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By Joe Slater Good stewards take care of whatever has
been entrusted to them. If God has entrusted you with home ownership, you
certainly ought to maintain that home sensibly and reasonably. But what about
God’s house? (No, not the physical structure in which we assemble, but the
Lord’s church!) Unlike today when God’s house is a
spiritual edifice, the prophet Haggai wrote during the Mosaic age when God’s house
was a physical temple in Jerusalem. Haggai’s people had begun to rebuild the
temple shortly after their return from captivity, but political and religious
enemies had conned the Persian king into forcing them to halt construction.
Through the years they had become content to leave the project on the back burner. Meanwhile the people built their own fine
homes and went about their business as usual. Through His prophet the Lord
asked them, “Is it time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses,
and this temple to lie in ruins?” (Haggai 1:4). The problem wasn’t that the Jews’ homes
were too ornate. It was that their zeal for God’s house had cooled to the
point of total disinterest. “This people says, ‘The time has not come, the
time that the Lord’s house should be built’” (1:2). How often do we use similar excuses to
justify our neglect of God’s work while we focus on ourselves? “It just isn’t
a good time!” (Really? When will the time be right?) God has entrusted us with the spread of
Christ’s gospel and the building up of the church. Are we being good
stewards? [Seed thought via Joseph Lewis (Flower Mound)] |
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