“To Ezra the priest, a teacher of the Law of the God of heaven…” Ezra 7:12

Spread all over the Old Testament are four books dedicated to this same incident of rebuilding the temple and the City of Jerusalem. When one reads Ezra, Nehemiah, Zechariah and Haggai together you get a fuller sense of how the effort was successful, and particularly how the various ministers (remember, you are a minister) teamed together to get the job done. I want you to find your role in this business of God’s, this business of finding, funding and building a place.

• Teacher Ezra
• Prophet Zechariah, Haggai
• Preacher Zechariah, Haggai
• Apostle Nehemiah
• Elders Many local leaders mentioned
• Priests Many mentioned, besides Ezra
• Intercessors All of the above
• Financiers The leaders first, the Jewish people, foreign governments
• Builders Some volunteer, some hired.

Building the kingdom is a team effort. While Artaxerxes recognized Ezra’s role as a teacher and priest, Ezra trumpeted the role of his co-laborers. “So the elders of the Jews continued to build and prosper under the preaching of Haggai the prophet and Zechariah, a descendant of Iddo. They finished building the temple according to the command of the God of Israel and the decrees of Cyrus, Darius and Artaxerxes, kings of Persia.” (Ezra 6:14) I love this verse because we see Ezra honoring others: he honored the prophets for their prophecies and preaching, he honored the people for their work, and he honored the government leaders who supported the initiative. It wasn’t “all about me” – Ezra’s leadership made space for and blessed the team that God put together.

God does projects to build people. He builds places by growing people. He teaches us his processes by building places. God is a team God, and I am grateful for the many people who have sown into our place—prophecies, prayers, dreams, visions, finances, fasting and good counsel.

What is your role in the team? Is it prayer—if so, are you praying? Is it prophecy—if so, are you speaking God’s word into the situation? Is it preaching, teaching, encouraging? Is it standing in the gap as a priest, repenting of sin, and reconciling things to God? Is it building? And is it giving? No doubt God has more than one role for you to play; I am sure that spectator is not one of them. There is little merit in waiting to see what happens and then jumping in after the fact. Find your roles and fill them, and experience, as Haggai would say, the Lord stirring up your spirit together with your team mates.

“According to their ability they gave to the treasury for this work” Ezra 2:69

We pulled off the busy main road onto a side street in an industrial area in Lagos. The streets had potholes where water had gather, sidewalks were nominal, and street vendors sold evening snacks to passing pedestrians. The church where we were speaking was located in a former factory or warehouse. It was a warm evening and the expansive hall had fans whirling overheard to compensate for the absence of air conditioning. Lyn and I preached to a congregation of mostly younger people. By US standards the setting was very modest.

Two things happened as we left the building: first, the pastor handed us an envelope with a “very small token of thanks for our ministry.” The second was that they pointed out a large brick and mortar building under construction behind the hall we had spoken in. It looked to be massive. “That is our new building,” they told us. When we got home we opened the envelope expecting a few bills in the local currency, and found the envelope filled with $100 bills. We spoke for only an hour to people we had never met in an area we would call poor, and the “small gift” was about 20 times larger than that which we receive for speaking at churches in the US!

In recent devotionals I mentioned three objections to giving for a property: The timing is not right, place is not important any longer, and putting money into buildings is not good stewardship. The fourth objection is this: “I just don’t have the money…I cannot afford to give.”

God does not expect us to give what the next person gives. “According to their ability they gave to the treasury for this work” Ezra 2:69 He also does not want us to give because we feel coerced; he wants our cheerful gifts. As we give we find ourselves in one of four camps:

1. The “I cannot afford to give” camp

2. The “My gift is so small that I will not bother to give” camp

3. The “This is what I can allocate” camp, or

4. The “I cannot afford not to give” camp.

We suspect that the Lagos church where we preached lived in Camp 4. We expected nothing, we did not share any needs, we had never met them before, and yet they blessed us. Why? They are doing such a big work that they have to live in the stream of God’s supernatural provision, and they know that giving and receiving keeps that stream flowing. What camp are you in? What, if God were asking, is your real ability to give?

“give careful thought to your ways” - Haggai 1:5

In the previous devotionals we addressed objections #1—the timing is not right—and #2 – place is not that important any longer. The third objection is this: “Putting money into buildings is not good stewardship, so I am putting my money into more direct spending on immediate needs.” This is not a bad argument, but it fails to recognize the difference between capital and working capital. We know that the nature and use of each of these is different. Scripture calls it “seed for sowing” (that is capital) and “seed for bread” (that is, working capital). A best practice for kingdom people is to (a) build capital, and (b) give capital towards capital projects. Yet many believers amass capital, often in foundations or investments, then mainly give it to “daily bread” needs, rather than to planting a wheat field or building a bakery. Why is this? First, there is more immediate gratification. A hungry person with a grateful face today gives a better emotional high than one hundred hungry people getting bread every day two years from now.

A second issue with this logic is that it often results in people building their own capital base, and neglecting God’s capital base. In the book of Haggai (a variant of Jeshua, by the way) he cautions against this rationale.

”Give careful thought to your ways. You have planted much, but have harvested little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it.”

Three times God makes this gentle appeal to his people… “give careful thought to your ways.” It is not a heavy handed rebuke, because earlier the people had given generously. Ezra 3:7 records their giving: “Then they gave money to the masons and carpenters, and gave food and drink and oil to the people of Sidon and Tyre, so that they would bring cedar logs by sea from Lebanon to Joppa…” Their earlier generosity had stalled, however, and God wanted to get them back on track. So he urged them the “give careful thought” to how their finances were panning out. The first time it came with a warning in Haggai 1:

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 second warning in Haggai 2 came with a promise:

15 ” ‘Now give careful thought to this from this day on—consider how things were before one stone was laid on another in the LORD’s temple. 16 When anyone came to a heap of twenty measures, there were only ten. When anyone went to a wine vat to draw fifty measures, there were only twenty. 17 I struck all the work of your hands with blight, mildew and hail, yet you did not turn to me,’ declares the LORD. 18 ‘From this day on, from this twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, give careful thought to the day when the foundation of the LORD’s temple was laid. Give careful thought: 19 Is there yet any seed left in the barn? Until now, the vine and the fig tree, the pomegranate and the olive tree have not borne fruit.

” ‘From this day on I will bless you.’ “

What was the difference? In verse 12 of Haggai 1 we read that “the whole remnant of the people obeyed the voice of the LORD their God.” Generosity is not a guarantee of financial prosperity. Some giving is a sacrifice. But the principle is that when we commit resources to God’s capital projects, as he leads us, he then stops our working capital from leaking away. It takes faith and obedience, but it comes with a promise.

” ‘From this day on I will bless you.’ “

“so that I may take pleasure in it and be honored,” says the LORD  - Haggai 1:8

In the previous devotional we addressed objection #1: The timing is not right. Moving forward to today’s world, we have a second objection: “Place is not that important to God in these New Testament times. Brett, the temple was an old testament thing…now God lives in people, so why do you need a place for rēp ?”

There is some truth to the shift in emphasis on place. Going back to the beginning, however, every square inch was God’s, and all of it was man’s responsibility to manage. Then Adam yielded that right to Satan. God elected to live mainly in one place, the temple. Later the second Adam, Jesus, redeemed everything through his sacrifice, reconciled the cosmos to himself, and restored our management responsibility back to us. Place became hugely important to God with a new urgency because he can now inhabit not only all people, but all places. That is why today we teach business leaders that their factories, retail outlets, offices and construction yards should reflect the order, beauty, and creativity of God. Place is there to, in part, steward the presence of God, and to give him pleasure.

Look at your own life:

• Do you feel better in a beautiful, welcoming home or office, or in one that is unkempt and dirty?
• Do you value place? Have you prayed to have your own house or apartment? Why?

If place is no longer important to God, who not sell your house or abandon your office? (‘Well, Brett, place is not important to me and God, but it is to my wife.’ I have news for you: it is important to your wife, and to your God.) We may not understand the importance of place, but Starbucks (and the local pub in England) does. They have tapped into the need for people to belong, and to have a place where that yearning can be expressed.

This past month we have moved houses fairly often, looked for cafés that have wireless internet access, and shuttled back and forth to storage to find things. These are small inconveniences, really, and the home office team has managed really well. The greater reality is that our transitory time has highlighted the importance of gathering places for the people who are in our community. We regularly get calls or emails that ask, “Where are you? Can I come and see you? When are we meeting again?” Like children who feel more secure when they know their parents are in a set place, so our rēp community has cried out for the anchor that place lends to community. Place is an important anchor.

Finally, there are plenty of functional reasons why place is crucial to God’s work. But you may want to consider that there are places all over the earth that he simply wants for himself.

This is what the LORD Almighty says: “Give careful thought to your ways. 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.

This is what the Lord Almighty says: “These people say, ‘The time has not yet come for the Lord’s house to be built.’” Haggai 1:2

We were flying back from Texas and I felt I should read Haggai so I turned there, not knowing that the topic was going to be property. The specific matter at hand in Israel was timing about a property improvement. God’s place needed some serious repair, and some were not in favor of it. God used this passage to highlight for me that those engaged in believing God for property for ministries, and sometimes even for homes, face common objections. There is “push back” from others that has two components: as God puts it to Haggai, “These people say…” We need the ability to discern the assumptions that underlie the “These people say…” statements so that we can speak truth and liberty into these our own lives, and into the minds and hearts of others. We face an interesting dilemma when God wants us to give to something, and we don’t want to do so. We can either obey, or we need to create a reason why we are not giving.

One objection: the timing was not right. ‘The time has not yet come for the Lord’s house to be built.’ Earlier these same people had set to work on God’s house with gusto, but had faced political opposition, and so had retreated from the work. It is easy for me to start well on a kingdom initiative, but when opposition comes I can do what the inhabitants of Israel did: retreat to my own project.

By the time Haggai comes to jump-start them back into God’s business, there was a conflict of interest: the people were building their own houses and didn’t want to divert resources to God’s work. There will always be those who look for an excuse to not jump on board with what God is doing and say, in defense of themselves, ‘It is not the right timing.’ What they imply is, ‘If it was the right timing, of course I would give to God.’

I summarized the gist of Haggai’s message as I flew back to the Bay Area. ‘Some are saying that it is not time to get a property, yet they spend their time and money on making their own houses or apartments fancy, while My work is a under-resourced. This is why you I have not blessed their work or finances. Lay the foundation of my house this June, then I will bless your lives and finances.’

We can get behind God if we like, and we can choose not to. He will not be left short of resources even if we do not give. “The silver is mine and the gold is mine” declares the Lord. Yet God gives us a chance to partner with him for our benefit.

Let’s test our hearts lest we say, “This is not the right time for a campus for rēp – we should rather focus on…” for in this statement can be a personal agenda to protect our own nest egg while we keep God and his agenda on pause.