The First Word from the Lord
A warning
This is what the LORD Almighty says: “Give careful thought to your ways. 8 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. 9 “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. 10 Therefore, because of you the heavens have withheld their dew and the earth its crops. 11 I called for a drought on the fields and the mountains, on the grain, the new wine, the oil and whatever the ground produces, on men and cattle, and on the labor of your hands.”
The remedy for the bad things that happen to people who build their own houses at the expense of the Lord’s house is in verse 8. “‘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.” Cutting the trees of Lebanon and getting them the one hundred plus miles to Jerusalem was backbreaking work. Besides being hard work, it was also costly and it took much time.
But there was a reason for all of the pains: “That I may take pleasure in it and be honored.”
What an incentive to build God’s house! It honors him! It is the expenditure of time, money, thought, and strength that lends worth to a gift. A gift of thousands of dollars that comes as an afterthought and does not even amount to the interest on the principal is not much of a gift in the eye of the receiver. On the other hand, a gift that may be in its sum total modest and unassuming to the outsider comes as a prize to the person who knows the work and effort that may stand behind it.
So it is with God’s house. Our church may not be the grandest church building in the world. Our organization may not boast the most eloquent and gifted people on its roster. Our effort to preach and teach may not be carried out with finesse and beauty. But never mind that. It is God’s house. We are the ones who call it that—and so does God. The people who go by on the outside do not call it God’s house. It is beautiful regardless of the structure, if it was built in love. The Lord knows the motives of hearts.
He also knows a cold shoulder and an indifferent yawn. And he does something about these; everything goes to ruin. The misery comes “because of my house, which remains a ruin, while each of you is busy with his own house.”
You can’t get much clearer in your speech and insinuation than that. It is a judgment. We squirm under the accusation. We don’t like it. But there it is! The only way we can get out of it is to be sure that we are putting God’s house before our own. “Seek first [the kingdom of God] and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you” (Matthew 6:33).
There is nothing more important that a ruler (or pastor) can teach his people than this. With this as knowledge and practice, life prospers and is good. It is a sweeping promise. We must take God at his Word, both with regard to the warning and with regard to the promise.
A warning is perhaps in order here that we don’t try to second guess the visible evidence and try to ascertain the crime. In other words, it isn’t for us to judge every crop failure of a Christian farmer or every accident or setback a Christian might experience as some direct reference to unfaithfulness on that person’s part or disregard for God’s house and God’s work. Job would be an example. Sometimes the Lord gives, and sometimes he takes away. Still in all, the blessing lies waiting. “I was young and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread” (Psalm 37:25). And in Job’s case we read that at the end of his suffering, the Lord blessed Job and gave him twice as much as he had before. The reason has a direct connection with the fact that in his life, Job put God first.