Biblical Roles
Tom Shrader walks through Haggai chapter 1, showing how the returning Israelites neglected the temple while building comfortable homes for themselves, and draws three diagnostic symptoms of misplaced priorities: self-centeredness, worldliness, and ingratitude. He argues that disordered affections—loving what we should love least and neglecting what we should love most—are as common today as they were 2,500 years ago. The teaching closes with a call to renewed gratitude, urging listeners to return to the cross until spiritual vitality replaces apathy and God is genuinely placed first in time, talent, and resources.
“We either put God first or we give Him the leftovers.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Standalone Teachings
Recorded: 2001 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 37 min
Themes: priorities, gratitude, selfishness, apathy, worldliness, putting god first, spiritual vitality, disordered affections, feeling spiritually dry, struggling with materialism, distracted by comfort, busy professional, new believer, parent, feeling apathetic toward god, mid-life Christian
Scripture: Matthew 6:33, Matthew 22:37-38, Haggai 1:1-9, Mark 1:32-33, 2 Peter 3:18, Philippians 2:21, 1 Peter 2:5
Theological Themes: sanctification, biblical stewardship, repentance, haggai, lordship of christ, sin nature, worship, returning to god
Full Transcript
Misplaced Priorities
A priority is simply that which we place first in our lives. What is first in your life? That is your priority. If you are not sure, another way of figuring it out is to ask: what are you passionate about? What gets you excited? What gets you fired up?
I heard a story about two golfers who played together for years. Both were tired and enjoying one of their regular rounds. They were on the 17th hole, just about to finish up — a beautiful hole right along the roadway — and one of them was standing over his putt when he looked up and saw a funeral procession coming by. He stopped, backed off, took off his hat, covered his heart, and waited. He didn't move while that whole funeral procession went by. His friend looked at him afterwards and said, "Jimmy, I didn't realize you had such respect for the dead." And he said, "Well, she was a wonderful wife for 40 years." His priority was golf.
It is a pretty good laugh, but seriously, if our priorities are out of order, then we as God's people and His church will never accomplish all the things that He has for us. There are some of us whose lives are in total disarray because we have chosen to put something other than Jesus Christ first. St. Augustine identified that the nature of human sinfulness and the source of most human evil is that we have disordered affections. He said we love things most that we actually should love the least, and we love things least that we actually should love the most.
Our Lord Jesus understood that this would be a struggle for us. That is why He tells us in Matthew 6:33, "But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well." And then later in Matthew 22:37-38, "Jesus replied, 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and the greatest commandment.'" Sometimes we think that putting God first in our lives is actually a sacrifice, but God says it is the way to have our life in order.
The Historical Setting of Haggai
Misplaced priorities may be one of the most common and most serious problems in the church today, but it is not a new problem. It is a problem that the prophet Haggai dealt with over 2,500 years ago. Haggai is one of the minor prophets and is the second shortest book of the Bible, behind that very familiar Obadiah. Haggai is just 38 verses. His ministry lasted only five months, and we have the very specific dates of that ministry: from August 520 BC to December 520 BC. Understanding the history around Haggai's message will help us apply his message to our lives today.
Haggai was a contemporary of Zechariah, and he spoke to the returning Israelites who had come from exile in Babylonia. When we looked at the prophet Habakkuk a few weeks ago, we saw how God told him that the Babylonians were going to come and destroy Judah and Jerusalem, wipe out the area, and take the people into exile. That was in 620 BC, and it actually happened 34 years later. In 586 BC, the Babylonians came to Jerusalem, destroyed the city, destroyed the temple, and carried off most of the people 1,100 miles to Babylon, where they lived in forced exile. The temple was destroyed for the first time since Moses had built the tabernacle, and it was a time of religious stagnation for the people of Israel living in Babylon.
Then in 539 BC, God raised up the Persians under King Cyrus, and they defeated the Babylonians. Cyrus issued a decree allowing the captives to return to Israel. Only God could have done that. So under the leadership of Ezra and Nehemiah, the exiles — Haggai among them — returned to Jerusalem. They were instructed through the prophets to rebuild the temple when they arrived. That was the first priority, the first thing they were to do, and they got right at it.
However, 16 years later, Haggai comes with his message, and it appears that the rebuilding of the temple had been forgotten. All of their energy had been consumed with the tasks of building their homes, their vineyards, their farmlands, and their businesses. The work of building the temple had been set aside.
Haggai Chapter One
I would like to ask you to open your Bibles to the book of Haggai. It sits right between Zephaniah and Zechariah, and if you work from the back of the Old Testament, it goes Malachi, Zechariah, and then Haggai. I would like to read chapter 1, verses 1 through 9.
"In the second year of King Darius, on the first day of the sixth month, the word of the Lord came through the prophet Haggai to Zerubbabel, son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua, the son of Jehoshadak, the high priest. This is what the Lord Almighty says: 'These people say the time has not yet come for the Lord's house to be built.' Then the word of the Lord came through the prophet Haggai: 'Is it time for you yourselves to be living in your paneled houses while this house remains a ruin?' Now this is what the Lord Almighty says: 'Give careful thought to your ways. 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. This is what the Lord Almighty says: Give careful thought to your ways. Go up into the mountains and bring down timber and build the house, so that I may take pleasure in it and be honored,' says the Lord. '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—'"
Misplaced Priorities Then and Now
Even though this message was written 2,500 years ago, it is very applicable for us today because it teaches us to give careful thought to our ways. Now, it is our ways that he is talking about, not just our thoughts. A changed heart is revealed by changed actions. Look at verses 7 and 8 again — look at those action words. This is what the Lord Almighty says: "Give careful thought to your ways. Go up into the mountains and bring down timber and build the house so that I may take pleasure in it and be honored, says the Lord." Those are action words.
Priorities are about what we love, and what we love most — and love is an action word. Are the activities of our life about seeking possessions and pleasures and prestige? Are we putting our efforts into those things, thinking that they will satisfy us? Do you think today is any different than 2,500 years ago when the Prophet Haggai said to the people: "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."
How many times have we taken our check and said, "This is not enough — we are working so hard"? Haggai teaches us to give careful thought to our ways. Instead of seeking the pleasures and possessions and prestige of this world, Jesus says to us that we are to seek first God's kingdom. We are to seek first to please the Lord and glorify Him. Then we will be putting first things first, and we will have our priorities straight.
The Danger of Good Intentions Deferred
For the people of Haggai's time, the idea was this: we have to get ourselves established. We are just getting back to the land — let us get our houses settled, our businesses established, commerce going, trade established, income coming in. Then we will take the money we receive from doing all these things for ourselves and put it into building the temple, and it will all be set. Well, sixteen years later, nothing had happened.
They had good intentions at first. They thought they would just put it off for a little while, and then they got busy and procrastination set in. Before long the thinking became: "I just do not feel that the Lord desires me to work on the temple right now. He wants me to get things established in my own life." And beyond that, this was tough — there was opposition. The Samaritans who lived in the north were coming down to Jerusalem and harassing the people as they attempted to build the temple. They did not want the temple rebuilt. They did not want Jerusalem becoming repopulated. They were very happy up in Samaria without them. Opposition came in, and the people started to lose their zeal for serving God and working on His house.
So God brings them a convicting question in verses 3 and 4. He says, "Then the word of the Lord came to the prophet Haggai: 'Is it time for you yourselves to be living in your paneled houses while this house remains a ruin?'" The Lord is pointing out that they seem to have overcome the obstacles to build their own houses, their orchards, and their farmlands. With that question, God reveals their problem: they had inverted priorities. They had put themselves first.
Busyness as a Spiritual Barrier
It seemed then, just as it seems today, that there is never enough time to do God's work. We are so busy. Do you know what the number one response to the question "How are you doing?" is? It is not "Fine." It is "I am so busy." We all feel it. Tom read from Peggy Noonan's article last week, and she so succinctly described all of the things that jam into our lives and get our focus off the most important thing. Usually we think, "Oh, it is just for a little while — I will get this settled and then get back to serving God." And we think we are the only ones, that it is this time, this age.
But it was also the case in Jesus' time. Jesus Himself experienced incredible busyness. In Mark chapter 1, verses 32 and 33, it says: "That evening, after sunset, the people brought to Jesus all the sick and demon-possessed. The whole town gathered at the door, and Jesus healed many who had various diseases. He also drove out many demons." Jesus was swamped with people everywhere He went — people constantly clamoring for Him and for His time. But the center of His time on earth was His obedient relationship to the Father, always ready to respond in love to Him. No matter how busy, Jesus understood what His priority was.
Haggai is not only asking us to reorder our activities — he is calling us to change our center. He is asking us: what is our center of gravity? What is the center from which our thoughts, our actions, our activities, and our priorities flow? If that center is in the wrong place — if it is anything other than our relationship with God — then everything else is wrong as well. As followers of Jesus Christ, 2 Peter 3:18 says that we are to "grow in the grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ" — first and foremost. But how easy it is to say, "I will get to it, Lord — just got to finish redecorating the house, just got to get the kids to one more soccer game." Misplaced priorities hindered the work of God in Israel 2,500 years ago, and they do the same thing to us today.
Three Symptoms of Misplaced Priorities
What I would like to do is look at three symptoms of misplaced priorities that lead to spiritual apathy and indifference to the work of God.
The first is self-centeredness. Again in verse 4, God asks: "Is it time for you yourselves to be living in your paneled houses while this house remains in ruin?" And then again in verse 9, He says: "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." That term — busy with his own house — captures the heart of the problem.
Misplaced Priorities: Self-Centeredness
The phrase can be translated as "continually running after his own house." It conveys the idea of being completely preoccupied with something to the extent that a person devotes all his time, all his energy, and all his resources towards that chief concern. That is what was happening to the people of Israel in Haggai's time. All of their focus was on their own houses and their own lives.
It was not that way when they first got back to Jerusalem. They understood the need to re-establish the temple, to re-establish a central place to worship, for the people to come and to serve and to worship Him. This would be the place that the Messiah would come and teach. They understood the central nature of the temple to their everyday life, and they went right to work at it. But slowly but surely things crept in, and they started to move away from it until they moved completely away.
We see the first symptom of misplaced priorities: self-centeredness. Instead of God's work being the center, instead of their relationship with God being the center of their life and their activity, the building of their own houses had become the center. For many people in the world today, real meaning in life is the next vacation, career success, or stepping up the income ladder. It is a life based on pleasurable experiences. Many of us have toiled our whole life to gain a pleasurable lifestyle only to find that it is empty and meaningless.
King Solomon, the wisest and richest man who ever lived, was a man who had nothing withheld from his appetite. He was a great builder, a great businessman, and a great lover of women. Every imaginable pleasure on earth was his, yet he discovered that those things alone could not satisfy his soul. Solomon started well, but as the wealth, the riches, and the prestige of his position crept in, they came to totally dominate, and he ended his life unhappy. Vanity — all is vanity.
Lest you think this was a problem only for Old Testament times, Paul in Philippians 2:21 says, "Everyone is looking out for their own interests, not for those of Jesus Christ." Even in Jesus' day, even with our Lord walking the earth among them, Paul could still say that everyone was concerned with their own interests. We get so taken up with our own affairs, our own welfare, our own comfort, our own desires and ambitions, that we have little thought and little time for the things of God. It is not just the church that suffers — we as individuals suffer.
Spiritual apathy and indifference draws us away from our first love. We either put God first or we give Him the leftovers. We need to consider our ways. Are we running after the things of this world and relegating the things of God to second place in our lives? Has God become a bit-part player in our lives, or is He the chief purpose of our existence? If not, then we need to get our center right again. We need to place Him at the center of our life and make decisions throughout the busy activities of our week that choose to serve and follow Him.
Misplaced Priorities: Worldliness
The second problem we face when our priorities are misplaced is worldliness. Again, looking at verse 4: "Is it time for you yourselves to be living in your paneled houses while this house remains a ruin?" When God refers to their paneled houses, He is highlighting the fact that these houses were not just comfortable — they were luxurious. There are not many trees in Israel, and in order to panel their houses, the people had to import wood from Lebanon. This was expensive, time-consuming, and difficult, yet despite all of the obstacles, they managed to supply themselves with paneled housing.
I have been to the area around Jerusalem, and I can assure you there are not many trees there. As a young child growing up in a Jewish family, my grandmother would plant a tree in Israel for my birthday. I cannot tell you how disappointing that was. I would receive a little note card that said a tree had been planted in Israel on my behalf. I was six years old — I wanted a G.I. Joe. If any of you have grown up Jewish, you know that was a significant thing, precisely because there are so few trees. Yet the people made the effort to bring that wood in for their houses.
The problem was not the paneling itself. It was the contrast between their houses and the state of God's house. The temple remained a ruin, with only a foundation built, while they were importing expensive wood from Lebanon. They had plenty of time to build their own houses. Peter says in his first letter, in chapter 2, verse 5, that we are spiritual houses and we need to be built up into a holy priesthood. How can that possibly happen if we are putting off the needs of our spiritual lives and concentrating on the things of this world? Jesus said that life does not consist in the abundance of our possessions, yet we spend our best time on those things. We are constantly upgrading to the newest, fastest, and best — I remember when a 286 was an awesome computer.
Please do not misunderstand. God is not pointing His accusing finger at the people simply because they had built beautiful homes or were living in comfortable surroundings. That, in and of itself, is not wrong, nor is it sinful. What God condemns is the sinful, materialistic, worldly-minded, self-centered attitude by which these people were driven to desire these things for themselves while caring little about the work of God. It was the fact that their hearts were set more upon material things than upon the spiritual things of God. They had their priorities wrong. There is nothing wrong with living in a nice, comfortable home — the issue is always one of the heart and where our deepest affections lie.
Ingratitude as a Symptom of Misplaced Priorities
A well-furnished, well-equipped home is not a problem. There is nothing wrong with making improvements to our property, changing our car every couple of years, or taking a nice vacation with our family. These things are not wrong or sinful in and of themselves. But they become wrong when our hearts are set upon them to the extent that acquiring those things is more important to us than the things of God and the work of God.
Self-centeredness and worldliness are two symptoms of misplaced priorities. The third is ingratitude. In verse 4, there is a little phrase that says, "You yourselves." In the King James Version it reads, "For you, O ye." What we find in the original is a repetition of a personal pronoun, which happens in the Hebrew language when the writer wants to emphasize, to put stress on, or draw attention to the words. John Calvin renders it this way in his translation: "Is it a time for you, you to dwell in covered houses and this house to lie desolate?"
The point God is making to the people of Israel is: How could you — you of all people — do such a thing? You who have enjoyed His privileges and His blessings. You, the people upon whom He set His love out of all the peoples of the earth. You, the people He chose for Himself, protected, returned from exile, and with whom He made His promises and kept them. How could you do this?
A Picture of Fading Zeal
When the people first returned from exile, they were excited. They went right to work. Is that not a picture of us? When we first come to know Christ, when we first realize that God has showered His love and grace and mercy upon us, and in repentance and faith we come to Him as our Savior, we are so excited. I know I was. When I first became a believer, I wanted to do anything for God. I even volunteered to serve in the junior high ministry at the church I was attending — and thank God there were only two kids in that junior high.
I am the worst singer in this entire room. There is not anybody close. In fact, if any of you have sat in front of me at a service, you have probably been one of those people who turned around and gave me a look. But I did not care when I first became a believer. I sang loud, and I received plenty of those looks. As time wore on, though, serving two kids in that junior high ministry week after week became a burden. I grew embarrassed about my singing and started to mouth the words rather than sing them, losing that same excitement, that same gratitude, that same appreciation for the God who had saved me.
I had been ready to do anything. Then, slowly, it diminished. My priorities changed. I became less committed, less devoted to serving God. I think that happens to us so easily. We become like the church at Ephesus, of whom it was said: you have lost your first love.
Consider Your Ways
Would you give careful thought to your ways? Has your sense of gratitude to God for what He has done in saving you from your sin diminished over the years, even to the extent that it no longer motivates you to serve Him? If that is the case, then I suggest we take ourselves to the Scriptures again and remind ourselves that we have been brought from death to life, and remind ourselves of the horrors of hell from which we have been rescued.
I suggest we take the time to stand, in our mind's eye, at the very brink of hell's abyss and think about that terrifying sight from which we have been saved. Then we need to go back to the Gospels, read through them, and again in our mind's eye take a walk to Calvary — and there look upon the One who was bruised for our transgressions, who was pierced for our iniquities. As we do that, we need to remind ourselves that no man has greater love than this, that he lays down his life for his friends.
We need to stand once again under the shadow of the cross and think about the fact that Jesus Christ gave His all for us. We need to stay there under the shadow of the cross until that sense of gratitude returns, until that self-centeredness is destroyed, until that worldliness is overcome, and the spiritual apathy is replaced with a spiritual vitality that motivates us to seek first His kingdom.
Building for God's Honor, Not Our Own
We need to go back up to the mountain and bring down the timber and build the house. Not so people will drive by on Elliot and say, "What an incredible facility the people of East Valley Bible Church have." Not so that we can sit in luxurious accommodations and know that we built this. No — Haggai says we are to go up into the mountains and bring down the timber and build a house so that God may take pleasure in it and be honored.
When we have our priorities right, when we place Him first in our lives, God takes pleasure in it and is honored. The greatest feeling I have when I work here at East Valley Bible Church is when Tom pokes his head in my office and says, "Neil, I really appreciate what you do." My boss takes pleasure in what I am doing. How much more should we want the Lord of the universe to take pleasure in what we do? And He says He does when we place Him first.
Ladies and gentlemen, it is never too late to get our priorities right. It is never too late to get Him back into the center of our lives, never too late to recommit ourselves to seeking Him first. John Wesley said, "Indeed, whoever comes to seek this first will soon come to seek this only." That is what Matthew 6:33 is about: seek Him first.
This book is about building a temple. But today, for us, it is about building the temple of the Holy Spirit — and that is us. By placing Him first in our lives and honoring Him with the best of our time, the best of our talent, and the best of our resources, we build that temple in a way that brings Him pleasure and honor.
Putting Him First
When we truly put Him first, we honor Him in the way He deserves. Larry Ross, who is in charge of our small groups, tells me that roughly 30% of the people who sign up for small groups leave after one or two weeks because the commitment is too much — it takes too much time. If you are one of those people, I would encourage you to call that leader back and get back in the group. If you are thinking about joining a small group and have not yet made the call, make the call. If you are thinking about serving in children's ministries, we have a thousand kids here each week — make the call, make the time, and put Him first.
Heavenly Father, thank You so much for the reminder of where You need to be in our lives. Lord, it is so easy to push You out just for a little while, and then that little while gets longer and longer, and pretty soon it gets very difficult to get You back. Lord, help us to be reminded by the prophet Haggai that we must place You first, that You must be the center, and then together, as the Church of Jesus Christ, we can accomplish so much for You. Thank You for that privilege, in Jesus' name, amen.