I think most of us would probably consider the site a blot on the landscape. Certainly the neighbours do! But here is what the builder had to say about it in a recent press interview: “If you stand back and look at it, it actually isn’t [an eyesore],” he rather brashly claimed. Then he went on to comment, “It might be annoying that it’s not done and you might be wondering what [on earth] is going on there. But if you look from a distance at the building wrap on it, it’s a funky white and red.”[1]
Well, I ask myself what kinds of things people were saying about the Temple in Jerusalem in the days of Haggai back in the year 520 bc? It too had been standing partially reconstructed for more than a decade.
Those of you who have been present over the past three weeks will already have heard the events of Haggai’s timeline. But let me recap them for you. In 597 bc, after a two-year siege, the walls of Jerusalem had finally given way to the powerful armies of the Babylonian Empire. Ten years later, in 587 bc, those same armies had leveled the entire city, including its magnificent Temple, which had been constructed during the reign of King Solomon three and a half centuries before. In addition, in a series of expulsions over a period of fifteen years, the city had been emptied of its citizens. Men, women and children were forced into exile in Babylon involving an arduous journey by foot of over 1200 kilometers.
Ten years after that, when Cyrus the Great of Persia conquered Babylon, Jerusalem’s citizens were permitted to return. Construction soon began on rebuilding the city, and two years later they started to undertake the project of restoring the Temple—all of which brings us to the year 537 bc. The restoration began with the setting of the altar in its place. This meant that the regular sacrificial offerings according to the feasts and seasons of the year could begin once again (Ezra 3:1-6).
Construction
A year later, with construction crews organized, the foundation of the Temple was laid. This was accompanied by a great celebration with trumpets and cymbals and choirs, and the crowds cheering and singing along—although those who remembered the grandeur of the original Temple could only weep. In their eyes the new temple would never be more than a pathetic successor to Solomon’s imposing structure.
They were not the only ones who did not join in with the jubilation. The Samaritans and others who had settled in Jerusalem during the Jewish exile began to feel threatened by what they saw happening around them, particularly when the Jews refused to allow them to assist with the reconstruction project. And so they wrote a letter of protest to the emperor. In it they claimed that the rebuilding that was taking place was just the first step towards a full-scale rebellion and that the next step for the Jews would be to stop paying tribute to the emperor. And so construction was forced to halt, with not much more than the foundation having been laid.
For a full ten years it remained that way and it didn’t take long for people to become accustomed to it. It just became part of the landscape and nobody seemed to be terribly bothered by it. Until along came two men: Ezra, the envoy of the Persian emperor, and Haggai the prophet.
It was through the initiative of these two remarkable leaders that the work on the Temple that had been stalled for a decade got under way. On the long-neglected site workers could once again be seen sawing and chiseling wood, shaping stones, and putting them into place. You could hear the banging of mallets, the back-and-forth of saw blades, the chip, chip, chipping of stones.
Yet the productivity that was evident on the Temple site was in stark contrast to what was happening in the fields and orchards and vineyards not very far away…
As we open our Bibles to this morning’s passage, it is approaching the darkest day of the year. Three times Haggai mentions the exact date: the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month—which on our calendar turns out to be December 18th. And Haggai uses the shortening days to acknowledge that the people have been living in dark times. Indeed, for season after season they had seen repeated crop failures. If it hadn’t been one thing, it had been another: blight, mildew, hailstorms, all in an unrelenting succession of disasters year after year.
The situation had become so dire that people were beginning to ask, “Why?” “Why are our crops failing again after again in spite of all our toil and labour?” “We are nearing the point of starvation. What have we done to deserve this?”
Challenge
So it was, in these desperate circumstances and with the approach of the darkest day of the year, the Lord spoke to Haggai—and not with an answer, but with a couple of questions to put before the priests. And they were these:
“If someone carries a piece of sacred meat in his pocket, meat that is set apart for sacrifice on the altar, and the pocket touches a loaf of bread, a dish of stew, a bottle of wine or oil, or any other food, will these foods be made holy by such contact?”
The priests said, “No.”
Then Haggai said, “How about someone who is contaminated by touching a corpse—if that person touches one of these foods, will it be contaminated?”
The priests said, “Yes, it will be contaminated.”
Haggai was taking the priests back to the laws of ritual purity in the book of Leviticus, where they are all laid out with great clarity in chapter 11—laws with which the priests would have been deeply familiar. There were the dietary laws that governed what you were and were not permitted to eat: Animals with cloven hoofs and that chew their cud, such as cattle, goats and sheep, OK; animals that don’t conform to this standard, such a camels, rabbits and pigs, not OK. Fish: OK; but any water creature without scales, not OK. And the list goes on. You can find it all in Leviticus 11.
There were also laws about avoiding contact with people with skin diseases and with dead bodies—and even with women after childbirth. And they are all laid out in great detail in Leviticus, chapters 12 to 14.
But Haggai reminds the priests (as they knew perfectly well) that cleanness and uncleanness only goes one way. Contact with something that is unclean renders you unclean. But the Levitical standards were clear: you can’t render something clean that is unclean or tainted by putting it into contact with something clean. It just doesn’t work that way.
Haggai does not mention precisely what the issue was but his contemporary Ezra didn’t hesitate to be specific. The problem was intermarriage with the Samaritan and other non-Jewish settlers. The Book of Deuteronomy was very clear in that regard: “You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons, for they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods.” (Deuteronomy 7:3-4)
And Ezra’s reaction, when he found out what was going on, was “As soon as I heard this, I tore my tunic and cloak, pulled hair from my head and beard and sat down appalled… And at the evening sacrifice I rose from my fasting, with my garment and my cloak torn, and fell upon my knees and spread out my hands to the Lord my God…” (Ezra 9:3,5)
The lesson that Haggai was seeking to get across in his more measured language was that it all had to do with consistency. The people of Israel had committed themselves to a sacred project: the rebuilding of God’s holy Temple. But their attention to the Temple had not led to a corresponding focus on their everyday lives. Maybe if they thought about it, as Haggai was at pains to inform them, they would realize that God’s failure to bless their harvests was not his failure at all, but a result of their failure to live up to his righteous commands.
I remember way back when I was in university there was one of my fellow students who would repeatedly remind us that going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than going into a garage makes you a car. (I expect you’ve heard that one before.) The people of Jerusalem had got their priorities backwards. They somehow assumed that rebuilding the Temple would be all it took to gain God’s favour. How wrong they were!
It was generations before Haggai that God had spoken to the prophet Hosea in these words: “I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.” (Hosea 6:6)
In the gospels we find Jesus quoting those exact words. On another occasion he addressed the religious people of his day like this: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean. Woe to you! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness.” (Matthew 23:25-27)
While after a long delay of ten years, the people of Jerusalem had been diligent about rebuilding the Temple, on the inside their own moral and spiritual lives lay in ruins.
Promise
Many years ago Karen and I visited St Paul’s Cathedral in London. As we wandered about in awe, we were halted in our steps by the sight of something that was very familiar: the artist Holman Hunt’s famous painting of Christ the Light of the World. I suspect that many of you can picture it in your minds. It depicts Jesus standing and knocking at a closed door with his right hand, while holding a lantern in his left. As you take a closer look, you see that the door at which he knocks has been overgrown with vines. It hasn’t been opened for a long time.
The painting of course is a representation of Jesus’ words in Revelation 3:20. “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to them and eat with them, and they with me.” Many of us are likely accustomed to hearing those words in an evangelistic context, as though they were addressed to people who hadn’t yet opened their lives to Christ. But that is not the way they were originally intended. They were addressed to a church, to a community of believers, to people who had turned to Christ and invited him into their lives. But the problem was that their faith had become lukewarm. It had become a kind of accessory, an adjunct to a full and busy life. Their status as God’s beloved children had become not a privilege they treasured but a commonplace they casually assumed.
The people of Jerusalem were so focused on rebuilding the physical Temple that they failed to see what Paul would later identify as God’s spiritual temple. He wrote to the church in Corinth, “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” Later, he added, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” (1 Corinthians 3:16; 6:19–20).
So what can we learn from this passage? Years ago I had a friend who would warn not to get so caught up in the work of the Lord that I lose sight of the Lord of the work. And that is an easy trap to fall into. Just take a moment to look at all the things that can occupy our time and energy: Sunday school, prayer meetings, church council, youth programmes, music team rehearsals, conferences… And that doesn’t include our primary obligations—to our spouse, to our family, to our neighbours in need, not to mention our own personal relationship with our heavenly Father. (Oh, and did I neglect to include our jobs?)
As with the men and women of Jerusalem, our gracious God wants nothing more than to bless us. Five and a half centuries after Haggai there was another who put it this way: “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” (Matthew 6:33)
As we yield our hearts fully to our holy and gracious Lord and to his priorities, we will find that his will for the people of Jerusalem is his will for us today: “From this day on I will bless you.”
[1] https://www.saltwire.com/atlantic-canada/construction-on-eyesore-near-provincial-park-in-hrm-painfully-slow-but-making-headway-101004250
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