Last night was my first taste of being in a book club. I'd read the book (Shockwave: Countdown to Hiroshima, by Stephen Walker) and really enjoyed it. It brings up a huge number of topics to talk about, and everyone in the group found it really opened their eyes to the incredible history surrounding the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. If you are interested in history, or physics, or war, or ethics, or aviation, human drama and even a little bit of romance; you will enjoy this book. The ethical issues that it raises are particularly interesting, and it was fun to toss these around a little bit in the group last night. These ethical issues are very relevant for us today when considering conflict around the world and even in our own personal lives. Particularly our tendency to dehumanise those we are in conflict with - we don't think of them as people but as savages or fanatics or whatever. And because we don't think of them as people with feelings and families and histories and hopes...people just like us... we are excused in treating them in ways that we ourselves would not wish to be treated. We forget the words of Jesus that are described as the Golden Rule - treat others as you would like to be treated yourself. The great tragedy of war is that it is an arena in which living by that rule is almost impossible. In fact the event of war is brought about by the forsaking of that rule by those in power. "Forward he cried, from the rear, and the front ranks died. The Generals sat, and the lines on the map moved from side to side." - from "Us & Them" by Pink Floyd.
I felt that Stephen Walker did a good job of reflecting the moral and strategic complexity of the decision to drop the bomb on Hiroshima (and later, Nagasaki) without seeking to represent his own personal views too strongly or even go down the line of a debate on the issues. I had only a slight grizzle, which was that I felt that the characters tended to be identified a little too strongly with their particular idiosyncrasies (like the repeated mention of General Groves' weight and love of chocolate), almost to the point of caricature. I felt that maybe that didn't represent those people quite fairly, but as Gary pointed out last night, we tend to remember people by their idiosyncrasies, so I guess that it was only natural for this to be reflected in the book.
To sum up, a very good read. 4 stars.
Tuesday, 6 February 2007
Monday, 5 February 2007
Building God a Temple - Haggai chapter 1
Building God a
Haggai 1:1-15
Introduction –
Does the concept of a Temple have any significance for us today? Do we care about what the temple was and what used to happen there? What relevance could it have for us? That's what we are going to discover!
The Temple in Jerusalem
- Brief recap from last week
- Key Idea: The Shekinah glory of God dwelt in the
18 Then the Jews demanded of him, “What miraculous sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?” 19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.” 20 The Jews replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” 21 But the temple he had spoken of was his body. 22 After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.
The Coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost – the
Ephesians 2:19-22
19 Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. 21 In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. 22 And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.
1 Corinthians 6:19-20
19 Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 20 you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.
(So the Bible depicts the Church as God’s
This is a key concept for us to understand: The tangible presence of God with humanity has moved from being resident in the Temple in Jerusalem, to being in the Person of Jesus Christ, to being in the People of Jesus Christ - the Church. The Church is God's Temple.
- To understand our relationship with God and each other (hence Hebrews
- To understand our role as God’s people
- To understand and apply the Bible to our lives
Case Study – Haggai 1:1-15 (read)
The Message for the Israelites Back Then
“Give careful thought to your ways. You have neglected my temple and have laboured for your own satisfaction. I have frustrated all your efforts in order to show My displeasure, so now come and labour for My house and My glory as you ought to.”
Remember the significance of the
But is this rebuke and command from God fair? I want just for a few minutes to put ourselves in the shoes of the Israelites who God is speaking to, to know a bit more about their circumstances and how they might feel about what God is saying to them through the prophet Haggai.
The Jews had been allowed to return from Exile in
I want you to understand how daunting a task this would have been for them. It had taken a full-time work force of 153,600 men 7 years to build the original temple. Some estimates place the value of the gold used in the original temple at 50 billion dollars at today’s prices!
Put yourself in the position of the 50,000 men, women and children who also need to rebuild their own homes and farms, as well as rebuilding all the infrastructure of the nation. You can see how this would be a daunting task. And they could never hope to be able to restore it to it’s former glory – they just didn’t have the resources.
Nevertheless they begin. They clear away the rubble from the temple site and rebuild the altar. Despite their fear of the people around them, they re-establish sacrifices and feast days. For 6 years the work goes on, and the foundation for the new temple building is laid.
But a couple of things happen. Those who remember the former temple are distraught as they realise that what they are building could not compare to the glory of what was destroyed. They become despondent and discouraged. Opposition from the surrounding peoples also increases, with threats made to the Jews and counsellors employed to find ways to stop the Jews from completing their task. Discouragement from within, and opposition from without work together to stop the people from doing what they needed to do in order to glorify God and proclaim Him to the nations. Instead they become a people who have no sense of God’s presence with them.
For 10 years the nation is in this condition. They are spiritually shackled, and as we learn in our passage, they are also frustrated materially. They work for little reward, and life is just all-round frustrating and depressing.
How would you feel if you were in this situation, hearing Haggai’s rebuke?
Imagine being the governor, Zerubbabel. What might he say to God? “Well I did try! I worked hard, I put all my personal resources into it. But all I got in the end was discouragement and opposition. What could I do? The old people kept complaining that what we built wasn’t as good as what used to be there before. The surrounding people kept harassing us and threatening us. What choice did I have but just to let things slide for a while?”
But do you know what Zerubbabel did? He allowed God’s rebuke to stir up his heart to obedience. God worked in him and the rest of the people to renew the work. They wanted God’s presence in their nation. They wanted to experience God’s blessing in their lives once more.
So they start work again. Sure enough what they are doing gets noticed and the Persian officials come to find out what is going on. But God looks after the people, and instead of the Persians calling a stop to the work, as the enemies of the Jews were hoping; the King of the Persians actually told his local officials to pay the expenses for the project, and provide all the priests needed in order to restore temple worship.
So instead of experiencing God’s chastisement, the people start experiencing His provision for them. It didn’t happen though until they heeded His voice and responded in obedience and faith.
The Message for Christians Today
I’m going to ask a series of questions to find out how we should apply the message of this story to our own lives.
1) Do we as Christians have a responsibility to build God a
(Remember the verses earlier – the temple is God’s Church, every local church and every individual believer that makes up the church. God lives within his people.)
Ephesians 4:11-13
11 It was he [Jesus] who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, 12 to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up 13 until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.
2) Have we experienced God’s chastisement because of our failure to be concerned for God’s
Haggai 1:6
6 You have planted much, but have harvested little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it.”
Types of chastisement:
· Physical – lots of effort, but a lack of results! God is not blessing their efforts, instead He is frustrating them. Would He do this to us?
· Spiritual – same deal! Lots of effort, but little in the way of results. Answers to prayer? Effective witness to the lost? Joy and peace and hope and love and contentment… where are they? Perhaps a lack of fruit in these areas signal God’s chastisement.
Today I speak as a teacher, not a prophet. I do not feel compelled to say “God says I am chastising you!” the way a prophet might. As a teacher I say, “the Bible urges us to ask ourselves this question: “Is God chastising me?””
Are you experiencing the consequences of a lack of concern for God’s
3) What are the things that hold us back from working on God’s
- Discouragement from Within
The people became disheartened and lost their zeal for the work. That happens today as well. We become disheartened when we encounter criticism. We become discouraged when we do not feel cared for. We become discouraged when we feel let down. We become discouraged when we doubt the value of our own efforts. We become discouraged when we forget that it is God who works through us, that it does not depend on our resources alone. The best way to counteract discouragement from within is to choose to be an encourager. That was the message of Hebrews 10 last Sunday. Consider how you can be someone who encourages others in their walk with God and their service for Him in building the Church. That encouragement starts with your own commitment to the body of believers.
- Opposition from Without
Just as there were enemies outside the Jewish community who wanted to stop them from glorifying God, experiencing His presence and being witness to the nations; so there are enemies who want to frustrate the Church in those endeavours. We need to recognise that Satan and the systems of this world are actively trying to stop us from being the temple that God has designed us to be. If we allow them to, they will stop us. Dealing with spiritual opposition is a big topic for study, but for today we need to mention it and be aware of it. We need to resist the Devil, flee from temptation and pursue a holy lifestyle. Pray for one another, and especially for leaders, because we all need God’s help to stand firm.
- Confusing the external realities with spiritual realities
Remember the older people who were able to remember the previous temple that stood over 70 years earlier? They were discouraged because they thought the new temple could not match the glory of the old one. They were mistaken. A little later in the book of Haggai God tells Zerubbabel that the glory of the new house would actually be greater! Those people who were discouraged were looking at the external glory – the beautiful architecture, the professional choirs, the opulence of the building and courtyard areas. They forgot that what made the temple glorious was the fact that God’s glory was inside it!
Was it wrong to grieve? No, of course not. But their attachment to the past stopped them from moving forward with faith and hope and joy.
We can just as easily look at the external trappings of our worship life, and get caught up in them. We can focus on the place, the type of teaching, the style of music, the structure of worship, the instruments used, the events and programmes run and so on. What matters is the presence and leading of God!
I hope this study on the Temple and our passage in Haggai has helped you to understand these important topics more fully. I hope that over the last 2 weeks you have come to more fully appreciate the significance of God’s presence within you and within us as a group of believers. I hope that God has challenged you with what it means to be designed for His glory, just as the
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
