Sermon Schedule — Haggai: Building God’s House

What are we living for? What ambitions and goals direct our lives? Whose plans and purposes do our lives revolve around? Faced with life’s challenges and comforts, it is easy for us to become spiritually complacent. How might our priorities be in need of a reset? 

Written to the Jews returning from Babylonian exile, the Book of Haggai challenges us to “consider our ways”. Like so many of us, these former exiles were discouraged by trials and distracted by the cares of life. So concerned were they with their own houses that they had neglected God’s house, which still lay in ruins. The temple stood for God’s covenantal relationship with his people. So, rebuilding the temple would show the people’s trust in God and in his commitment to his covenant. Speaking through his prophet, the LORD calls his people to action: Be strong and work! Build God's house! 

God is gracious. He does not simply command, but he also promises his people a future of blessing and hope. The LORD of hosts, who is sovereign over all creation, promises to be with us. He will dwell with us by his Spirit. He promises to build an even more glorious house. He promises to raise up a King and to establish an everlasting kingdom that cannot be shaken. Therefore, let us humbly and honestly consider whose house we are building. Let us be strong and build God’s house, for we have a sure hope of greater glory and of an unshakeable King and kingdom. May the Book of Haggai help us to rightly order our priorities for the new year!

The songs that we have been singing at our services can be found at this Spotify playlist: