A Prophet's to Real Estate Investment
Haggai 1:1-15

The book of Haggai is about real estate investment. At least I think it is. I admit that my judgment may be slightly skewed. Carol and I have been looking for a house -- so far unsuccessfully -- and when you are looking for a house it is hard to think of anything else. It becomes a preoccupation.

It has also been highly educational. For example, I have learned that people involved in real estate are amont the most optimistic people in the world. To a good real estate broker there are no bad houses -- only opportunities. There are no small houses -- just cute ones. The realtor we started with -- he retired in May, but I don't think it was our fault -- Anyway, the realtor we started with had a favorite phrase. Whenever a problem showed up in a house we could count on him to say "You could always . . ." The house is awfully dark -- "You could always knock some skylights in." Hmm, Don't like that panelling. "You could always slap some paint on it." Too small? You could always expand into the garage.

Now this sort of talk really scares me. You see, I have observed some of you who are homeowners. And I have a small idea of how much time and money it takes just to keep a house from becoming a dump. Just keeping the yard from becoming jungle and keeping up with peeling paint and fixing collapsed gutters takes more time than most of us have. And once you own a house you don't have much choice about it. You've got to protect your investment, right? It's part of caring for your family. It's part of being a responsible homeowner, right.

That's exactly what the people Haggai prophesied to thought. They were just trying to be good responsible homeowners. They were just trying to maintain a modest middle-class lifestyle.

And what could be wrong with that? Surely God must approve of hardworking people who just want to make their lives a bit more comfortable? Surely keeping your home looking good is virtuous?

But then this troublesome Prophet comes along. Listen to Haggai, ch. 1

-------- Read Haggai 1:1-15.

Some historical context will help here, so let me take a bit of a detour:

The book of Haggai was written in 520 BC. That's much later than the other prophets we have covered. Hosea, Amos, Habbakkuk and most of the other minor Prophets all prophesied the judgement of God that was to come. The culmination of that judgement came in 586 BC when Jerusalem was destroyed -- including the temple -- and the leaders of Judah were taken into exile in Babylon. But by the time Haggai prophesied the Babylonian empire had been conquered by the Persians and many of the exiles had returned to Judah. God had restored his people to their land, as he had promised he would.

The problem was, there was very little to come back to. The land had been devastated. Jerusalem was in ruins. Much of the land had been taken over by squatters. So the exiles who returned had their work cut out for them. And they were doing their best to scratch out a decent life for themselves -- reclaiming their farms, rebuilding their homes, fending off hostile neighbors. It was alot of back breaking work just to live -- just providing for their families took about all of the time they had. They knew that the temple was in ruins and they would have liked to do something about it, but they just didn't have the resources.

Now it should not be too difficult for many of us to sympathize with these people. They were hardworking people who were struggling to make a go of it. Can you really blame them for feeling like they just couldn't take on a massive church building project just then? It wasn't that they didn't CARE about the temple. Of course they wanted the temple to be rebuilt. It just wasn't quite time yet. They were just too busy. Later, when the kids were gone off to college. Later, When they had finished their education. Later, when the business was going better -- then they would set to work on the temple.

And along comes Haggai, saying (vs. 4) "Is it time for you yourselves to be living in panelled houses while this house remains a ruin?"

Basically Haggai's message is: You're making very bad real estate investments. You're investing all of your time and energy into trying to build comfortable houses for yourselves, and you've completely neglected the house of God. And look what your investment has earned you. Are you really better off for all of your work? Are you really happier? Are you really more secure? You work and work and it comes to nothing. Why? Because you're chasing after your own security and your own comfort rather than seeking God who is the true source of security and comfort.

Listen to verse 9: You expected much, but see, it turned out to be little. what you brought home, I blew away. Why? declares the Lord Almighty. Because of my house which remains a ruin, while each of you is busy with his own house.

The main message of Haggai is very simple: If you want good returns, invest in God's house rather than your own house. Invest in God's real estate rather than your own real estate.

Now this raises an immediate problem: Why would God care about haveing a house? The whole of the heavens and the earth cannot contain God.

The most high does not live in houses made by men. As the Prophet says, "Heaven is my throne and earth is my footstool. Where is the house you will build for me?" (Acts 7:47; Is. 66:1)

The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands as if he needed anything (Acts 17:24)

Why does he make such a fuss over a temple? Because the temple represented his presence and his GLORY. It was through the temple that he made his glory known to the people of Israel and through them to all the nations. And God desires above all else to have his glory known -- to be recognized and acknowledged for who he is. So by neglecting the temple in order to build their own houses, the people of Judah were basically saying, our comfort is more important than your Presence and your Glory.

So when God says, "Invest in God's house rather than in your own houses" he is saying, "Invest in my GLORY rather than in your own glory."

His point is simply this: The only investments worth your time, your energy, your money are those things which will bring Glory to God. Only what's done for God will have lasting value.

Now for the people of Judah applying this lesson was rather clear cut. They simply had to start picking up stones and mortar and start building. And that's what they did [Read 1:13 ff]

For them the task was well-defined.

But what about for us? What does it mean for us to invest in the house of God rather than building our own houses?

1. It means giving our WORK over to God.

By this I do not mean participating in an occasional workday at church, or joining a committee -- those may be good things.

But what God calls us to is to refocus our attitude toward all work.

It's like this: We tend to view work like a pie -- its something to be sliced up into pieces.

Now this pie represents your available work time -- not including sleep and other non-productive hours -- maybe 100 hours. Right off you slice off half of the pie and give it to your employer. You take another big slice for work at home. You need a slice for liesure -- God commands you to rest, after all.

And in the end you're left with a pretty good slice for God. Probably this is a bit unrealistic, but let's give each other the benefit of the doubt.

Now what's wrong with this picture? The problem is that God really wants the whole pie, uncut. He wants you to invest all of your work for his Kingdom. [This doesn't mean quitting your job -- it means refocussing how you view your job]

But we tend to be like the people of Judah -- we see most of the pie as belonging to us -- and we see God as competing with other things for a rather small pie. But when we try to keep the pie for ourselves, two things happen:

1. WE make ourselves miserable. We grow to resent the demands that God and other Christians make on us and consequently we forfeit God's blessing.
   
   
2. The work of God languishes. The church simply cannot thrive on on part-time labor. EVERY believer is called to full-time service. That means that I am not this churches only full-time worker. Every one of you is a full time worker in the Kingdom.
   
   

So stop moonlighting. God wants all of your work.

Building God's house means giving our work over to God. It also means . . .

2. . . . giving our FEARS over to God

After the people of Judah started working on the temple, they very quickly became overwhelmed and discouraged.

Read ch. 2:1-5

The task was just too great. And to make things worse, some of them remembered the glory of the former temple and they fell into despair. They wept because they could not see how they could ever get the task done.

Their problem? They were allowing themselves to be overcome by what they could see. And what they could see was a pile of rubble and a small, weak, overwhelmed band of people.

What was God's response? Be Strong and Do not fear. Why? Because God is the real builder and he has unlimited resources.

Like the temple, the Church of God is a real fixer upper.

When you begin to invest yourself in the work of God, it's very easy to become discouraged, to feel that it's a futile task. The work is too great. The workers are too few. We're crazy to be wasting our time and our lives this way. Why don't we just go back to work on our own houses.

If this is the way you feel -- if you retreat from the work of God because it seems overwhelming -- you need to give your fear over to God. The work IS too big for you, but God is much bigger.

Finally, investing in the house of God . . .

3. . . . means PURIFYING ourselves before God.

We see this in Haggai's third prophesy, in chapter 2:10-14

The point of this dialogue is simply this: It's much easier to mess something up to fix it. The effects of sin spread like a virus. The cure is much slower and more painful.

Give me a nice, well-kept house and a sledge hammer and I could destroy it in a matter of hours. Repairing it takes much longer.

So it is with sin. Sin is the great destroyer of the house of God. It is like a sledge hammer. By allowing sin to go unchecked you can, in a matter of minutes destroy what takes years to build.

So investing in God's house requires not just giving your work and your fear to God -- it also means purifying yourself before God, lest you destroy what you are trying to build.