Icebreaker
5 mins
Do this quick quiz with the group:
- Who can spell Haggai?
- Where it is in the Bible?
- How many chapters does it have?
- What was Haggai’s job?
Haggai Overview
10 mins
Say: Haggai is a small book with a big message. Haggai was a prophet who spoke to the people of God after they had escaped from Babylon. They were not putting God first, and he had an important message for them.
Read the whole book together. Beforehand, explain that you want the group to be thinking about any main themes they hear. What’s God’s message to the people? What things are repeated?
Big message one – Consider your ways
10 mins
Say: One of the main themes in Haggai is for God’s people to ‘Consider their ways’ (ESV) or ‘Give careful thought’ (NIV) to what they’re doing. God challenges them to think about what is more important: their ‘panelled houses’ (i.e. their wealth / comfort), or him.
Read Haggai 1:6. What are the problems facing God’s people? Why is God asking them to ‘consider’ or ‘give careful thought’ to this?
Say: God is very direct here. He is making a big point about freedom. The people have probably not given much thought to what’s going on. They are too busy working to make themselves comfortable and happy. But because they’re not focused on God, they’re not getting anywhere (you could cross reference this with Ecclesiastes). Go back to verse six: the people are living in all the freedom that the world has to offer, but this has actually enslaved them to the point that they have lost sight of God (and therefore they are never fully satisfied).
Ask: What does ‘freedom’ mean to you? What does it mean to your friends? What do you think Haggai is telling us about true freedom?
Key Point 1
Don’t be tempted to think that we are missing out on something if we follow the Lord. True freedom comes from being ‘enslaved’ by Jesus.
Big message two – we know the ending
10 mins
Say: We live after the death and resurrection of Jesus, so we know that God doesn’t only live in temples – he sent Jesus and the Holy Spirit. But God’s solution for his people’s problem at the time that Haggai was written was to rebuild the temple. Ask: does this seem odd? Why do you think he asks them to do that?
God knew his people needed a focus. They needed a way to keep their minds fixed on him. They needed reminding of how important he was (or should have been) in their lives. We have the best viewpoint – we know the ending. We know that Jesus has won the war, and that if we trust in him now, we will be with him forever. This also means we have no excuses!
Ask: Why do you think it’s important to go to church every week? Why is it important to read our Bibles and pray daily?
Key Point 2
Live according to the ending you know is coming, not according to the world that will pass away.
Activity
10 mins
Get out the A3 sheets of paper with house outlines. Label one ‘The house of the Lord’ and the other ‘My house’. Ask: in what ways do we ‘build our own house’ (ie. focus on ourselves)? In what ways do we ‘build the house of the Lord’ (ie. focus on his glory)? Encourage your young people to write their answers inside the different house outlines.
Big message three – start young
10 mins
Say: We can’t build a temple – and we don’t need to! But we need to ask ourselves what the book of Haggai has to say to us. Ask: what sort of people do you think Haggai was talking to? How could the theme of ‘building for the future’ apply to you? You could be forgiven for thinking Haggai was only talking to adults who were busy with jobs and so on, but the theme of building is very important for young people – we need to be investing in the future, building solid foundations. It takes time but what you build now will serve you well in the years to come.
Application
10 mins
Say: Look back at what you’ve written on each sheet of paper: is your natural ‘way’ to follow Jesus or to build your own house?
Read Haggai 2:4-5 together and ask how can we build for God even when everything around us is tempting us not to? Watch either Stephen or Blake’s story here.
Wrap up
5 mins
Say: At first you might think that Haggai is all about a judgemental and mean God who is punishing his people and giving them very odd instructions. But it’s actually all about grace!
We see in Haggai that God’s people had slipped from dependence on him to reliance on themselves. They’d been freed from Egypt, by God, but instead of continuing to rely on him in better times, they took their freedom too far. They mistook building for themselves as freedom. But, bonkers as it may sound, true freedom is found in putting God first – in everything.
Jesus said, ‘I have come that they may have life, and life to the full’ (John 10:10). We only achieve life in all its fullness when we’re putting God first. That means putting ourselves second. The beautiful simplicity of it is that when we really see God for who he is, our natural response is to make ourselves second.
Ceryn Oakes is a speech and language therapist and a volunteer youth worker in Cardiff.
