Haggai

Are you tired? Does it seem that, while you are busy serving God, you just don’t see fruit? You get involved in various programs offered to the community through your church, but the pews are no more filled than they were before you started the outreach programs. You build a playground and have special events for the neighborhood children. The children come. But you only see their parents as they drive through the pickup line.

Your efforts seem like those God speaks about in Haggai 1:6.

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.

It might seem the more you do, the less are the returns. Why?

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, on what the ground brings forth, on man and beast, and on all their labors. (1:9-11)

God is talking to the people about rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem. But, as always, I believe we miss so much of what God wants to say to us when we read His Word as a history lesson. What do these verses mean to us today? Most of us aren’t in the middle of building projects in our churches. But we are in the middle of building the temple which is the Church.

I heard a short clip from Voddie Baucham this morning. I really don’t know that much about the man, but what he said spoke to me when I read Haggai this morning. He shared that he was raised by a single mom in Los Angeles in what he describes as a gang and drug infested environment, in an environment many people would label “oppressed.”

But he said his greatest need was met, not when someone delivered him from human oppression, but when someone shared the Gospel with him and he was “delivered from the oppression of sin.”

I think what God is saying through Haggai is what Voddie Baucham was expressing in this video. If we are merely concerned with poor children, gang and drug infested environments, hungry families, and homelessness, we are only filling bags with holes in them. Baucham said that the Gospel transforms individual lives, who then transform families, communities, and nations.

It’s the Gospel that transforms lives. I’m not saying we should chuck all our outreach programs. But if the Gospel of Jesus isn’t first and foremost in our efforts, we are going to work tirelessly and have nothing to show for it.

And maybe most importantly, if we are doing the outreach programs, children programs, community Bible studies, whatever, and we have not dealt with sin in our own temple, our own hearts, then we are expecting to produce crops during a drought. The truth is, you can’t expect God’s blessings if you aren’t right with Him.

So it comes down to sin. It’s not a hungry belly, but a hungry heart. It’s not homelessness, but hearts without a home. It’s about making sure our hearts are pure, not just our intentions.

If you are tired of serving God and not seeing things happen, maybe you need to get on your knees and ask God to reveal sin that needs confessing. Maybe you need to get in front of your church and encourage the same for each individual. Because like Baucham says, and like the Bible proclaims:

The Gospel transforms lives. And transformed lives transforms families, communities, and nations.