Haggai the prophet was God’s mouthpiece at a unique time in the history of God’s people. After the decree of Cyrus the king of Persia in 538 BC, the Jews returned to Jerusalem from the Babylonian exile for the explicit purpose of rebuilding the house of the LORD, that is, the temple. They had rebuilt the altar and laid the foundation of the temple when they were met with opposition from neighbouring enemies (Ezra 1, 3, 4). This brought the work to a halt and the initial impulse to build the temple lost steam.
Sixteen years later, the temple is still lying in ruins and the people are neck-deep in spiritual apathy. Their sense of responsibility for restoring the LORD’s house has withered away. They have built houses for themselves instead and have settled for “a sort of truce between conscience and covetousness.”1 But this “truce” is soon broken when God sends his prophets to challenge and stir up his people to action (Ezra 4:24–5:2).
Much of Haggai’s message resists a one-to-one application to the Christian life today, since it was given to God’s people at an unrepeatable point in redemptive history. Hence, we cannot flatly equate the building of the temple in those times with a church building extension project today. Nor can we expect to pinpoint God’s presence and glory in a specific physical structure today. Nevertheless, Haggai is a man for our times because God’s people today are ailed by the same thing that ailed his people then: spiritual apathy. As we consider the first chapter of Haggai, we will find that God is calling us to a reorientation of our priorities and a renewed commitment to him.
Spiritual apathy, then and now
Spiritual apathy is a lack of interest and enthusiasm for the things of God. We need look no farther than the people of Haggai’s time for a perfect portrait of spiritual apathy. At first, they were forced by violent opposition to pause their rebuilding of the temple. However, even after the opposition had ceased, they refused to resume their work although they no longer had any reason not to. Spiritual apathy had subtly crept in; it had gradually built up around their hearts like plaque on the teeth. “The time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the LORD,” they said (Hag. 1:2). It’s not that they weren’t going to, just not yet – like Augustine’s double-minded prayer as a young man: “Lord, make me chaste – but not yet!”
Matthew Henry notes with penetrating spiritual insight, “There is an aptness in us to misinterpret providential discouragements in our duty, as if they amounted to a discharge from our duty, when they are only intended for the trial and exercise of our courage and faith.”2 Perhaps the people were appealing to God’s providence, saying, “God means for us to stop building for a time; otherwise, why would he place such obstacles in our way!” What we know for sure is that the people were neglecting their God-given duty, all the while busying themselves with their own panelled houses (1:9). Their priorities were completely upside down. Once we settle in our comfortable houses and get the economy right and put in place a decent standard of living and negotiate proper wage rates, then we’ll have time to serve God, the thinking went.3
If we are to see how serious the people’s neglect was, we need to understand the significance of the temple. The temple was the meeting place for God and his people; God’s presence was mediated through the temple. Of course, God didn’t need a temple to dwell in (1 Kgs. 8:27; Acts 17:24). This wasn’t a matter of providing housing for the deity. It was a matter of worship and piety. In refusing to rebuild the house of the LORD, the people were saying it didn’t matter whether the LORD was present with them or not. They didn’t long for God’s presence. They thought to retain his favour while leaving his house in ruins. So the LORD said through Haggai, “Consider your ways.” He revealed that the reason all their labour for themselves was being frustrated and never leading to fulfilment was that they were prioritising themselves over God (1:7–11). They were storing up treasures on earth rather than in heaven, filling their holey bags rather than fulfilling their holy calling.
This condition of spiritual apathy has also been known as acedia, or sloth. But this should not be equated with laziness. For those who are slothful might very well be busy doing things, just not important things.4 The slothful know that there are important and weighty things out there to care about (e.g., building the temple), but they can’t bring themselves to care deeply enough about them. Sloth lacks joy in and love for what is truly good; it lacks magnanimity and the courage to accept the great dignity to which God has called us.5 Sadly, there are Christian men and women who are bent on inserting levity into every discussion about the things of God as though it were embarrassing to be so serious and passionate about such matters, while at the same time demonstrating their capacity to speak with absolute seriousness when it comes to computer games or exercise regimes or essential oils. A numbness to what is meaningful and a liveliness towards what is trivial: these are hallmarks of sloth.
In his book Overcoming Apathy, Uche Anizor reflects on how he has been shaped by a steady diet of TV shows such as Seinfeld, The Simpsons, Married with Children, and Friends, concluding that “this kind of pop culture … only nurtured an attitude of indifference. Subconsciously I grew to believe that it was cooler to not care about meaningful things, or at least to not put any earnestness on display.”6 Ours is a culture perpetually distracted by trivialities. Everything, from religion to politics, is recast as entertainment. We are amusing ourselves to death. And the more we choose to consume unthinkingly from a culture that deals in frivolities, the more the plaque of apathy is bound to build up around our hearts.
The same divine exhortation to “consider your ways” (1:7) comes to us today insofar as we, like the people then, are indifferent to the things of God, all the while attending to our own wants and needs. Spiritual apathy can set in and go unnoticed in our lives for long stretches of time. Before we know it, we’re sitting back watching the fifth consecutive episode of a Netflix series, while the Bible sits unread and unstudied in the other room; we’re scrolling online for memes, world news, sports highlights, travel videos, while private prayer remains neglected for days or weeks on end; we’re gladly stretching our budgets in order to spend money on gadgets and activities, while questioning whether the budget really “allows” us to give to this month’s special collection. The apathy that ailed God’s people then also ails us now.
By the Spirit and the Word
Yet there is hope. For God does not give up on his slothful people, but graciously gives them an opportunity to repent (1:8). His “voice” comes to them through “the words of Haggai the prophet” (1:12). Such was the nature of prophecy (and is the nature of Holy Scripture), that the words of the messenger were themselves the words of the LORD God.
In 1:12–15 we are told that the LORD, by the same Spirit who empowered Bezalel to work on the tabernacle (Exod. 31:1–5), stirred up the people and their leaders to obey his voice, fear him, and resume their God-given work. As much as we’d like to, we don’t get people out of spiritual apathy through guilt-tripping or a “do more, do better” message. Spiritual apathy is overcome by the powerful stirring of the Holy Spirit, who works through God’s chosen instrument of renewal, his word read and preached. When we are bogged down in slothful disobedience, we need a word from outside of ourselves – the word, in all its “exhortations, threats, and promises.”7 Additionally, we need the Spirit to work in us, stoking a flame in our cold hearts, reorienting us to things above, and freeing us from our addiction to ease and comfort.
Learning from Haggai
The words of the Lord through Haggai come to the believer as a warning, then, to beware of backsliding into worldliness or complacency; to keep watch on your own spiritual state, lest you drift into lukewarmness and receive the Lord’s rebuke (Rev. 3:16). For if God is who Scripture says he is, then indifference to him and to his word is a serious sin. It is a refusal to love the One who is most worthy of our love – our highest love, our unalloyed love, our heart-soul-mind-and-strength love.
We are not to wait to serve him only after certain conditions have been met in our lives. Rather, in all things we are to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness (Matt. 6:33), directing our thoughts, our efforts, our time, and our money towards kingdom-priorities, particularly the work of gospel ministry and missions. Why these in particular?
In Haggai chapter 2, the people became discouraged when they recalled the temple’s former glory. But the LORD declared that “the latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former” (2:9). This prophecy has reached significant fulfilment in this age in the person and work of Jesus, but also awaits complete fulfilment in the age to come. Jesus spoke of his own body as the temple and, when he rose from the dead, filled it with glory (John 2:20–22; cf. 1 Cor. 15:43). Now, as we become joined to Jesus by faith, we are built up together as a living, Spirit-in dwelt temple whose cornerstone is the crucified and resurrected Lord himself (1 Pet. 2:4–5).
For us, then, “building the temple” means being witnesses for Christ and testifying to the excellencies of our Saviour (2:9) so that more people may come to Christ in faith and become living stones in him (2:4).8 God does not bid us to collect wood or stones and build a physical structure as he did in Haggai’s time; he gives us a more momentous calling.9 And he exhorts us to consider our ways and press on to do the work of witness to which he has called us. As we do this work, our Lord will be with us always to the end of the age (Matt. 28:19–20; cf. Hag. 1:13, 2:4: “I am with you”). And in the age to come, when the City of God is established in its consummated glory and all the people of God are gathered in his presence, the Lord God and the Lamb will be its temple (Rev. 21:22). Until then, we are to go and build.
1 Thomas V. Moore, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi, Geneva Series of Commentaries (London: Banner of Truth, 1960), 58.
2 Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, on Haggai 1:2.
3 J. Alec Motyer, “Haggai,” in The Minor Prophets, vol. 3, A Commentary on Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, ed.Thomas Edward McComiskey (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1998), 979.
4 R. J. Snell, Acedia and Its Discontents: Metaphysical Boredom in an Empire of Desire (Kettering: Angelico Press, 2015), 11.
5 Josef Pieper, Faith, Hope, Love (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1997), 119.
6 Uche Anizor, Overcoming Apathy: Gospel Hope for Those Who Struggle to Care (Wheaton: Crossway, 2022), 21.
7 Canons of Dort, 5.14.
8 See G. K. Beale, The Temple and the Church’s Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God, New Studies in Biblical Theology (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 332, 395, on being a living “temple of witness.”
9 John Calvin, Commentaries on the Twelve Minor Prophets, on Haggai 1:2–4.
Mr Jae Kim is a minister in the Pukekohe Reformed Church
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