Part 1, All Strife and No Satisfaction

Thank you, instrumentalists. Thank you, worship team. Thank you, media team in the back. Couldn’t do this without you all.

This morning, if you have not already, if you’ll be finding your copy of God’s Word, the book of Haggai might be a little bit hard to find. There, one of those short books, and just a few pages long, you get to those short books called the Minor Prophets.

Turn over one too many pages and you miss it.

If you’re using the pew Bible as I am, it’ll be page 839, the book of Haggai, chapter 1. When you get there, if you’re able, would you stand with me as we honor God and the reading of his Word?

Zephaniah, Haggai, Zachchariah.

Some of you say, “That’s not in my Bible.”

Haggai chapter 1, verse 1.

Now hear the word of the Lord.

“In the second year of King Darius, on the first day of the sixth month, the word of the Lord came through the prophet Haggai to Zerubbabel son of Chitiel, the governor of Judah, and to Joshua son of Jehosedac, the high priest.

“The Lord of Armies says this,” or, “Thus says the Lord of hosts: ‘These people say, “The time has not come for the house of the Lord to be rebuilt.”’”

The word of the Lord came through the prophet Haggai.

“Is it time for you yourselves to live in your paneled houses while this house lies in ruins?”

Now the Lord of Hosts says this: “Think carefully,” or, “Consider your ways.”

“You’ve planted much but harvested little. You eat but never have enough to be satisfied. You drink but never have enough to be happy. You put on clothes but never have enough to get warm. The wage earner puts his wages into a bag with a hole in it.”

The Lord of Armies, the Lord of Hosts, says this: “Think carefully about your ways. Go up into the hills, bring down lumber, and build the house, and I will be pleased with it and be glorified,” says the Lord.

“You expected much, but then it amounted to little. When you brought the harvest to your house, I ruined it. Why? This is the declaration of the Lord of Armies. Because my house still lies in ruins, while each of you is busy with his own house.

“So on your account the skies have withheld the dew and the land its crops. I have summoned a drought on the fields and the hills, on the grain, new wine, fresh oil, and whatever the ground yields, on man and animal, and on all that your hand produces.”

May the Lord add his blessing to the reading, the preaching, and your hearing to understand his holy Word. May our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ forever be praised.

And all of God’s people say, “Amen.”

Amen. You may be seated.

There are seasons in history when people come through tremendous hardship and they are presented with tremendous opportunity.

Some of you are in this generation. I want you to think back to the Americans who were born in the 1920s. We don’t have very many left in that generation. They endured the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, World War II, rationing, economic uncertainty, making great sacrifice.

Some of you remember your grandparents, um, washing tinfoil and reusing it and turning that Ziploc bag inside out and washing it, putting it out to dry because it was too good to throw away, because they remembered having to make sacrifice.

Yet when those difficult years ended in the post-war era and the great boom, the economic boom began, they seized the opportunities that God placed in front of them.

Industry flourished, farms prospered, colleges expanded, churches were built, and churches were filled.

It was a time when missionaries were sent out all over the world. They didn’t waste the opportunity that God had given them.

Haggai opens up during a similar moment in Israel’s history. They had been in exile for 70 years. For 70 years—this is the book of Jeremiah—70 years they’ve been in exile in Babylon. They’ve been taken away from their homeland. They’ve been taken away from Jerusalem. The temple had been destroyed. The wall around the city had been destroyed. And for 70 years, they were not allowed to go back home.

But now God has graciously brought his people home to Jerusalem.

This is—you may remember about Nehemiah and rebuilding the wall. Well, they’ve come now and they’ve built the foundation of the temple. The foundation of the temple has been laid at King Darius or King Cyrus’s command, and God has opened the door.

The future looks bright.

But instead of pursuing God’s priorities—listen to me, church—instead of pursuing God’s priorities, they pursued their own prosperity.

Instead of advancing God’s kingdom, they advanced their own comforts.

Instead of seeking God’s glory, they sought their own gain.

Instead of living for God’s purposes, they became consumed with all their own little pursuits.

Instead of putting God first, they put themselves first.

And because of that, because of that conscious decision they have made to do that when God has clearly given them a purpose, and God has given them a command, and God has given them a design, and they’ve chosen not to follow it—and because of that, they were busy but not blessed.

Write that down.

They were busy but not blessed.

They were working hard but never getting ahead. They had all of the activity in the world, but none of the satisfaction.

Friend, there are a lot of people living exactly like that today.

They’re working harder than they’ve ever worked before. They own more than they could ever imagine that they would own. Their bank account is bigger than they could ever imagine that it could have ever been. They’re running faster than they have ever run, and yet somehow feeling emptier than they ever have before.

God explains why in this passage.

They had all strife, all the striving, but no satisfaction.

All strife and no satisfaction because, number one, because of their rebellion against the commands of God.

Verse 2, if you’ll look there, the Lord of Hosts, the Lord of Armies, says this: “These people say, ‘The time has not yet come for the house of the Lord to be rebuilt.’”

The first words out of the people’s mouth reveal their problem.

It’s rebellion.

They say, “The time has not yet come for us to rebuild the house, Lord.”

Yes, the foundation is there, and then, yes, everything else in ruins, but it’s not yet time for us to rebuild the temple, the house of God.

Notice they didn’t say never.

They didn’t make an outright refusal.

They just said, “Not now.”

Huh?

So often, Satan doesn’t have to convince us to refuse God altogether. He simply convinces us to postpone what we know we ought to do.

Delayed obedience, folks, is still disobedience.

Delayed obedience.

When God says now, and we say later, that’s sin.

God had already made his will known to them. King Cyrus, King Darius had issued the decree. He had sent the materials. They had returned from, uh, Babylon to their homeland for this very purpose.

The foundation is laid. It’s all laid out. The plans are there. The material is there. The people are there.

This wasn’t confusion or lack.

It was rebellion disguised as, “Well, it’s just bad timing.”

Oh, friends, you better listen, because that’s the state of the American church.

We don’t say no to God.

We just say not yet to God.

Amen.

It’s what we all do.

We say, “I’ll get serious about the church later. I’ll forgive when the sting subsides a little bit. I’ll tithe when I finally get caught up.”

You’ll never get caught up.

“I’ll witness when life settles down. I’ll start reading my Bible when things aren’t so busy.”

Friend, tomorrow.

Tomorrow is Satan’s favorite word.

The Christian life is never lived on intentions about tomorrow. The Christian life is lived on obedience today.

Let me say that again.

The Christian life is not lived on intentions about tomorrow.

The Christian life is lived on obedience today.

Amen.

All strife and no satisfaction because of rebellion.

All strife and no satisfaction, number two, because of ranking yourselves—ranking themselves—ahead of God.

Verse 3, the word of the Lord came to the prophet Haggai: “Is it time for you yourselves to have paneled houses while this house, the house of the Lord, lies in ruins?”

Now the Lord says this: “Think carefully about your ways.”

God asked one of the most piercing questions in scripture. He says, “Is it time for you?”

Now, follow the logical progression.

God says, “Rebuild the house of the Lord.”

The people say, “We will, just not yet. It’s not yet time.”

And the Lord says, “Is it time for you to be living in your fine paneled houses while the house of the Lord is in ruins?”

The issue was not that they had houses.

The issue was that they had beautiful houses, when he says paneled houses.

So, spiritual imagination time. Okay, for those of you who haven’t been around me very much, spiritual imagination means this is plausible. It’s not in the text. Don’t, like, hang a hat on it or anything.

I’m thinking this could have happened.

Y’all with me?

So I sort of have an idea of what happened. They got the masonry done on their little houses inside the walls of Jerusalem. The house was sturdy and the house was safe. The house kept the rain, the wind out, and then they were to go build the house of God.

And then, um, one of the ladies who’s come back in the exile says to her husband, “Don’t you remember how nice our house was in Babylon that had the cedar on the walls?”

And then the next day she said, “You know, I’m thinking about how that house smelled when you walk in,” just dropping this hint and dropping that hint and dropping this hint.

So finally the man of the house goes up into the hills and brings down the cedar logs and cuts them into planks and panels the inside of their house with this fine cedar, just like his wife wants.

And then—and I’m just saying this could have happened—she invites all the other ladies over for tea, and they all see how nice the cedar panels are in her house, and they all tell their husbands, “You know, we sure would like to have the cedar paneling in our house.”

And so now all the men are going up into the hills and bringing down the cedar logs and sawing the logs and paneling the houses instead of building the house of God.

I think that’s sort of maybe what happened.

They had the resources.

They had the energy.

They had the time.

They simply spent that time and resources and energy on themselves instead of God.

Jesus said exactly the same thing in the Gospels. Matthew 6:33. Jesus said, “But seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and then everything else will be”—what?—“added to you as well.”

Notice he didn’t say, “Seek the kingdom of God sometime.”

He said, “Seek it first.”

Folks, God has never objected to his people having homes or careers or hobbies or vacations. He simply refuses to take second place to any of those things.

We’ve got to get this through our thick American Christian heads.

God does not want our second place.

You offer God second place in your life, and you’re so proud of yourself because you rank God so high, all the way up to second place in your life.

God does not need your little trinket of devotion.

He is God, and we are not.

And he says, “I will be first in your life or I will not be at all.”

But seek ye first.

Everything else is fine, and everything else will come.

Put God first, folks.

Every family has a calendar, and every family has a checkbook. I don’t know if they do anymore, or a PayPal or a Cash App or something.

Every family has those things.

That calendar and that checkbook, that reveals who’s first in your life.

That stings a little bit, but that’s just how it is.

No amen there.

Oh, me.

Folks, we all have enough time, and we all have enough money to do what really matters to us.

The things that really matter to us, we make a way, don’t we?

The things that really matter to us, we’re going to find a way to make it work if it really matters.

And so this is what it comes down to:

Does God matter to you a lot, or does the kingdom of God matter to you most?

I think that’s what we deal with in the American church today, is that God matters a lot to the people that go to American churches. God matters big time.

God matters a lot to them.

He just doesn’t matter most to them.

All strife and no satisfaction is the result of that.

All strife and no satisfaction because of ranking ourselves ahead of God.

Number three, all strife and no satisfaction because of not reflecting on what is going on.

Folks, you got to listen carefully because this point is so important.

Verses 5–11, he says, “Now the Lord of Hosts, the Lord of Armies, says this: Consider your ways,” or, “Think carefully about your ways.”

Twice in this passage, 5–11, he says this phrase. He says it once and he says it again: “Think carefully about your ways. Consider your ways.”

Literally from the Hebrew, literally, “Set your heart upon your ways.”

Let me put it into the vernacular so that everybody can understand it.

He’s saying, “Stop, think, pay attention, process, and evaluate your ways.”

Stop what you’re doing.

Think about what you’re doing.

Pay attention to what’s happening.

Process what’s happening.

And then evaluate what’s happening.

But we live in a world that is constantly moving, and phones always buzzing, schedules always packed. Uh, if you’re like my family, you try to find one Apple calendar that we put all the family events into so that we can try to work around this and work around that.

The television’s always on in the background. Noise everywhere.

Very few people ever stop long enough to stop and ask, “Why isn’t all this working?”

Because what we’re doing in life and the way that we’re living life, obviously this is not working.

All of this striving and never having any satisfaction.

That can’t be how it’s supposed to be.

Anybody?

God points out the symptoms of this.

He says, “You have planted much but harvested little. You eat but you never have enough. You drink but never have your fill. You put on clothes but never have enough to get warm.”

It’s sort of like lying in the bed at night on a cold night, and you got your weighted comforter, your weighted blanket, and you pull it up to your chin because your chin gets cold, and then your feet sticking out of the bottom and your feet get cold, and you try to squish it.

And it’s pushing and pulling, pushing and pulling, pushing and pulling, but never getting satisfaction.

He says—oh, this is so telling—and he says, “You earn your wages only to put them in a bag with holes in the bottom.”

The more you put in, the more that pours out.

Amen.

Oh, what a picture of modern America.

More income, more conveniences, more entertainment, more technology, yet less peace, yet less contentment, less joy, less satisfaction.

All strife, all the striving, none of the satisfaction.

The people back then, they thought the problem was economic, or they thought the problem was agricultural, or they looked at the clouds in the skies and said, “El Niño this year.”

They said the problem is meteorological or agricultural, economic.

And God said, “No, the problem is spiritual.”

Folks, sometimes the greatest act of God’s mercy is allowing us to become so frustrated.

Frustrated enough to finally start asking the right questions.

There are some things you really need to stop, think, process, and evaluate.

There are some things you need to think about, folks.

You need to stop and think about your marriage.

Look, I know some of your lives are so busy, and you’ve got soccer practice and cello practice and violin recital and this and this and this and this, and then—and you might pass in the night as you’re going.

You say, “Well, there goes the other half of my family down that way,” as you’re passing on the road and all this going on.

If you don’t have time to stop and think about your relationship with your spouse, evaluate it, process it, identify some problems that aren’t going to go away by themselves—if you are too busy to stop and do that, then you’re just too busy.

If you’re that busy, you need to cut some things out of your life.

Maybe good things. Plenty of them. But there’s too many good things for you to do them all.

Folks, let me tell you something.

It’s okay for your kid not to do everything.

Your marriage and your family is more important than the plastic trophy they’re going to get at the end of the season.

That’s it.

That’s it right there.

That’s it, folks.

That’s it.

You listen to me.

The Holy Spirit speaking.

You listen.

If you ever sat in my office for a marriage counseling session, you know that this—we don’t have time for the full 50-minute session right now—but I’m going to show you this.

I want you to imagine a triangle right here.

See this triangle?

You see it?

Here’s you.

Here’s your spouse.

Here’s God.

If you and your spouse will intentionally seek to get closer to God, then you will naturally start getting closer to each other.

You need to stop and think about your marriage.

You need to stop and think about your children.

Ask the questions:

Does something seem off?

Does something seem wrong?

Do we need to skip a practice and go, um, sit in the car and have a Sonic Blast and talk about what’s going on?

You need to think about your children.

Seriously, you need to think about your priorities.

Look at your life. Examine your life and say, just by looking from the outside looking in, looking at my life, what would it look like as the most important thing in my life?

And is that what I really want to be the most important thing in my life?

You need to think about those.

You need to think about your giving.

You need to think about your church.

You need to think about your place in New Bethl Baptist Church.

You need to think about your personal walk with Christ.

Is it better than it used to be, or is it worse than it used to be?

So, you need to think about where your life is headed.

You know how you do that?

Go back and look at the footsteps you’re leaving behind, the path that you were on yesterday and the week before and the month before.

And then draw a line from that, because that direction is the direction you’re heading in.

And ask yourself, is that the direction I want to be heading in?

Hey, you want to see something coming before you get there?

Amen.

You need to stop and think about the direction of your life.

Because sometimes we get so busy living that we don’t stop and examine how we’re living.

Let me tell you this and I’ll wrap up.

God wasn’t trying to punish his people.

He was trying to wake them up.

The dissatisfaction wasn’t accidental.

It was disciplinary.

Hebrews 12:6 says, “God disciplines those whom he loves.”

God loved them too much to let them find any lasting satisfaction while they were neglecting him.

Some of you this morning know exactly what Haggai was describing.

You’ve been striving, and you’ve been working, and you’ve been accumulating, and you’ve been running, but something is missing.

So before you start blaming your circumstances, or blaming your upbringing, or blaming your childhood trauma, or blaming your employer, or blaming the politicians in Washington, or blaming your spouse, God says, “Consider your ways.”

There’s no lasting satisfaction until God is first.

There is no lasting peace until obedience replaces rebellion.

There’s no lasting blessing until his kingdom becomes our highest priority.

Listen, you may be saying the same thing that they were saying back then about the temple: “It’s not yet time to rebuild the temple.”

But you’re saying it about salvation.

You’re saying, “It’s not time for me to give my life to Christ. Someday, sure, but not yet.”

But 2 Corinthians chapter 6, the Apostle Paul says, “Now is the appointed time. Today is the day of salvation.”

What rebellion do you need to repent of?

What priority do you need to realign?

What situation do you need to carefully consider?

Is the problem really material or economic or agricultural or meteorological, or is the problem actually spiritual?

Think carefully about your ways.

Consider your ways.

Heavenly Father, I pray this morning that everybody here today in the sound of my voice has heard not my voice, but yours.

And that, Lord, as you have tugged at hearts through your Holy Spirit today, I pray that men and women, boys and girls will respond in faith in this invitation.

I pray they’ll come and kneel at this altar. I pray they’ll make decisions public that need to be made public—to follow you in believer’s baptism, to follow you in Christian vocation, whether that’s, uh, pastoring or missionary, whether it’s joining this church.

Whatever decisions need to be made for you, Lord, let somebody drive a stake in the ground this morning, make that decision.

We pray in Jesus’ name.

And all of God’s people say, “Amen.”