So often we read the Bible and the stories can feel like, well, stories. Because it is history it’s easy to disconnect from the events emotionally and forget these were real events experienced by real people with real families and real struggles and real emotions. When we dig a little deeper we can begin to see how ordinary folk were affected by the stories we read.
Imagine the sixth-century BC. Israel’s great king David is long dead. His son Solomon built a glorious kingdom, including a temple for the Lord God of Israel to replace the tabernacle. The priests and Levites were organized for more structured worship at the temple. Things were great for God’s people. In 1 Kings 10 the author tells us “the king made silver as common in Jerusalem as stone”. I’ve been to Jerusalem; it’s all one big pile of stones. That’s a lot of silver!
After Solomon his kingdom was divided, with one son becoming king over the ten northern tribes and the other becoming king of Judah and Benjamin. Things went downhill from there. Because of their ongoing rebellion against the God of Israel and their worship of false gods, the Lord sent numerous prophets to warn them of the outcome of their sin. Then, in 589BC, the mighty king Nebuchadnezzar arrived from Babylon. He destroyed the city of Jerusalem, tore down the temple that had stood for centuries, took the gold and silver utensils and such from the temple, and led a large number of the people back to Babylon where they would be exiles in a foreign land.
There they were told to settle in, to get married and have children and build houses and plant gardens. Because they were going to be there for 70 years, God tells them to establish a faithful presence among the pagans. They were to worship the Lord God while living as exiles in that pagan land. In time, God would restore them to the land of Israel.
Years later the situation had changed. Persia was now the dominant power, led by Cyrus the Great. Whereas Nebuchadnezzar’s policy was to remove the cultural and ruling elite from a conquered land, taking the educated and skilled and capable folk to become part of the administration of his vast empire, Cyrus’ policy was quite different. In God’s providence he determined Cyrus would send the people back to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple and to take back the captured gold and silver utensils from the original temple.
The returned exiles did not have it easy. Surely they had been longing for this day for an entire lifetime, but when they arrived back in Jerusalem they found themselves in a strange land. Their culture had been radically changed in those 70 years. Gone were the days of the Ancient Near East and its cultural understanding. These were the days of Persian and Greek and soon, Roman culture.
They had to start over in this strange land. In Babylon they had, in fact, built houses and planted gardens. They had married and had children. Their children married and built houses and planted gardens. Their children also married and built houses and planted gardens. Their lives were established in Babylon, but now they have returned to a ruined city and were told to start over.
They began to rebuild the temple, starting with its foundation. Soon the weight of rebuilding such a massive temple weighed them down and they began to focus on more immediate, more personal matters. The Lord sent them the prophet Haggai to explain why things were so difficult.
“Thus says the LORD of hosts: These people say the time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the LORD.” 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? Now, therefore, thus says the LORD of hosts: Consider your ways. 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.”
Haggai 1:2-6 ESV
Instead of building the Lord’s temple they focused on their own homes—their paneled houses. Not only were they building houses for themselves, they were building paneled houses. This is somewhat obscure but it seems they weren’t merely providing for their families but were seeking to live lavishly, in luxury. Meanwhile God’s temple was still not built. Haggai later explained God had sent a drought, withholding the rain for their crops and for their vineyards, yet they still did not work on his temple. Because their focus had turned to their own prosperity, the Lord removed their prosperity. Their response was profound:
Then Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, with all the remnant of the people, obeyed the voice of the LORD their God, and the words of Haggai the prophet, as the LORD their God had sent him. And the people feared the LORD.
Haggai 1:12 ESV
The people put themselves to work on the temple, but they soon began to become discouraged. There were some older folk among them who remembered the temple Solomon had built—and this was not it. It seemed smaller and less glorious in their eyes, so they wondered why they should even bother. God had another message for them.
“‘Who is left among you who saw this house in its former glory? How do you see it now? Is it not as nothing in your eyes? Yet now be strong, O Zerubbabel, declares the LORD. Be strong, O Joshua, son of Jehozadak, the high priest. Be strong, all you people of the land, declares the LORD. Work, for I am with you, declares the LORD of hosts, according to the covenant that I made with you when you came out of Egypt. My Spirit remains in your midst. Fear not. For thus says the LORD of hosts: Yet once more, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land. And I will shake all nations, so that the treasures of all nations shall come in, and I will fill this house with glory, says the LORD of hosts. The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, declares the LORD of hosts. The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former, says the LORD of hosts. And in this place I will give peace, declares the LORD of hosts.’”
Haggai 2:3-9 ESV
As they were building they could only see what they saw. That is, they were unable to see the end result. Their focus was on what was immediately before them and the work seemed monumental—with very little payoff, so to speak. They doubted the glory of the finished temple. What they failed to recognize is the real glory of Solomon’s temple wasn’t the gold, and there was a lot of gold. The Most Holy Place was lined with gold. The walls of the temple were covered in gold. The altar of incense and the table for the bread and the lampstands were covered in gold. As beautiful as it was visually and as much gold as it contained, the glory of the temple was not in its physical beauty but in God’s presence.
This is what God says to the people rebuilding it. The real glory of the temple they were building is this: “My Spirit remains in your midst”. And yet God promises the temple will be filled with treasure, for the treasures of all nations shall come in.
Fast forward a few more centuries. King Herod has expanded the temple substantially. The temple complex was massive and took several decades to complete. Had it remained standing it would have become one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. But that was not its glory, for the promise of glory was the treasure of all nations would come in.
Not long after turning water into wine Jesus went to Jerusalem. John tells the story of Jesus cleansing the temple, chasing out those who sought to profit off people worshiping the Lord. The leaders demanded to know what right Jesus had to do this.
So the Jews said to him, “What sign do you show us for doing these things?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking about the temple of his body.
John 2:18-21 ESV
The temple was, in fact, destroyed, and on the third day he did, in fact, rise from the dead. Thus Jesus is the True Temple and to him the treasures of all nations will come. What did he say to his disciples before he ascended into heaven? “Make disciples of all nations“. Later in Acts 10 Peter is sent to the home of Cornelius, a Gentile. His home was filled with Gentiles—the nations. When they believed the gospel the Holy Spirit fell upon them and what Peter said is remarkable.
While Peter was still saying these things, the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word. And the believers from among the circumcised who had come with Peter were amazed, because the gift of the Holy Spirit was poured out even on the Gentiles. For they were hearing them speaking in tongues and extolling God. Then Peter declared, “Can anyone withhold water for baptizing these people, who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?”
Acts 10:44-47 ESV
The Holy Spirit was poured out even on the nations! God is doing a work that we only catch a glimpse of—the briefest glimpse. It is so very easy for us—for me—to lose sight of the fact that the glory of God in the face of Christ will shine for all to see. It’s easy to become consumed with caring for our own needs and our own wants. It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that God is doing something in our midst that if we saw it in its fullness we still couldn’t believe it for it would be too great to fully comprehend.
When the returning exiles hauled stone and cut stone and rebuilt the foundation of the temple and the walls around Jerusalem and when they rebuilt the temple itself, they were doing the very ordinary work of building. Nothing stood out. “Oh, you hauled away some rubble. Well done!” As a result of the ordinariness, they became discouraged. The work was hard. What was harder was seeing the real outcome of their work. Yes, each stone fitted felt slow and inconsequential, yet it was moving toward a goal. Whether they realized it or not, the temple they were building was being prepared for the arrival of the Messiah, God’s Savior of the world.
Each small act of ordinary faithfulness can feel unimportant and insignificant, and therefore unnecessary. This is because we tend to prefer big acts of faithfulness—things that are easier to see. It’s kind of like two siblings and their bedrooms. On the one hand is the sibling who, well, you know. The bedroom is a wreck. The laundry is piled up. The trash is overflowing. The nightstand is covered in dirty dishes from late-night snacks. When you peek inside you wonder if arson is a legitimate option. Then, once a quarter or so, whether it needs it or not, the room is cleaned. The trash is emptied. The dishes taken to the kitchen and washed. The laundry is washed and folded and put away. The cobwebs are cleared. The change is noticeable. Then there’s the sibling who empties the trash regularly and washes dishes from the snack right away. Laundry day is a weekly occasion and the clothes hamper never overflows.
Though the end result is the same we tend to notice the dramatic change in the messy sibling’s room, for cleaning that room seems so much bigger. The truth is it’s the same amount of trash and the same amount of laundry and the same amount of dishes. The difference is the “neat” sibling engages in smaller acts of cleaning that are easier to overlook. That sibling is simply the neater one.
We treat ordinary faithfulness to God the same way. There are those whose lives have the big clean-up, and there are those whose clean-up is substantially “smaller”, more routine—less noticeable. The truth is faithfulness is faithfulness. Yes, we should be faithful in the “big” things, the things everyone would recognize as faithfulness, but we should also be faithful in the seemingly little things, the things most wouldn’t even notice.
Whether we give consistently or we regularly pray for others or we spend time reading and meditating on Scripture or we loan a car to someone or we help someone financially with a debt or we share a meal with someone or we help someone move, these little acts of faithfulness are all building toward something significant—and it isn’t our little fiefdoms or our corners of the world or our own prosperity. Each act of faithfulness, no matter how small and insignificant it may seem, is building toward something extraordinary. Just as the real glory of the temple was not the gold or the silver or the size but was the presence of God in its midst, so, too, we are building toward the same.
The Lord is building his church, the place where he dwells on earth. He builds it in two senses. The first is more readily recognized: the church is growing in size. The second way, the one you and I have a direct part in, is the church is growing to be more like Christ. Every act of faithfulness is another stone fitted into that temple, where the Holy Spirit of God dwells on earth.
As followers of Jesus we have opportunities that come our way that are both big and small, the obvious, visible acts of faithfulness and the much more common ordinary acts of faithfulness. Whether you change diapers all day long or you have ministry opportunities that are public and visible, whether you steward the resources God entrusts into your hands or you faithfully pray for the church and your neighbors, these ordinary means of faithfulness are the very means God uses to change the world. Let’s encourage each other to stay faithful in the ordinary things, that we may also be faithful in the bigger things, that someday we may see the extraordinary work God has been doing through it all.