Week One
Consider Your Ways
Haggai 1:1-11
Watch this week’s sermon →Day 1
What You Finish First
ReadMatthew 6:19-34Jesus talks about treasure, worry, and priorities in the same breath, and that's not an accident. He says you can't serve two masters. You'll end up loving one and despising the other. Then he moves straight into worry about food and clothing, the everyday stuff that eats up most of our attention.
Notice the order. Jesus doesn't say “don't worry about anything.” He says seek first the kingdom of God, and the other things will follow. First is the key word. Not only, not instead of, but first.
The people in Haggai's day weren't irreligious. They just let something else go first. Their houses got finished. God's house sat in ruins. It wasn't a single dramatic decision. It was a hundred small decisions to handle their own business today and get to God's business later.
Jesus is asking us to look at our own “first.” Not what we say matters most, but what actually gets our first attention, our first dollar, our first hour. That's usually the truer answer.
Questions
- Jesus says you can't serve two masters. What would it look like, practically, to try to serve both anyway?
- Think about your last month. What got your time and attention first, without you even planning it that way?
- What would change this week if you deliberately moved something into the “seek first” spot?
Day 2
Bigger Barns
ReadLuke 12:13-21A man's crops come in so good he doesn't have room to store them. His solution is to tear down his barns and build bigger ones. Then he tells himself he can relax, eat, drink, and enjoy life for years to come.
God calls him a fool. Not because planning ahead is wrong, but because the man's whole plan started and ended with himself. Every sentence in his little speech uses the words “I” and “my.” He never once mentions God, and that night, his life is required of him.
This story lines up with Haggai in an uncomfortable way. The people in Haggai's day were also busy building, just building the wrong thing first. The rich fool wasn't lazy either. He was diligent, successful, and completely centered on himself.
It's worth asking what our own version of “bigger barns” looks like. It doesn't have to be a barn. It can be a savings account, a career, a comfortable routine, anything we're quietly building our security around instead of God.
Questions
- What was actually wrong with the rich man's plan? Was it the barns, or something underneath the barns?
- Where in your life are you tempted to find security in something you've built rather than in God?
- The man's plans got interrupted that same night. How does knowing your life could be interrupted change how you'd plan today?
Day 3
Remember Who Fed You
ReadDeuteronomy 8:6-18Moses is talking to a generation about to enter a good land, with wheat, barley, vines, olive trees, and honey. He warns them ahead of time. When you eat and are full, when you build good houses and live in them, when your herds and flocks grow, don't let your heart get proud and forget the LORD your God.
That's a strange thing to have to warn people about. You'd think blessing would make people more grateful, not less. But Moses knew human nature. Comfort has a way of making us feel self-sufficient. We start to believe our own power and strength got us here, as verse 17 puts it.
Haggai's people had the opposite problem in one sense. Their harvests were small, not large. But the root issue is the same one Moses warns against: forgetting God once your hands are busy managing your own life. Whether the barn is full or empty, the temptation is to stop remembering where it came from.
Questions
- Why do you think prosperity is often more spiritually dangerous than hardship?
- Moses tells the people to remember. What specific things has God provided for you that are easy to take credit for yourself?
- What's one practical way you could build “remembering God” into an ordinary day, not just a hard one?
Day 4
Robbing God
ReadMalachi 3:6-12Malachi is writing to a later generation, but the pattern will sound familiar after reading Haggai. God says the people are robbing him, and they ask, genuinely surprised, “How have we robbed you?” His answer: in tithes and offerings.
Then comes a promise. Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, test me in this, and see if I don't open the windows of heaven and pour out blessing. The connection to Haggai is almost exact. Withheld obedience leads to a curse on the harvest. Renewed obedience leads to a promise of blessing.
It would be easy to read this as a formula: give money, get money. That's not really the point. The deeper issue in both Malachi and Haggai is what withholding reveals. When people keep back what belongs to God, first, whether it's money, time, or attention, they're saying something true about where God actually ranks in their life.
Questions
- Malachi's audience didn't realize they were withholding anything from God. Why is it easy to miss that in ourselves?
- What does it mean to “test” God in this way? Does that seem consistent with the rest of Scripture, or does it feel different?
- What is one area, not necessarily money, where you sense you've been holding back from God rather than giving first?
Day 5
Unless the Lord Builds
ReadPsalm 127This is a short psalm, but it says something the whole book of Haggai is built around. Unless the LORD builds the house, the builders labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchman stays awake for nothing. It's useless to rise early and stay up late, working anxiously for food, because God gives to his beloved even in sleep.
That's a hard word for people who take pride in hard work. The psalm isn't against labor. It's against labor that thinks it's the real source of security. Solomon, who most scholars think wrote this psalm, would have known that lesson firsthand, since he built the very temple Haggai's generation was trying to rebuild.
After five days considering priorities, worry, memory, and giving, this psalm brings it to a single point. All of it, the house, the harvest, the family named later in the psalm, depends on the Lord's building, not just ours. Haggai's people had to relearn this the hard way: their own labor on their own houses had gotten them nowhere. Only when they turned back to build the Lord's house did blessing follow.
Questions
- What's the difference between working hard and working “in vain,” according to this psalm?
- Where have you seen the truth of verse 1 play out, either in your own life or someone else's?
- As you close this week, what's one thing you're ready to “consider” differently going forward?
