Dear Friends:

This is the fourth message in a series on the Book of Haggai. Visit our blog for the first three messages in the series.

In the second year of King Darius, in the seventh month, on the twenty-first day of the month, the word of the Lord came by the prophet Haggai, saying: Speak now to Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua son of Jehozadak, the high priest, and to the remnant of the people, and say, Who is left among you that saw this house in its former glory? How does it look to you now? Is it not in your sight as nothing? Yet now take courage, O Zerubbabel, says the Lord; take courage, O Joshua, son of Jehozadak, the high priest; take courage, all you people of the land, says the Lord; work, for I am with you, says the Lord of hosts, according to the promise that I made you when you came out of Egypt. My spirit abides among you; do not fear. For thus says the Lord of hosts: Once again, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land; and I will shake all the nations, so that the treasure of all nations shall come, and I will fill this house with splendor, says the Lord of hosts. The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, says the Lord of hosts. The latter splendor of this house shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts; and in this place I will give prosperity, says the Lord of hosts (Hag 2:1-9).

There was likely no one still living in Jerusalem who had witnessed Nebuchadnezzar destroy Solomon’s temple and haul away its treasures 66 years before.

But their parents and grandparents had told them the stories of the beauty and splendor of the symbol of the Jewish people and its unique link to God. With each telling the glories of the temple must have grown in imagination.

Now, the people rebuilding the temple labored under the burden of that former greatness and began to regard their efforts to rebuild as pitiful and shabby by comparison.

Anyone who is going to move forward with the Lord is going to have to get their head out of the past. This may be difficult given the power of history to shape our allegiances and faith and the toxic contagion of bitter resentment over loss.

The past is one of the pieces of luxury baggage that a person rich in pride, guilt or hoarded memories must off-load if he or she is going to enter the narrow gate into the kingdom of heaven.

The people restoring the temple found their vision and materials did not match the stories and in increasing shame and doubt they began to carp, complain and criticize. Discouragement was setting in like an early frost blighting the unharvested crops.

Here is always a challenge– Are we serving God or are we serving the past?

It’s a challenge that must be faced by a spouse who daydreams of a carefree but lost youthful love to escape the realities of bills, diapers, runny noses and the demanding routines of marriage.

It is a spirit-draining temptation to believers longing for the soul-padded comfort of their former pastor and church family rather than thinking and praying through new perspectives and relationships.

Do we humble ourselves to God’s leading in the realities of the present or do we elevate our memories of what was or might have been to first place in our hearts and minds?

Nostalgia for the past is an idol that must fall. Jesus warned us to “Remember Lot’s wife” (Luke 17:32), because she put her affinity for what lay behind her before following God and thereby forfeited the new life and faith that he was leading her family towards (Gen 19:26).

The children of Israel received a fresh supply of manna every day they were in the wilderness (Ex 16:13-35). They were not to hoard it because that would be a denial of the evergreen grace of God’s presence in the driest desert where their cravings for the savory stews of Egypt were a symptom of the addictive enslavement from which the Lord in his great mercy had delivered them.

Is it wrong to want what those who came before us possessed– a nice home and family, a profitable occupation, a beautiful place of worship, perhaps? Yes, if those desires are the only way we see and measure God.

We think we are restoring God when we seek to mend and revarnish the old furniture that decorated his dwellings with those who came before us, but we cannot relegate God to museums that we visit on the occasional field trip to marvel how it must have been then.

The people working on the temple wanted to restore the glory of the past. When they couldn’t match the material and craftsmanship, they deemed themselves failures and unworthy.

That’s the point when the Lord stepped in through Haggai with the jolt of reality in the form of a question. “Who is left among you who saw this house in its former glory? How does it look to you now? Is it not in your sight as nothing?” (Hag 2:1-3)

Then the Lord followed up with a cascade of grace–

Take courage . . . work, for I am with you according to the promise that I made you when you came out of Egypt . . . My spirit abides among you; do not fear. I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land; and I will shake all the nations, so that the treasure of all nations shall come, and I will fill this house with splendor . . . the silver is mine, and the gold is mine . . . the latter splendor of this house shall be greater than the former . . . and in this place I will give prosperity, says the Lord of hosts (Hag 2:4-8).

The Lord wants the real thing, not replicas of the past, and he told them so. The very definition of the “real thing” is God’s presence with his people. He is doing something new and everything necessary to his purpose is at his disposal. The splendor of the temple is that he is there, not what we bring to it.

We study the past for evidence of God’s leading, but that evidence is just the dry bone’s of Ezekiel’s vision, unless God breathes new life into us and through us (Ez 37).

The problem with our nostalgic reverence for the past is that it keeps us from seeing what God is doing in us and for us and through us in the present. There is nothing that anyone had from God in the past that he is not willing to give to us now and more (John 14:12;1 Cor 2:8-10).

We are not step-children or poor relations depending on the spiritual “hand-me-downs” of our ancestors. No, “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; everything old has passed away; see everything has become new” (2 Cor 5:17).

How great is your God and what can he do for you? Well, you don’t know do you because he hasn’t finished yet. You can know as his child and his handiwork that “The one who began a good work in you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil 1:6). You can know that “When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory”( Col 3:4).

His power to do these things is complete. “I tell you, ‘something greater than the temple is here,'” said Jesus referring to himself (Mt 12:6). It is Jesus Christ who is indestructible. “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up again” (John 2:20). The good news is that we are the living stones of that rebuilt temple (1 Pet 2:4-5).

Don’t resist his work of renewal by clinging to your past or by trying to repeat it in your relationships with the Lord and with others. Regardless of whether you consider your past, good, bad or indifferent, he has one thing to offer you for it–forgiveness, which indicates his judgment about what is required to deal with it.

In place of your past, he gives you a future with hope (Jer 29:11). Until then he gives you steadfast, unceasing love and new mercies every morning. Great is his faithfulness (Lam 3:22-23).

Next week’s message will discuss consecration.

“O taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him (Ps 34:8).

Under the mercy of Christ,

Kent

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Please note that the content and viewpoints of Mr. Hansen are his own and are not necessarily those of the C.S. Lewis Foundation. We have not edited his writing in any substantial way and have permission from him to post his content.

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Kent Hansen is a Christian attorney, author and speaker. He practices corporate law and is the managing attorney of the firm of Clayson, Mann, Yaeger & Hansen in Corona, California. Kent also serves as the general counsel of Loma Linda University and Medical Center in Loma Linda, California.

Finding God’s grace revealed in the ordinary experiences of life, spiritual renewal in Christ and prayer are Kent’s passions. He has written two books, Grace at 30,000 Feet and Other Unexpected Places published by Review & Herald in 2002 and Cleansing Fire, Healing Streams: Experiencing God’s Love Through Prayer, published by Pacific Press in spring 2007. Many of his stories and essays about God’s encompassing love have been published in magazines and journals. Kent is often found on the hiking trails of the southern California mountains, following major league baseball, playing the piano or writing his weekly email devotional, “A Word of Grace for Your Monday” that is read by men and women from Alaska to Zimbabwe.