watch here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jfVJefABJM
Sunday,
January 17, 2020
When you hear ‘Midas’, do you think of a tire company or
a dangerously greedy King from ancient Greece? Or, do you think of a cliché? He has the Midas touch. So, he always wins and everything he touches
turns to gold. We kind of envy him. Should we?
Do we remember the story? ‘The
Midas Touch” didn’t turn out so well for Midas.
King Midas was helpful to Silenus, a satyr and friend of
the god Dionysus. To reward the king for
helping his friend, Dionysus granted him a wish, and Midas wished that
everything he touched would turn to gold.
He got what he thought desired.
Then supper time came. King Midas
had a hankering for a gyro. He grabbed
that pita bread, well, you try it. Go
ahead. Take a bite out of solid
gold. Dionysus
told Midas he would be freed of the blessing that turned out to be a curse if
he bathed in Pactolus River. If you go
there today, in Turkey, you’ll find gold in that river. Please, if you do this, don’t let yourself be
taken with desire for that gold as Midas was.
What do we desire?
Four years ago, a lot of voters wanted to see Democrats out of the White
House. Are they happy with what they
got? In the 2020 election, many of those
same voters wanted change again and got it.
Will they be happy, now? President
Trump wanted his supporters to, using his words, “fight for him.” Is he glad they did?
What do we desire?
In my dating life, before my wife Candy came along, I would meet a young
woman and convince her to go out with me.
More than once, out on the date, I discovered a new desire. I wanted the date to be over. As wonderful as the young woman would be for
someone, she and I were not good together.
I got what I wanted, the date with the girl, and then realized, I didn’t
really want that, not with that girl.
What do we desire?
The high paying job? What if we
have to work twice as many hours, sacrificing family time? What does the church desire? More people coming through our doors? Right now, if that happened, we’d have to close
completely due limited occupancy forced by the pandemic. But let’s say, after the pandemic, with no
restrictions, we hold this desire to see immediate, substantial growth. That might be great. But what if, someone brings conflict with
that makes it harder for us do the what God has given us to do? Don’t misunderstand! I do want to see us grow. I want to reach new people, but numeric
growth can’t be our ultimate desire. We
must long for God and his kingdom more than anything else.
In 520 BC, as the people of God resettled Jerusalem after
a 70-year exile, God sent the prophets Haggai and Zechariah, the governor
Zerubbabel, and the high priest Joshua to lead the people to rebuild the
temple. In doing this, they would
re-establish worship as the central activity of community life. Everything would revolve around their
relationship with God and that relationship was rooted in worship.
In Haggai 2, the prophet names a struggle they faced. The elders remembered their childhood seventy
years prior, when the temple stood and was admired by those who saw it. Visitors brought great gifts from far and
wide and gave them to the temple. The
oldest people in Jerusalem listening to Haggai remembered those glory days now
long past.
Listening to the prophet and watching the young people
lay the foundation for a new temple, their eyes filled with sad tears. “Who among you saw this house in its former
glory,” Haggai asked. After exile,
nations were not coming to Israel to see the temple. They certainly weren’t leaving lavish gifts
to show their appreciation. “How does it
look to you now,” Haggai continued. “Is
it as nothing in your sight” (2:3)? This
new temple was less glorious. The good
old days were gone.
We believe we know what we want, then we get it, and then,
often, we end up disappointed. Repeated
disappointments kill our optimism. We
come to willingly accept diminished glory. We assume disappointment is
inevitable.
Apart from God, it is!
The world is fallen. Sin blankets
the land because sin rules the human heart. Whatever natural disasters come our
way, our worst struggles come from the selfish way we confront the world around
us. Take the pandemic. The Coronavirus is not the worst happening of
the year 2020. The very worst is our inability
to compassionately, cooperatively deal with challenges that confront us. Sin, makes disappointment inevitable for us
when live apart from God. However we
don’t have to live apart from God.
This is at the heart of Haggai’s theology. Of the beaten down returnees, he singled out
the elders because once he spoke God’s word and turned their grief to joy, he
knew the rest of the community would follow.
When the elders rejoiced, the younger people would take the cue and join
in the celebration.
Once he named their disappointment, Haggai then slings a
flurry of commands the people would be glad to heed as would we. “Take courage!” He says it to the governor, to the priest,
and then to the people. Three times: take courage! Ask any therapist. It does take courage to name our pain, to
face it, and then, to declare ourselves free from it. We become so comfortable in our
disappointment that we forget how to live with joy. We fear the uncertainty of giving up our
sorrow.
Next Haggai commands, “Work!” Why?
“For I am with you, says the Lord” (2:4). “Do not fear” Haggai continues. Why?
“[God’s] spirit abides among you” (2:5).
Haggai’s predecessor in the prophetic ranks, Ezekiel, hit on the worst
aspect of the exile and the worst fate any human or society can face: God’s
absence. Exile felt like God had turned
His back on his people. During the
pandemic, during protests and riots, and in other calamities, people inevitably
ask, “Where is God?” This question comes
from the emptiness of feeling God’s absence.
But in Ezekiel 39:29 God promises, “I will never again hide my face …
when I pour out my Spirit on Israel.”
And in Haggai God assures his people, I am with you.”
After the commands and the promise, God then says through
Haggai, “I will shake the heavens and the earth, so that the treasure of all
nations will fill this house with splendor” (2:7). It’s a promise that the very thing the older
generation missed and was certain would not ever come again was in fact coming
again. The world will flood into
Jerusalem to give glory to God.
I read the New Revised Standard Version of the
Bible, which renders verse 7, ‘the treasure of all nations shall come.’ The New International Version renders
it “the desire of all nations shall come.” One commentator believes when Haggai
wrote this, he didn’t envision ambassadors from various kingdoms bringing gold
and silver. He had in mind the Messiah,
the anointed one of God.
Whether Haggai and the people understood this promise to
specifically anticipate a person, it is intriguing to think about the idea that
Jesus as Messiah fulfills this promise because more than any other value or
material prize, He satisfies our desires.
If Haggai didn’t exactly
have Jesus in mind, God, who inspired Haggai’s words knew what He was
doing. Haggai, filled with God’s spirit,
knew God was going to do something they had never seen. Sit with that. We’ve repeated the question, what do we
desire? I hope we understand what
Midas learned so painfully, that our desires require more than gold or material
riches to be fulfilled. We need to know
God is with us and is for us. The
promise of presence lay at the heart of Haggai’s prophecy. God says, “In this place I will give
prosperity.” We need to desire God.
God’s presence
dramatically changes the world. “I will
shake up the heavens and the earth,” we hear God say in Haggai (2:6). When Jesus died on the cross, this temple so
necessary in 520 BC, shook. The curtain
separating the holy of holies from the people tore in half. God would no longer hide, but in the risen
Christ would walk among the people, giving new life. When the women approached the tomb, angels
came, the earth trembled, the stone rolled aside, and they saw that death had
been forever beaten.
I don’t know how you would
answer the question, what do we desire?
I am not completely sure I know how I would answer. I know that Jesus – God in the flesh, our
Savior and Lord – satisfies our desires as only God can. He is the desire of nations and the joy of
our hearts.
Be aware of your
striving. Bring to mind what you desire
most. See it. Then set it aside for a moment, and in its
place pursue Jesus. Open yourself to
Him, all your disappointments, mistakes, broken dreams, and uncertainties. Hold it all before Him. Ask Him to meet you right where you are. Ask Him to lead you to where He wants you to
be. It’ll shake you up. He does that.
It will rock your world. You’ll
never be the same. And you won’t want to
be.
AMEN
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