, a temple that is just a few rocks on top of each other, the foundation barely laid, and they say to God, not now, not now.

We can worship you just fine without doing it your way. We've got this figured out. We've got the internet. We've got all kinds of ways we can worship you. We don't need the temple. We don't need to gather.

We don't need the sacrifices. We've got our own methods. We've got our own ways of worshiping you. How in the world were they worshiping God in an old covenant way for those 20 years? Ask yourself that.

Well, they weren't doing it God's way. They weren't doing it in the way that God had established for them on the old covenant. They weren't following the law. They weren't bringing any sacrifices forward.

We're good without a temple. Or today, we're good without a local body. We're good without a gathering. The returning exiles are saying, this isn't a good time to rebuild yet. They acknowledge in verse 2 that it is their responsibility.

By the word yet, well, we know we're supposed to be doing it, but it's not good timing for us. But they've determined that this isn't, it's just not a good time, and the work started over 20 years and 20 years ago, and they're, not yet, not yet.

Church, when is it a good time? When is a good time to honor the Lord? Always, I like that answer. And I could even just add to that maybe now. Whatever now is, whenever now is, whenever it's brought to your attention, that which you ought to offer to God, offer it to God now, and always, and perpetually offering it to God.

When is it a good time to honor the Lord? Always and now. When is a good time to establish His worship and His praise in your life, in your family, in your work, in all of these things that we are given to do to bring glory and honor to our great God, and all things in all times to praise Him?

Today is a good day. Now is a good time. Verse three reemphasizes that God speaks out into this context. It's a reiteration of what's already been said. This is the word of Lord came to Haggai, but it's reemphasizing it to put it in this context.

In other words, it's at the point when the worship of God is on hold in Israel. It's at a point like that, and the people are going about their own business. We're gonna see in a moment they're building their own houses.

They're tricking out their own digs and ignoring God and not worshiping Him. It's speaking into spiritual things. They are speaking into things that are their own spiritual opinions. There is no lack of opinions about the way to worship God.

How about we get back into the word and see how He wants us to worship Him. Ask yourself, on what basis do they say it isn't time to reestablish worship in Israel? It's not time to rebuild His house. Why are they saying that?

These are real people, real humans. Can you imagine why they might be saying that? Well, the text is gonna explain that they're busy with their own houses. It's on the basis of their own opinions and feelings that they would say this, right?

Not on the basis of Scripture. Not on the basis of what God has asked of them. Not on the basis of what He wants of them, but on the basis of how they feel. A bit busy right now, God. But maybe this is a tough season for me, but maybe once we get past the crunch and we get back into school and things are a little bit better and I've got a little bit more pattern, then I'll praise you.

Then I'll worship you. Then I'll stick to your word. Then I'll gather with your people. Then, then, then. No, now. Now is the day. Now is the time. And man, oh man, does this feel like a contemporary indictment on us?

Not you, us. Me included. Are we not living in a culture full of doing, doing things our own way? Only obeying convenient commands? Disregarding any command that might call for sacrifice on our part? That might require us to give a little more of our resources, a little more of our time, a little more of our energy.

God is faithful to deal with the real history of real people. I love that. Their wavering and commitment to the worship of God so he in grace and in his kindness sends them a prophet to correct their error.

It's kind of harsh. In verse four, the accusation is more pointed and we get a better picture of what's happening here. A simple rhetorical question. Look at it with me. Verse four. Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses while this house lies in ruins?

A simple rhetorical question makes clear that the people are in need of a radical realignment of their priorities. That's what we're talking about. We're not even, at the end of the day, this is not an application about building something.

It's not even an application about giving something. It's an application about realigning our priorities toward the worship of God in all things. The question makes it clear that they're living in opulence while the temple lies in ruins.

I say opulence. The word paneled, paneled houses has a little bit of debate over it but the majority of scholars think that that word, because it's used in the, one of the only other times it's used in scripture, that specific word is in the temple, I mean, rather, the palace of Solomon.

You talk about opulence. The only time we see paneled as an adjective for houses or for a dwelling is for the dwelling of the most wealthy king over all of Israel, potentially one of the most wealthy kings of the era and the time.

And he lived in a paneled house and now they are paneling their houses as well. Putting their comfort first while putting off the command of God to restore his place of worship. They are honoring themselves in comfort while the work of the temple can wait till tomorrow.

And I said in the introduction, this is not a passage that directly correlates to a church building. Please, oh please, oh please, don't draw that connection because it's actually a relatively unhealthy, unhelpful connection.

It's too little an application to think that we might walk away and I would say this would be a small, a small-minded application to this passage. How can I live in a house with clean carpet when the church has coffee stains everywhere?

Right? By the way, I see every coffee stain on that carpet as a badge of honor. It is used, amen? Like it is us. We're here and we consume some caffeine and in the consuming of that caffeine we pay attention and we hear from God and God speaks to us and meets us here in this place and so when I walk in here and we're not here, by the way, it shows up a lot more when you're here alone.

You walk through there and say, whoa, there's some stains back here and kudos to Bob who tries to work on those things. I mean, he's trying to get those stains out and everybody give Bob a hand. I'm just so grateful.

He does a great job cleaning this place. There he is, yeah. I did not plan that. Sorry to call you out, but I'm sure you don't mind. But where was I? Stains on the carpet. How can my house, how can I pay such close attention and keep my place all clean and then see that here and see the stains and stuff like that?

Now this is an issue of the priority of worship. Not about a facility. Not at all about a building. The temple served a role in the old covenant as the place. It's different now. Did you know that? It's different now.

The temple had its purpose and fulfilled its time and its era and it's done with. It's fulfilled in our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. It served a role in the old covenant as a place where God was pleased to meet with his people.

That's not here now. Does he meet us here? Yeah. And he also meets us on our morning run and he meets us in our quiet time and he meets me in my brown chair as I'm looking out on the woods in the morning.

He meets me in all that I got. He meets guys in deer blinds. He meets women while they're together quilting. He meets us in our workplace. He meets us anywhere. Amen. You don't have to travel anymore.

Praise God. You don't have to travel to a building to meet God anymore. The temple is fulfilled in Christ. But in that time and in that era, it was essential because of the way that God had designed that old covenant with a central people.

A nation. As a model for others. A model for what? A model that we can't do it. Look. Look at all the blessings that he heaped on them and look at how they spurned him. How they pushed him aside. How they refused to build his house.

How they refused to honor him. Just like our hearts are prone to do. So it's a place where he met with his people. It was a place of atonement where sacrifices were made. It was the place of the gathering of the people.

The place his very presence was together with his gathered people. A place that now in the new covenant is defined much better by a person. A place that is defined by a person. Jesus Christ, our greater temple.

He is the greater, eternal, omnipresent presence of God with his people so that he meets us in all of those places at the same time. We need not pilgrimage to a place. Jesus told the woman at the well that a day was coming when people no longer have to travel to Jerusalem or go into Samaria up to the mountain of Gerizim to worship God or to make sacrifices but they will worship wherever they are in spirit and in truth.

In Christ, the location and the geography is wrapped up. We don't have to pilgrimage to a place any longer. Jesus is our better sacrifice. No longer repetitive but finished. We don't need a place of sacrifice any longer.

He did it once for all. Jesus forges our local gatherings in his name and he is as Colossians, as Paul writes in Colossians, he is the head of his church. Head of his body, the church, that's us. He forges us, he leads us, he guides us.

I'm merely an under-shepherd to the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the head of this church. The building is no longer his focus. Rather his people are his focus. Whether they meet in a basement in Trestle Creek or a storefront or a cafeteria or a steel building, we are the new covenant temple of God church.

It's a glorious thing that he is pleased to dwell in our gathering. Pleased to dwell through his spirit in each heart that is his. So to apply this today has much more to do with the neglect of worshiping God in community and barely anything to do with a building.

I say barely because we do, we do a little bit worship God in part through stewardship and our building is a tool. It's a very expensive tool but I've said it's always just been a tool that he has been gracious to grant to us and so we do try to treat it well but we don't make it an idol.

We don't make it something that has to be pristine. So to summarize the problem, the returning exiles have been neglecting worship for the cause of their own comfort. They have been sure to trick out their own digs while the central place of their worship lies in ruins.

They have taken care of themselves first at the exclusion of worshiping God. I'm curious, have they learned anything from their exile? They were exiled in the first place because of neglect of the worship of God and here they're at it again.