Did you ever read the book of Haggai? It’s good stuff. The Lord sends his prophet Haggai to the Governor of Judah (Zerubabbel) and also to the High Priest (Joshua) with a message. It’s not a pleasant message, in fact, it’s rather convicting. This is what the Lord thought of the plans they had been making:

“Why is everyone saying it is not the right time for rebuilding my Temple? Is it then the right time for you to live in luxurious homes, when the Temple lies in ruins?” Haggai 1: 2-3 TLB

Hmm…strong words! I can imagine how it all went down. Haggai arriving at the meeting place to be ushered into the sumptuously decorated chambers and seated in a plush reclining chair around a highly polished mahogany table (worth a fortune) and offered the finest refreshments. Only to hear the discussion ‘Yeahhh...we just don’t feel the timing is right financially on this whole Temple-rebuild project. Let’s reschedule a meeting for next quarter to re-visit the proposal.’ Then everyone goes home to their mansions with the four car garages and tennis courts and room for a pony…in other words, we have the resources, but we’d rather spend them on ourselves and live it up selfishly with our pony than to give our tithe to the Lord for His holy Temple to be rebuilt.

This is a BIG DEAL. The Temple that they were putting off building was where our Jesus spent a whole lot of time when He arrived on the scene. He performed healings in this Temple, the blind were given sight, and the crippled were restored. He taught the people in a way that they could understand, which must have been refreshing, because in that day, only those born into certain roles were taught to read, understand and think for themselves, so when the people came to the Temple for worship, the guy giving the ‘message’ was like a Harvard professor preaching to a class of Grade 6 students. The Temple is where Jesus had verbal skirmishes with the ‘self-important’ – the Pharisees, Sadducees and teachers of the law. It’s where Judas Iscariot felt the burn of conviction and cried out to the chief priests that he had betrayed an innocent man and then thrown down the thirty pieces of silver. It is the Temple that was destroyed upon Jesus’ death; the curtain separating the Holy of Holies, torn in two.
THIS is the Temple that Zerubbabel the governor and Joshua the priest were hemming and hawing about building.

They were dragging their feet because up until that point they were using the resources that God gave them to live enjoyable, comfortable lives. So, the Lord does what He always does when He wants to bring a message to His people. He sends a prophet to give the Word, and an apostle to lead them into carrying it out. The Lord sends Haggai to the people and begins to prepare Nehemiah to come and spur them on. He was raising up people in the community not only to go and speak out the plans that He wanted to come about, but also equipping and sending out those who would implement the vision and work to make it possible.
First the prophet and then the apostle.

What does that speak to us today? Consider this: that the Temple WE are building is not one of dead rock, but out of believers:

“and now you have become living building-stones for God’s use in building His house.” 1 Peter 2:5

We hold back, not solely in our money, old clothes we could be giving away or the extra room that we could invite someone to stay in but when we don’t live simply.
We don’t give the Word of God our full attention, rushing through a skimpy devotional just to be able to say ‘well, at least that’s done’.

We don’t spend the time in prayer – just doing all the talking and not pausing to listen because we don’t expect God to even say anything to us anyway and besides, we’d rather go watch TV…we are holding back.

We are building up our own household of sinful flesh rather than denying ourselves and giving our all to be a living building-stone in the eternal Temple of the King of Kings. We drag our feet because we too are using the resources God gave us to live out comfortable lives.
We can look back at Joshua and Zerubbabel and at their reluctance to change, but we can also look ahead to all that God would do through the Temple that He wanted built. Our position in history affords us the knowledge that the Temple simply HAD to be built, and WOULD be built, even if that meant a little self-denial on the part of the people.

The same message holds true for us today. We have a reluctance to be self-sacrificial and to deny ourselves, but we can’t even begin to imagine all that God will do through His living Temple, the Church – and through each individual building-stone.

“Building up the Temple, building up the Temple,
building up the Temple of the Lord
Boys won’t you help us? Girls won’t you help us?
Building up the Temple of the Lord.”