What God Says When We Repent | Haggai 1:9–15

Have you ever been through a season when nothing seemed to work? The car and the water heater die in the same month. You finally get a little ahead financially, and an unexpected bill shows up. You work harder than ever and somehow end up further behind. Most of the time we can't say for certain why hard seasons happen — but in Haggai 1:9–15, God tells His people exactly what He says when we repent, and what was really behind their hardship all along. https://youtu.be/96WuM0aS7Do Table of contentsThe Setup: Sixteen Years of NeglectWho Was Really Behind Their HardshipLesson One: We Should Ask Whether God Is Disciplining UsLesson Two: Obedience and Fear Are the Right Response to God's WordLesson Three: We Find God With Us the Moment We ObeyLesson Four: God Works in Us While We Are WorkingThe Restart Doesn't Take as Long as the DriftGod With Us, Fully The Setup: Sixteen Years of Neglect The Jews had returned from exile to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. Then they stopped — for sixteen years — to focus on their own lives instead. Haggai 1:6–7 describes how that went for them: "You have sown much, and harvested little. You eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm. And he who earns wages does so to put them into a bag with holes." "Thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider your ways." (Haggai 1:6–7) Nothing was working out for them. So God told them what to do about it in Haggai 1:8: "Go up to the hills and bring wood and build the house, that I may take pleasure in it and that I may be glorified, says the Lord." They needed to make God a priority again and finish the temple. Who Was Really Behind Their Hardship Now we come to the passage for this post — and it names exactly who was behind their suffering: "You looked for much, and behold, it came to little. And when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why? declares the Lord of hosts. Because of my house that lies in ruins, while each of you busies himself with his own house." "Therefore the heavens above you have withheld the dew, and the earth has withheld its produce. And I have called for a drought on the land and the hills, on the grain, the new wine, the oil, on what the ground brings forth, on man and beast, and on all their labors." (Haggai 1:9–11) All this time, bad things had been happening to them, and they probably didn't know why. Maybe they thought they were unlucky. Maybe they assumed this was simply what life was like back in the Promised Land, or that they'd had a run of bad harvests. Maybe they blamed each other, or their leaders. But in these verses they learned that God Himself was causing it. In verse 9 He says, "I blew it away." In verse 11 He says, "I have called for a drought." It's one thing when bad things happen. It's another thing entirely to find out God is the one behind them. There's even a wordplay in the original Hebrew that Haggai's hearers would have caught immediately: Verse 9 — "God's house lies in ruins" — the Hebrew word is hareb Verse 11 — "God called for a drought" — the Hebrew word is horeb Same root. The message was built into the very sound of the words: "You left My house desolate, so I left your land desolate." The condition of their fields matched the condition of the temple. Lesson One: We Should Ask Whether God Is Disciplining Us There are two causes of suffering — trials and discipline — and understanding the difference matters more than we usually realize. Trials. We suffer because of the trials we experience. We did nothing to cause this suffering; it's simply the suffering that comes with living in a fallen world. Discipline. We also suffer because of the sins we commit. In this case, we did everything to cause it. Along with Job, 1 Peter is the other main book in the Bible dealing with suffering, and it lays these two categories side by side: "For this is a gracious thing, when, mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly." (1 Peter 2:19) — suffering from a trial we did nothing to cause. "For what credit is it if, when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure?" (1 Peter 2:20a) — suffering because we sinned, and God disciplined us for it. "But if when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God." (1 Peter 2:20b) — suffering for doing good: a trial. 1 Peter 3:17 lays the two side by side almost word for word: "For it is better to suffer for doing good (trial), if that should be God's will, than for doing evil (discipline)." And 1 Peter 4:15–16 shows both again: suffering as an evildoer is discipline we bring on ourselves, while suffering as a Christian is a trial we did nothing to cause. Consider how badly Job's friends got this wrong. They looked at his suffering and reasoned backward: he is suffering, therefore he must have sinned; God must be disciplining him. They put Job in the wro