How would you know if God gave you a miracle? (a sermon from Ruth)

This is a sermon preached by my daughter Ruth on 23rd July at her church – Holy Trinity Lenton. She’s on the PCC, Safeguarding officer and occassional preacher.  She asked me to proof read this and I thought it rather good. https://www.lentonparish.org.uk/   (Photo is of Tim, Abi, Ruth, Lucy, me walking in Sheffield Park)

Haggai 2:1-9 sermon

How do you know when you’re home?

Maybe it’s a smell, a particular type of food, a sound, a feeling? For me, it’s the sound of a crackling fire and the heat of a warm cup of tea, and also the soft weight of one of my cats curling up on my lap. For me, a home without my cats doesn’t feel quite right.

For the Israelites, the temple in Jerusalem was the symbol that they were home. Since returning from exile, they have neglected to rebuild this temple, to rebuild the symbol that they are home, the symbol that God is with them.

Now, forgive me a brief segway into temples in the Bible before we dig into Haggai, but understanding the symbol of the temple in the bible is really important for where this sermon is going.

See, in the Old Testament, pre-Jesus times, the temple was a bit different to our modern day churches. The temple was the physical place where God lived, somewhere that brought heaven to earth. This was the place where God dwelled with his people. Earlier in the Old Testament, this temple is destroyed, and prophets speak of a New Temple, one who’s glory will be greater than the old.

Now, spoiler, they do rebuild this temple. But it gets corrupted again by people. And this is where we start to look at the New Testament for the fulfilment of this prophecy – for God to dwell with his people literally and physically, in the form of Jesus. Jesus becomes God’s connection with humankind, he becomes the temple. We get this in John – ‘²⁰ They 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.’

But that isn’t where the temple theme stops. When Jesus dies, the curtain in the temple that symbolically separates God and humanity is torn in two. After Jesus’ resurrection, he promises (and sends at Pentecost) the Holy Spirit to dwell in and among us. 1 Peter chapter 2 reads ‘And you are living stones that God is building into his spiritual temple’. Through Jesus and the Holy Spirit, we are the temple where God dwells.

Coming back to Haggai then. Daniel spoke last week about how God’s people have returned to their land, but they haven’t built the temple and God’s house has been neglected, which means the people are not truly back at home.

For the people of Israel, building God’s temple is relatively straightforward practically, brick by brick.

But if we are the temple where God dwells, how do we go about building that?

Happily, this passage in Haggai gives us some answers. So we’re firstly going to look at how we build a temple, but also what God promises us from that.

 

So, may my words and our thoughts be in the name of the father, son and holy spirit, Amen.

 

Verses 4 and 5 read – ‘but now be strong, Zerubbabel, declares the Lord. Be strong, Joshua son of Jozadak, the high priest. Be strong, all you people of the land, declares the Lord, and work. For I am with you, declares the Lord Almighty. This is what I covenanted with you when you came out of Egypt. And my spirit remains among you. Do not fear.’

This gives us I think three ideas about how to start to build a temple – remember, encourage, and work.

I want to throw a question out to you guys to ponder as we go through these different elements. In therapy, we like to ask something called the miracle question. If a miracle happened overnight and all your problems disappeared, how would you know? What would be different?

So hold in mind this question – if tomorrow you woke up and God was at the centre of your life, how would you know?

 

So, firstly, remember. God calls his people to remember the past, when he covenanted with them in exile. God calls his people to remember his presence now – that he is with them, and his Spirit remains among them, despite the lack of a temple to remind them of this. So part of building a temple is to take the time to remember God, remember what he has done for us and remember that he is with us.

This could look like classic good habits of establishing a practice of reading the Bible, or attending church. These of course are great ways of grounding ourselves to God again, remembering God’s promises in the Bible. But there might be other ways that keep God at the centre. I’ve got a colleague who always says Grace before his lunch. I’ve started putting an alarm on my phone for the beginning and end of the working day to pray.

Unlike the Old Testament guys, we also have the example of Jesus to remember. He is our reminder that God dwells within us, that the curtain has been torn.

 

Secondly, encourage. God is incredibly encouraging to his people. He tells them three times to ‘be strong’, and ends with ‘do not fear’. Building a literal temple is hard and difficult. Building a metaphorical temple within ourselves where God dwells is even harder. And so we can try and do what God is modelling for us here, and encourage each other. Encourage and build up each other to keep making God a priority, and create a community at home with each other.

For me, Beth and Tim are constantly excellent at this – I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve ranted to Beth on a run about something and she’s asked – have you prayed about it? (and no, I hadn’t!). I’ve got a wonderful colleague who’ll pop into my room and say little things like – remember who the boss is!

What are ways you can encourage each other today? Can you catch up with someone over coffee after today and ask, deeply and intentionally, how are you? How can I help? How can I pray for you? Life groups are also great for this – we’re trying to get better in our life group at asking each other – where have you seen God in your life this week?

 

Thirdly, get to work. Often we can wait to feel motivated before we start making changes. To wait to feel God’s presence and then that’ll motivate us to pray/read the Bible/live differently. But you wouldn’t wait till you were fit to start going to the gym.

The fifteenth century philosopher and theologian Blaise Pascale said – ‘it is then habit that convinces us … we must resort to habit once the mind has seen where the truth lies, in order to steep and stain ourselves in that belief … we must therefore make both parts of us believe: the mind by reasons, which need to be seen only once in a lifetime, and the automaton by habit’.

Remember the question I asked at the beginning? If tomorrow you woke up and a miracle had happened and God was at the centre of your life, how would you know?

How would you behave and act as you woke up, made breakfast, got dressed, spent time with your family/pets/friends, went to work or university or the shops or the park?

A few weeks ago I had some weeklong university teaching blocks. This was pretty exhausting and by the end of it all of us were pretty tired and grumpy and irritated with each other. Unfortunately this resulted in a few different people making a few different complaints and comments about others. And goodness me did I want to join in the complaining – I too was very tired and grumpy and lots of people were driving me up the wall in lots of different ways. I had absolutely no desire or motivation to be the better person. And yet, earlier in the week at life group, I’d prayed to respond better to the frustration and irritation that I felt. I’d made that commitment to try and get to work. And I was by no means perfect, but I knew that engaging in rants and gossip wouldn’t be working to build a temple where God dwells.

For me, getting to work and living as though I am a temple where God dwells looks like making daily (and some days, hourly) commitments to do something different. To speak kindly about someone instead of hurtfully behind their back. To speak confidence and hope to pessimistic anxiety ridden course mates. To choose what I pay attention to – Instagram or my husband?

Of course it’s not that easy to build a temple. We’ll make mistakes and slip up all the time. But I’d rather build a messy, wonky, odd looking temple that God dwells in than not bother in the first place.

Because also, at the end of this passage in Haggai, God calls us to a bigger and brighter future. He promises that the glory of this present house will be greater than the glory of the former house. When we build a temple, we can expect great and incredible things to happen.

God promises that ‘in this place I will grant peace’. In this temple we build, God promises us peace. And people notice – One of the biggest compliments Tim and I had for our wedding was from our photographer, who after the service said I’ve photographed lots of church weddings, but there was just something different and particularly joyful about yours.

Since starting the new job and course, I’ve tried to make a commitment to prioritising God and putting in habits like prayer more – some weeks more successful than others. But I know it’s working, because everyone at work keeps telling me how calm and peaceful I am.

We don’t need to go to a temple to have the presence of God with us. We worship a God who surpassed the need for a temple and came to earth as human, who broke down the need for a physical big building and made us all little temples that God lives in. When we have a relationship with Jesus and have him at the centre of our lives, when we remember, encourage, and work at building our little temples, we carry God – we carry home – with us wherever we go.

If tomorrow you wake up and a miracle has happened and God was is the centre of your life, how will you know?