Put God First: Stop Delaying Obedience | Haggai 1:1–8

Putting God first means acting on His Word instead of waiting for a more convenient time to obey. In Haggai 1:1–8, God confronts a people who had attended to their own houses while His house remained unfinished. He calls them to consider their ways and begin building.

The background in Ezra explains why this message mattered: work on the temple had stopped for sixteen years. Haggai’s message exposes the excuses that can turn a temporary delay into a settled pattern—and shows how God graciously calls His people back. For the historical setting and an outline of all four messages, read The Book of Haggai Explained.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Follow the podcast: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | RSS

These Were Mature, Godly People

Before we read a single verse, you need to know something about the Jews this book is written to. They’re going to look pretty bad for starting the temple and then stopping for sixteen years — but they were mature, godly people.

Remember, last time we looked at Ezra 2:64, which said there were only 42,360 people in the first return — about 2% of the Jewish population. The other 98% wanted to stay in Persia, where they’d lived for decades and built lives, businesses, and families. The Persians were sufficiently favorable toward the Jews to allow this small remnant to return and rebuild.

Consider what returning actually meant:

• A roughly 900-mile, four-month journey back to Jerusalem — long, unpleasant, and dangerous.
• Leaving behind most of their friends and family, since so few chose to go.
• Walking away from established businesses and lives after seventy years in Babylon.
• Returning to a monumental building project in a city with no homes, no walls, and no defenses.
• No material resources, many enemies, and land still in the possession of another empire.

These Jews had a heart for God. And here’s the application: if what we’re about to read can happen to Jews who were serious about their faith, it can happen to even the most mature Christians too.

Haggai 1:1 — Who Received the Word

Haggai 1:1 — In the second year of Darius the king, in the sixth month, on the first day of the month, the word of the Lord came by the hand of Haggai the prophet to Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest.

Notice who receives the word: the governor and the high priest — the civil leader and the spiritual leader. When God wants to move a people, He typically begins with their leaders.

The date given — “the second year of Darius the king, in the sixth month, on the first day of the month” — is August 29, 520 BC, exactly when we read last time that Haggai started preaching (Ezra 4:24). The first day of the month was the new moon, a feast day when the people gathered together (Numbers 10:10). God delivered this message on the day the maximum number of people would hear it.

God Graciously Speaks to Us Even After Years of Neglect

The Jews returned to Jerusalem for one purpose. Cyrus’s decree wasn’t “go re-occupy the land” — it was go rebuild the house of the Lord (Ezra 1:3). That was the mission. And for sixteen years, the mission sat abandoned while everyone got on with life.

If God had stayed silent for another sixteen years, no one could have accused Him of injustice. If He’d sent another Nebuchadnezzar, they could hardly have been surprised — that’s what happened the last time the people ignored Him for decades. Yet He did not send an army or a new king. He sent preachers with His Word. God’s gracious first move toward a people who had neglected Him for sixteen years was to speak to them. He clearly hadn’t given up on them.

There’s a real application here. Maybe you stopped going to church for years. You always meant to go back, but the longer you stayed away, the more awkward walking through the doors felt. Maybe you haven’t really prayed in longer than you can remember, or you can’t recall the last time you opened your Bible on your own — and “someday” has slowly turned into “probably never.” Maybe you haven’t served in years, like you know you should.

Or maybe the sixteen years is something you’ve been doing rather than neglecting: pornography that’s had a grip on you so long you can’t remember life without it; alcohol that started as a way to unwind and became a habit, and then a master; anger that’s been your reflex for so many years your family flinches before you speak; bitterness toward someone who hurt you long ago, a decision to never forgive that’s been calcifying ever since, until you’ve simply accepted, “It’s too late to be free of this. This is just who I am now.”

If any of that applies to you, see where these people were when God spoke to them: the sixteen-year mark. And notice that God’s first word to them was not “You’re done” or “You had your chance.” The message was basically, get up and get going. God broke through sixteen years of silence with His Word 2,500 years ago, and He does the same thing today. If you’re at all convicted right now, that conviction is evidence that He hasn’t given up on you. Conviction is not rejection. Conviction is an invitation to repent.

Delayed Obedience Often Disguises Itself as “Not the Right Time”

So what did Haggai actually say?

Haggai 1:2 — Thus says the Lord of hosts: “These people say the time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the Lord.”

Notice how carefully the people worded this. No one in that community was going to stand up and announce they were against the temple. So they reached for something that sounds far more reasonable: “It’s not the right time.” This is one of the most useful excuses ever invented, because it lets us say no while sounding like we’re only saying “later.”

We can’t bring ourselves to say we shouldn’t go to church, or read our Bibles, or serve, or give. So we don’t say that. Instead, we say it isn’t the right time. We’ll get to it. someday. Listen to how it actually sounds coming out of our mouths:

• “I’ll get serious about church once this busy season at work calms down.”
• “Once the kids are a little older and out of this stage, we’ll start doing family devotions.”
• “When we’re more financially stable, then we’ll start giving.”
• “After the house situation gets sorted out, I’ll have the margin to serve.”
• “I’ll start sharing my faith once I know the Bible a little better.”

Every one of these sounds responsible. Some even sound spiritual. But every single one is waiting on a future that never quite arrives — the busy season just gets replaced by the next busy season, the kids hit the next stage and then the stage after that, and the finances never feel quite settled. “Not right now” is almost never a decision to do it later; it’s a way of saying no without feeling like we said no.

Here’s what makes this account so interesting: from where the people were standing, it seemed very reasonable. They’d come back to a wasteland. The walls were down. Homes had to be built, fields cleared and planted, defenses raised in a city that couldn’t protect itself. If you’d asked one of the Jews, “Why isn’t the temple finished?” he wouldn’t have looked at you with contempt — he’d have looked at you like you didn’t understand how much there was to do. “Of course, we want to rebuild the house of God. It’s just — look around. We can’t do it yet. But next year.” And every one of us knows that feeling, because we’re not against church, or prayer, or giving, or serving. It’s just — look at the season we’re in. We can’t do it yet.

Notice what filled the gap. The Jews didn’t do nothing for sixteen years. They built their houses, planted their fields, and ran their own lives. That’s exactly how it works for us. We rarely stop serving God to do nothing. We stop serving God because something else — often something good and legitimate — crowds in and takes the place that belonged to Him. The danger is rarely a dramatic rebellion. The danger is poor priorities. So let me ask: what have you stopped doing that God would have you do? Whenever we cease doing the things we know God wants, we always think we’re stopping for a short time. Nobody ever thinks they’re stopping for sixteen years. But that’s exactly what can happen.

Haggai 1:3–4 — Paneled Houses

Now watch God ask them a question:

Haggai 1:3–4 — Then the word of the Lord came by the hand of Haggai the prophet, “Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, while this house lies in ruins?”

They said, “It’s not time.” God said, “You found time. to work on your houses.” And notice it doesn’t just say dwell in your houses — it says dwell in your paneled houses. A paneled house is a nice house with woodwork on the walls. They hadn’t just completed their houses; they’d gone beyond that to make them sort of fancy.

Let me be clear: money is amoral. Scripture never condemns people for having wealth, and God Himself made many people in Scripture wealthy. This isn’t a passage about wealth being wrong — if someone used it to condemn having a fancy house, they’d be ripping it out of context. This is a passage about priorities. God wasn’t upset with them for having paneled houses; He was upset with them for having their priorities out of order. They could have had paneled houses — they just should have had them after God had His house.

Here’s the application: how often, when we say we don’t have time for the things of the Lord, do we somehow have time for television, video games, surfing the Internet, or social media? God didn’t buy the excuse in their day that they didn’t have time, and He doesn’t buy it in our day when we likely have more time than they did. We make time for what’s most important. So whatever we say we don’t have time for, it would be more accurate to say, “This simply isn’t as important to me as these other things I make time for.”

Consider Your Ways

Now look at the next thing God says, which is the theme of this whole book:

Haggai 1:5 — Now, therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts: “Consider your ways.”

He says it again in Haggai 1:7, and again in Haggai 2:15 and 2:18. Five times in this short book, God tells them to consider — to give careful thought to — their ways. It’s like God is saying, “Look at how things have been going for you!” And this is really a loving request. Have you ever seen someone making decisions that are clearly detrimental to them? Isn’t it effective to ask how things are going, to ask them to consider their ways? It’s love, not harshness.

Here’s what God wanted them to notice:

Haggai 1:6 — “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.”

When God Is Not First, Even Good Pursuits Become Frustrating

It’s hard to imagine a more frustrating description in all of Scripture. They plant a lot but harvest a little. They eat, but they’re still hungry. They drink, but they’re still thirsty. They dress, but they’re still cold. They earn wages, but the money disappears — a bag with holes. Every payday, the money runs out before the month does.

Here’s what’s so shocking: these are all the things they were trying to improve when they put the temple on hold. They said, in effect, “First we need to secure the harvest, the houses, the finances — and then, once all that’s going well, we’ll build the temple.” But things went poorly. After sixteen years of putting these things first, they were worse off than before. If they’d known their Bibles, none of this should have surprised them — God had already told Israel exactly what covenant unfaithfulness would look like:

Deuteronomy 28:38 — “You shall carry much seed into the field and shall gather in little…”

Haggai 1:6 reads almost like a checklist from Deuteronomy 28. Their frustrating economy wasn’t bad luck. It was a message. Jesus states the principle they had backward:

Matthew 6:33 — But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

The Jews had this verse backward. They put all the other things first and then tried to add the Lord to what was left. They should have put the Lord first, and there would have been room for everything else.

Haggai 1:8 — Go Up and Build

So look at what God tells them to do:

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.”

This verse matters because putting God first involves action and behavior. They were going to have to start doing something. It wasn’t enough to say, “Okay, we want God to be first.” They had to do something to make God first — in this case, going up into the mountains and getting wood.

God Is Glorified by the Priorities We Practice, Not Merely the Priorities We Profess

I know words matter — Jesus said we’ll give an account for every careless word we speak, and Proverbs says death and life are in the power of the tongue. But this verse makes me think of the phrase “talk is cheap.” God doesn’t say, “Tell Me I am first.” Or, “Sing louder during your worship music that I am first.” Or, “Have a meeting and discuss whether I should be first.” He says, “Do something. Take action. Let your priorities show up in your behavior. This is a theme throughout Scripture:

Proverbs 14:23 — In all labor there is profit, but idle chatter leads only to poverty.

Talking about what needs to be done doesn’t accomplish it. Plans don’t build the temple. Conversations don’t cut the wood. Good intentions don’t glorify God unless they become obedience.

1 John 3:18 — Let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.

It’s easy to say “I love God,” “I love my spouse,” “I love the church,” or “I want my children to follow Christ.” But does that love show up in deeds?

Titus 1:16 — They profess to know God, but they deny him by their works.

That’s a frightening verse — it tells us our works can contradict our profession. Our mouths can say one thing while our lives say another. Jesus gave a powerful picture of this in Matthew 21: a father had two sons. One said he’d go to work in the vineyard but didn’t go. The other initially refused, but afterward changed his mind and went. Jesus asked which son did his father’s will. The answer is obvious: not the one who said the right thing, but the one who actually obeyed.

For the Jews, putting God first meant walking into the hills, cutting down wood, carrying it back, and building the temple. It meant time, sweat, inconvenience, and rearranging their lives around what God said mattered. For the Jews, it was neglected wood. For us, it might be a neglected Bible, a neglected prayer life, a neglected ministry, a neglected marriage, a neglected child, a neglected act of repentance, or a neglected step of obedience. This is where we must consider our ways. It isn’t enough to agree with a sermon, feel convicted, and say, “That was a good message.” The question is: what do we need to do now?

Being practical: A husband can say, “My marriage matters,” but does he repent, listen, pray with his wife, speak gently, and cherish her? A wife can say, “I want to honor the Lord in my home,” but does that show up in her patience, respect, forgiveness, and faithfulness in the daily pressures of life? Parents can say, “We want our children to follow Christ,” but do they open the Bible with them, pray with them, discipline them faithfully, bring them to church, and model repentance?

A Christian can say, “I need to get serious about prayer,” but at some point, the alarm has to be set and the phone put away. A church member can say, “The church is important,” but does that show up in gathering, serving, giving, bearing burdens, and using spiritual gifts? Someone can say, “I need to reconcile with that person,” but obedience means making the call, sending the message, confessing the sin, asking for forgiveness, or granting it.

Someone can say, “I want God to be first financially,” but obedience means looking at the budget and asking, “Does my spending show that God is first, or that my comfort is first?”

God is not honored merely by the priorities we claim. He is honored by the priorities we practice.

Consider Your Ways

Let’s go back to where we started. The Jews in this chapter weren’t rebels — they were the 2% who made a 900-mile journey because they had a heart for God. And they still drifted for sixteen years. So we probably shouldn’t ask, “Could this happen to me?” Instead, we should ask, “Where is this happening in my life?” That’s why God’s command in this book is “consider your ways”:

• God graciously speaks even after years of neglect — so if you feel convicted, that’s not rejection. That’s God inviting you to repent.
• Delayed obedience disguises itself as “not the right time” — so ask what you’ve been calling “not yet” that’s really your way of telling God no.
• When God isn’t first, even good pursuits grow frustrating — so before blaming our circumstances, we should examine our priorities.
• God is glorified by priorities, not merely our profession — so the response God seeks is obedience, not merely agreement.

Here’s something practical to take with you this week: go home and list the top five things in your life. If God isn’t in the top five, list the top ten. Be honest — nobody has to see this but you. If you’re brave, show your spouse, or do it as a family. See where God is on your list, then see what actions you need to take to make Him first. What needs to be removed from, or added to, your list to put Him in the number one spot? Start making those changes. Go up to the mountains and get the wood needed for a God-centered life.

What happens after we begin putting God first? In Haggai 2:15–19, “From this day on I will bless you,” the people are called to remember the cost of neglecting God and continue obeying while the barn is still empty.

Finally, I can’t preach on God’s house without pointing you to the true and greater temple. Jesus called His own body a temple (John 2:19, 21). He never said, “It’s not the right time” — He set His face toward Jerusalem and prayed, “not my will, but yours, be done.” Where we’ve delayed for years, He obeyed without delay, and if you’re in Christ, His righteousness is credited to you by faith.

Questions for Reflection

• What have you been calling “not the right time” that may actually be delayed obedience?
• What do your daily priorities reveal about God’s place in your life?
• What concrete step would help you respond to His Word now?

Watch the Sermon