Haggai 1:2-6 (ESV)

[2] “Thus says the LORD of hosts: These people say the time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the LORD.” [3] Then the word of the LORD came by the hand of Haggai the prophet, [4] “Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, while this house lies in ruins? [5] Now, therefore, thus says the LORD of hosts: Consider your ways. [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.

God is here warning his people to make the main thing the main thing. They have been busy building up their own personal comfort systems. They built their houses and paneled them. They planted their crops and harvested them. They enjoyed the fruit of their labors, but in the process they forgot to make the main thing the main thing. The neglected to build the Temple of God. How often that happens to us!

Haggai is written to those Jews who came back from captivity. They experienced years in a foreign land under foreign rulers. Now they are home and they have been busy making life comfortable. In the process they forgot that they came back to rebuild the Temple of God. In the New Testament God is not interested in our buildings. He is building a whole new temple. “You yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house” (1Pet 2:5). God’s temple is no longer made of stone and mortar. It is now built out of people. As the Body of Christ, the church is the Temple of God. Our responsibility, our commission is to make disciples. As we make disciples the Temple of God is raised.

That is the main thing. Have we been so busy making sure that life is comfortable that we have forgotten to make the main thing the main thing? Are we making disciples? Have we been so busy protecting our political systems, our religious freedoms, our gun and speech rights that we have forgotten to make the main thing the main thing? God protected Israel when they were walking according to his Covenant with them, not when they built up their armies and city walls. God will protect his people when we are walking with him, not when we are using earthly methods to protect ourselves.

That is not to say that Lawyers defending Christian freedoms are unimportant. That is not to say that political involvement is unimportant. That is not to say that honoring the laws of the land in which we live is unimportant. But . . . we must never make that the main thing. If God chooses to bring this nation under judgment, if God chooses to remove the tax exempt status from churches and ministries, even if God chooses to imprison us for our faith, so be it. We must be about the main thing.

The same is true in worship. If the conversations we have in church or the worship styles that we employ hinder disciple making in some way, they we need to rethink them. The argument that this is the way we’ve always done it, or that this is what we are comfortable with is irrelevant. The question is: Does it promote disciple making? Every program, every event of the church, indeed every aspect of our lives needs to be reevaluated in this context. Is this about my comfort, or about making disciples? Are we building the Temple of God, or our we protecting our own personal comfort. Let us not fall into the very trap of Haggai’s audience. Let us make the main thing the main thing. “Go therefore and make disciples” (Mt 28:19).