A Word About the Right Time
Sermon
SEEK GOOD, NOT EVIL
that you may live
It's good to see that God gets what he wants, once in a while. The events of this text differ from those we've heard of the last Sundays. Here there is no rampant trampling on the poor, no idolatrous affluence, no thwarting of justice against which Micah, Zephaniah and Haggai railed.
A remnant of people had returned to Israel some eighteen years before from exile, an exile imposed by Darius and then relieved by Cyrus. Eighteen years is not a long time to resettle after your country has been devastated. Things were not going too well, chapter one tells us. They were sowing much and harvesting little, eating but never having enough; drinking but never being full; clothing themselves yet they were never warm; earning wages but putting them into a bag with holes. It was a situation altogether unsatisfactory for them to add the worries of temple-building, certainly on the face of it.
It's worth noting that God takes credit for their not doing well. He's had a hand in it. It wasn't as we say, "Just the luck of the draw." Why had he done so? God answers his own question: "Even when things are not going well, I will ask that first things be first, namely, that I be first. Obviously, I am not first if my house lies in ruins while you busy yourselves, each with his own house."
In other times and other places wealth, affluence, success threatened to pull the people away from God. In this case, hardship threatened to do the same thing. Have you ever wondered why the poor people of the world do not automatically flock to Christ? George MacDonald says, "If it be things that slay, what difference if it be things they have or things they have not?" In the case of the poor it is things that they have not that keep them away.
Being poor, the poor say, "First, let us establish ourselves. Then we will build a house for the Lord." Sounds like the yuppies of the eighties: look out for the self, get the proper education, be sure the salary is one thousand dollars for every year of your life, delay marriage; and once married, delay children, and then at the right moment ... Why build a church when your own home leaves much to be desired? Delay makes sense.
We have our own version of delay. It is persuasive, reasonable, thoughtful, and religious. Our version is, "You have to love yourself well enough before you can hope to love others." What sounds persuasive, reasonable, thoughtful and religious is in fact self-centered. The Biblical way is that it is in loving others that the love one wants to store up for oneself comes to be. It is in losing one's life that one finds it. So delay doesn't make the deepest sense.
Not in this case. Delay here meant, "God is coming in second, and he cannot come in second even for those who are less than well off. He always asks first place. So now is the time." Paul Scherer had a good word about the preacher and time: "Because preaching takes time, the preacher makes time - which is the only way I know to have time."
"Now is that time," says Haggai. "Now is that time," says God.
What God was asking was not in some self-centered way to have a house for himself just as they wanted houses for themselves. It was rather in their working together in the building of the new temple that they would once more become aware of him, become aware of the meaning of community, become aware of each other and their need for each other, and their need for God and God's desire to give them the riches of his presence.
Many a congregation and, perhaps, you as a member of this congregation or of another, have had that precise experience. You with others gave priority to building a house of worship and discovered with all the work the splendid benedictions that came through it all. They were unlooked for, but there they were. And it came from working together with other Christians for a common goal. When the building was finished, wasn't there a feeling of regret as well as elation, elation because the building was completed, regret because the times of mutual coming together were no more?
The priority that God is asking of time and resources for himself is not for himself alone. Rather, in that strange mathematics or chemistry of his, he thus is enabled to give us more of himself. Above all else, that is what he wishes to do. "Work, for I am with you," says the Lord of hosts, "according to the promise I made with you when you came out of Egypt. My Spirit abides with you, fear not, take courage."
Some wanted to hold back because they were afraid the splendor of the new temple would not match that of the old. Not so, says God. "I will fill this house with splendor." That is, with himself and his gifts. His Spirit is there; that is, his life, love, joy, peace, and kindness.
The One who is filling the house with splendor is the One who brought them up out of the land of Egypt, that momentous event which would thereafter touch all other events. That God who brought them out with a mighty hand and a stretched out arm, it was he, none other, who would be with them. The language of gold and silver is used to persuade the doubters of the fullness of his love and presence. "All of the gold and silver from the ends of the earth are mine and I'm giving them to you. And you shall have prosperity. You shall have prosperity of a kind you have not known."
"To be with you ..." What good news to hear in these days of loneliness and exile and alienation. The One who made and kept the Egyptian release pledge to Haggai, continues to make it to us and to keep it. Emmanuel, "God with us," not just a friend or a neighbor or a parent or a brother or a sister or even a lover, but God with us. God guarantees it in a strange way, sends our Companion on the way to the cross. It's confusing until we realize that by that action he is saying, "You can't name a time or a place where I cannot be with you. Even death cannot separate us."
Because his people were in exile under Darius and Cyrus, it did not mean He ceased to be with them, as at first they thought. He went with them into exile. He was with them in exile. He returned with them from exile. He was with them after exile.
So it is with us. We may have less than we ought, less than we would like to have. We may not love ourselves the way we ought. We would wait until we do things properly for ourselves.
In that moment God comes to us and says, "Don't you know who I am? Don't you know the One who brought you out of Egypt? Don't you know who is the chief of exiles? My Son, crucified outside the city walls as a criminal outcast? And he is my pledge to you. There is no time, there is no place where anyone can be that I cannot be."
"And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband, and I heard a great voice from the throne saying, 'Behold the dwelling of God is with men. He will dwell with them and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them.'
"And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God, the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine upon it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp the Lamb." (Revelation)
Remember, it all happened, it all came to be because we trusted His timing instead of ours.
In the fourth year of King Darius, the word of the Lord came to Zechariah in the fourth day of the ninth month, which is Chislev. Now the people of Bethel had sent Sharezer and Regemmelech and their men, to entreat the favor of the Lord, and to ask the priests of the house of the Lord of hosts and the prophets, "Should I mourn and fast in the fifth month, as I have done for so many years?" Then the word of the Lord of hosts came to me; "Say to all the people of the land and the priests, When you fasted and mourned in the fifth month and in the seventh, for these seventy years, was it for me that you fasted? And when you eat and when you drink, do you not eat for yourselves and drink for yourselves? When Jerusalem was inhabited and in prosperity, with her cities round about her, and the South and the lowland were inhabited, were not these the words which the Lord proclaimed by the former prophets?" And the word of the Lord came to Zechariah, saying, "Thus says the Lord of hosts, render true judgments, show kindness and mercy each to his brother, do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor; and let none of you devise evil against his brother in your heart."
(Zechariah 7:1-10)
A remnant of people had returned to Israel some eighteen years before from exile, an exile imposed by Darius and then relieved by Cyrus. Eighteen years is not a long time to resettle after your country has been devastated. Things were not going too well, chapter one tells us. They were sowing much and harvesting little, eating but never having enough; drinking but never being full; clothing themselves yet they were never warm; earning wages but putting them into a bag with holes. It was a situation altogether unsatisfactory for them to add the worries of temple-building, certainly on the face of it.
It's worth noting that God takes credit for their not doing well. He's had a hand in it. It wasn't as we say, "Just the luck of the draw." Why had he done so? God answers his own question: "Even when things are not going well, I will ask that first things be first, namely, that I be first. Obviously, I am not first if my house lies in ruins while you busy yourselves, each with his own house."
In other times and other places wealth, affluence, success threatened to pull the people away from God. In this case, hardship threatened to do the same thing. Have you ever wondered why the poor people of the world do not automatically flock to Christ? George MacDonald says, "If it be things that slay, what difference if it be things they have or things they have not?" In the case of the poor it is things that they have not that keep them away.
Being poor, the poor say, "First, let us establish ourselves. Then we will build a house for the Lord." Sounds like the yuppies of the eighties: look out for the self, get the proper education, be sure the salary is one thousand dollars for every year of your life, delay marriage; and once married, delay children, and then at the right moment ... Why build a church when your own home leaves much to be desired? Delay makes sense.
We have our own version of delay. It is persuasive, reasonable, thoughtful, and religious. Our version is, "You have to love yourself well enough before you can hope to love others." What sounds persuasive, reasonable, thoughtful and religious is in fact self-centered. The Biblical way is that it is in loving others that the love one wants to store up for oneself comes to be. It is in losing one's life that one finds it. So delay doesn't make the deepest sense.
Not in this case. Delay here meant, "God is coming in second, and he cannot come in second even for those who are less than well off. He always asks first place. So now is the time." Paul Scherer had a good word about the preacher and time: "Because preaching takes time, the preacher makes time - which is the only way I know to have time."
"Now is that time," says Haggai. "Now is that time," says God.
What God was asking was not in some self-centered way to have a house for himself just as they wanted houses for themselves. It was rather in their working together in the building of the new temple that they would once more become aware of him, become aware of the meaning of community, become aware of each other and their need for each other, and their need for God and God's desire to give them the riches of his presence.
Many a congregation and, perhaps, you as a member of this congregation or of another, have had that precise experience. You with others gave priority to building a house of worship and discovered with all the work the splendid benedictions that came through it all. They were unlooked for, but there they were. And it came from working together with other Christians for a common goal. When the building was finished, wasn't there a feeling of regret as well as elation, elation because the building was completed, regret because the times of mutual coming together were no more?
The priority that God is asking of time and resources for himself is not for himself alone. Rather, in that strange mathematics or chemistry of his, he thus is enabled to give us more of himself. Above all else, that is what he wishes to do. "Work, for I am with you," says the Lord of hosts, "according to the promise I made with you when you came out of Egypt. My Spirit abides with you, fear not, take courage."
Some wanted to hold back because they were afraid the splendor of the new temple would not match that of the old. Not so, says God. "I will fill this house with splendor." That is, with himself and his gifts. His Spirit is there; that is, his life, love, joy, peace, and kindness.
The One who is filling the house with splendor is the One who brought them up out of the land of Egypt, that momentous event which would thereafter touch all other events. That God who brought them out with a mighty hand and a stretched out arm, it was he, none other, who would be with them. The language of gold and silver is used to persuade the doubters of the fullness of his love and presence. "All of the gold and silver from the ends of the earth are mine and I'm giving them to you. And you shall have prosperity. You shall have prosperity of a kind you have not known."
"To be with you ..." What good news to hear in these days of loneliness and exile and alienation. The One who made and kept the Egyptian release pledge to Haggai, continues to make it to us and to keep it. Emmanuel, "God with us," not just a friend or a neighbor or a parent or a brother or a sister or even a lover, but God with us. God guarantees it in a strange way, sends our Companion on the way to the cross. It's confusing until we realize that by that action he is saying, "You can't name a time or a place where I cannot be with you. Even death cannot separate us."
Because his people were in exile under Darius and Cyrus, it did not mean He ceased to be with them, as at first they thought. He went with them into exile. He was with them in exile. He returned with them from exile. He was with them after exile.
So it is with us. We may have less than we ought, less than we would like to have. We may not love ourselves the way we ought. We would wait until we do things properly for ourselves.
In that moment God comes to us and says, "Don't you know who I am? Don't you know the One who brought you out of Egypt? Don't you know who is the chief of exiles? My Son, crucified outside the city walls as a criminal outcast? And he is my pledge to you. There is no time, there is no place where anyone can be that I cannot be."
"And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband, and I heard a great voice from the throne saying, 'Behold the dwelling of God is with men. He will dwell with them and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them.'
"And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God, the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine upon it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp the Lamb." (Revelation)
Remember, it all happened, it all came to be because we trusted His timing instead of ours.
In the fourth year of King Darius, the word of the Lord came to Zechariah in the fourth day of the ninth month, which is Chislev. Now the people of Bethel had sent Sharezer and Regemmelech and their men, to entreat the favor of the Lord, and to ask the priests of the house of the Lord of hosts and the prophets, "Should I mourn and fast in the fifth month, as I have done for so many years?" Then the word of the Lord of hosts came to me; "Say to all the people of the land and the priests, When you fasted and mourned in the fifth month and in the seventh, for these seventy years, was it for me that you fasted? And when you eat and when you drink, do you not eat for yourselves and drink for yourselves? When Jerusalem was inhabited and in prosperity, with her cities round about her, and the South and the lowland were inhabited, were not these the words which the Lord proclaimed by the former prophets?" And the word of the Lord came to Zechariah, saying, "Thus says the Lord of hosts, render true judgments, show kindness and mercy each to his brother, do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor; and let none of you devise evil against his brother in your heart."
(Zechariah 7:1-10)
