The Heart of the Issue - Haggai 2:10-19

Growing up, my extended family would gather together around Christmas time to have a family celebration. And when I say extended, I really mean extended. I’m talking about my grandma and her 8 siblings, their kids, and their kids' kids. You get the picture… It was quite the sizable gathering. To accommodate all of these people, we had to meet out at a local bible camp, and we would use part of their overnight area called “Harmony Springs”. As you may have guessed by the name, Harmony Springs was a western themed little town, complete with a sheriff's office and quaint little chapel.

But what always stood out to me were the false front buildings.

You could walk down the central little street of Harmony Springs and these buildings would seem to loom 2 or even 3 stories high, yet if you circled around behind them you’d discover that they were in reality just small, single story buildings.

As I was studying Haggai 2 this week, the image of those false front buildings kept popping into my head. Because the Israelites, just like the buildings of Harmony Springs, presented a great image of godliness. They were now being obedient to God’s call to build the temple! Yet behind the façade there was very little to boast about.

In this passage of Haggai, God asks the people who have started building the second temple, “Where is your heart at?” He uses the mosaic law to demonstrate his desire not just for outward conformity to the image of a holy people, but of true repentance. If I was to contemporize his message, it might go something like this…

Imagine someone is sick (probably not that hard to do in this day and age). If you, as a healthy person go up to them and touch them, does your health spread to them? Of course not. That’s just not how health works. But conversely, if a sick person comes in contact with you, can their sickness infect you? Unfortunately, that is all too likely.

God here is illustrating that just having the holy temple restored doesn’t make the people of Israel holy. Holiness, like health, doesn’t spread by association. However, the sin in the people’s hearts does spread, so that even in their outward obedience as they build the temple, their hearts are full of selfish ambition and worry about the future. I fear that not much has changed in the hearts of people, since Haggai gave this message of God. We too can do all the right things but even in our best deeds are hidden motives of pride, fear of man, and selfish gain.

Our hearts are the problem.

But God’s grace is the solution.

Because it is at this point that God has Haggai make a pivot. Nothing has changed in the people. They are still in their sin, still have their issues. But God says in verse 19 of chapter 2, “but from this day on I will bless you.”

What an awesome moment of God’s grace and mercy overcoming human sin and defilement! That while we were still in sin, God would choose to bless us! We aren’t privy to how the people of Israel responded to this gracious blessing, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t know the effect that God’s grace has on our broken hearts. In fact, the apostle Paul quite clearly lays out the effects of God’s amazing grace on our maligned hearts in the second chapter of his letter to Titus.

“For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.”

• Titus 2:11-14

Did you catch that? Not only does God’s grace save us, but trains us to renounce ungodliness and live to righteousness. God’s grace is the answer to our heart problem. But even more amazing is the last part of those verses. Because now there is an association that will make you clean.

The association of building the temple didn’t make the people of Israel holy before God, just as a healthy person’s association with the sick doesn’t make the sickness disappear. But our great God and Savior Jesus Christ gave himself up to death, so that by our association with Him, we are made pure! In Jesus Christ, the grace, mercy and justice of God join together to purify sinners.

We are given a new heart as we behold the cross, and so we receive the ultimate blessing of God, his Spirit in us.

So when we are tempted to make our outward performance the marker of our standing before God, may the Spirit remind us that our hearts are the issue, but God’s grace is the solution.