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Scott LaPierre MinistriesAuthor: Scott LaPierre
Scott LaPierre (https://www.scottlapierre.org/) is a pastor, author, and Christian speaker on marriage. This podcast includes his conference messages, guest preaching, and expository sermons at Woodland Christian Church. Each of Scotts messages is the result of hours of studying the Bible. Scott and his wife, Katie, grew up together in northern California, and God has blessed them with nine children. View all of Pastor Scotts books on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Scott-LaPierre/e/B01JT920EQ. Receive a FREE copy of Scotts book, Seven Biblical Insights for Healthy, Joyful, Christ-Centered Marriages. For Scott LaPierres conference and speaking information, including testimonies, and endorsements, please visit: https://www.scottlapierre.org/christian-speaker/. Feel free to contact Scott at: https://www.scottlapierre.org/contact/. Language: en Genres: Christianity, Religion, Religion & Spirituality Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
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What God Says When We Repent | Haggai 1:9–15
Sunday, 2 August, 2026
Have you ever been through a season when nothing seemed to work? The car and the water heater die in the same month. You finally get a little ahead financially, and an unexpected bill shows up. You work harder than ever and somehow end up further behind. Most of the time we can't say for certain why hard seasons happen — but in Haggai 1:9–15, God tells His people exactly what He says when we repent, and what was really behind their hardship all along. https://youtu.be/96WuM0aS7Do Table of contentsThe Setup: Sixteen Years of NeglectWho Was Really Behind Their HardshipLesson One: We Should Ask Whether God Is Disciplining UsLesson Two: Obedience and Fear Are the Right Response to God's WordLesson Three: We Find God With Us the Moment We ObeyLesson Four: God Works in Us While We Are WorkingThe Restart Doesn't Take as Long as the DriftGod With Us, Fully The Setup: Sixteen Years of Neglect The Jews had returned from exile to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. Then they stopped — for sixteen years — to focus on their own lives instead. Haggai 1:6–7 describes how that went for them: "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." "Thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider your ways." (Haggai 1:6–7) Nothing was working out for them. So God told them what to do about it in 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." They needed to make God a priority again and finish the temple. Who Was Really Behind Their Hardship Now we come to the passage for this post — and it names exactly who was behind their suffering: "You looked for much, and behold, it came to little. And when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why? declares the Lord of hosts. Because of my house that lies in ruins, while each of you busies himself with his own house." "Therefore the heavens above you have withheld the dew, and the earth has withheld its produce. And I have called for a drought on the land and the hills, on the grain, the new wine, the oil, on what the ground brings forth, on man and beast, and on all their labors." (Haggai 1:9–11) All this time, bad things had been happening to them, and they probably didn't know why. Maybe they thought they were unlucky. Maybe they assumed this was simply what life was like back in the Promised Land, or that they'd had a run of bad harvests. Maybe they blamed each other, or their leaders. But in these verses they learned that God Himself was causing it. In verse 9 He says, "I blew it away." In verse 11 He says, "I have called for a drought." It's one thing when bad things happen. It's another thing entirely to find out God is the one behind them. There's even a wordplay in the original Hebrew that Haggai's hearers would have caught immediately: Verse 9 — "God's house lies in ruins" — the Hebrew word is hareb Verse 11 — "God called for a drought" — the Hebrew word is horeb Same root. The message was built into the very sound of the words: "You left My house desolate, so I left your land desolate." The condition of their fields matched the condition of the temple. Lesson One: We Should Ask Whether God Is Disciplining Us There are two causes of suffering — trials and discipline — and understanding the difference matters more than we usually realize. Trials. We suffer because of the trials we experience. We did nothing to cause this suffering; it's simply the suffering that comes with living in a fallen world. Discipline. We also suffer because of the sins we commit. In this case, we did everything to cause it. Along with Job, 1 Peter is the other main book in the Bible dealing with suffering, and it lays these two categories side by side: "For this is a gracious thing, when, mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly." (1 Peter 2:19) — suffering from a trial we did nothing to cause. "For what credit is it if, when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure?" (1 Peter 2:20a) — suffering because we sinned, and God disciplined us for it. "But if when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God." (1 Peter 2:20b) — suffering for doing good: a trial. 1 Peter 3:17 lays the two side by side almost word for word: "For it is better to suffer for doing good (trial), if that should be God's will, than for doing evil (discipline)." And 1 Peter 4:15–16 shows both again: suffering as an evildoer is discipline we bring on ourselves, while suffering as a Christian is a trial we did nothing to cause. Consider how badly Job's friends got this wrong. They looked at his suffering and reasoned backward: he is suffering, therefore he must have sinned; God must be disciplining him. They put Job in the wrong column entirely. But God had already said there was none like Job on the earth — a blameless and upright man who feared God and turned away from evil. His losses weren't discipline at all. They were trials. We must be slow to assume, of ourselves or of anyone else, that suffering proves sin. But we shouldn't swing to the opposite error either. Maybe we are being disciplined, and we need to repent. Think about the Jews in Haggai's day — it must have been painful to hear that God was the one doing this to them, and it might even have felt harsh or cruel. But He was actually being loving, because He was turning them back to Himself. What would have been truly cruel is if God had let their plan work: sixteen years of neglect, and their fields flourishing the whole time. They never would have repented. Instead, God lovingly refused to let them prosper without Him. This is exactly how the New Testament teaches us to think about discipline: "For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives." (Hebrews 12:6) "For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it." (Hebrews 12:11) Discipline is evidence that God loves us and that we belong to Him — even when it's painful in the moment. Lesson Two: Obedience and Fear Are the Right Response to God's Word So how did the people respond? "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) Two things stand out. First, the pronoun that appears twice: the Lord their God. After sixteen years of neglect, He is still their God. Second, the two responses: they obeyed the voice of the Lord their God, and they feared the Lord. This might be one of the most remarkable verses in the Old Testament. Consider how prophets were usually received: Jeremiah was beaten and put in the stocks, then thrown into a cistern. Zechariah the son of Jehoiada was stoned to death in the temple court. Micaiah was struck in the face and imprisoned. Uriah the son of Shemaiah was hunted down and executed. Elijah had to flee for his life. By later Jewish tradition, Isaiah was sawn in two — likely the very tradition behind Hebrews 11:37, which sums up the treatment of God's prophets: stoned, sawn in two, killed with the sword. But here, second only to Nineveh responding to Jonah, an entire community heard one of the most confrontational sermons in the Old Testament and responded wonderfully. No defensiveness. No committee to evaluate the prophet's tone. No "he doesn't understand our situation." Sixteen years of excuses ended in a single verse. When we put "obeyed" and "feared" together, we see the outside and the inside addressed at once — their actions and their hearts matched. We can obey without fearing (going through the motions outwardly while the heart doesn't match), and we can claim to fear God while disobeying (the outward doesn't match the supposed inward). But when the Word truly does its work, it deals with both: "But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word." (Isaiah 66:2) The measure of our maturity isn't how much preaching we can sit through or how much of God's Word we read or memorize — it's how we respond to it. When a sermon steps on our toes, we can critique the sermon, or we can consider our ways. When our spouse points out a pattern of sin, we can debate their delivery, or we can obey and fear. When our Bible reading confronts something we're doing, we can hurry to the next chapter, or we can stop and repent. "But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves." (James 1:22) The people in Haggai 1:12 heard one sermon and dropped sixteen years of excuses. May God help us respond to His Word the same way. It's also worth noticing exactly what they obeyed: "the voice of the Lord their God, and the words of Haggai the prophet, as the Lord their God had sent him." They didn't treat God's voice and Haggai's words any differently, because the Lord had sent Haggai, and Haggai faithfully delivered the Lord's message. Obeying the sermon was obeying God — the same principle Paul commends in the Thessalonians (1 Thessalonians 2:13) and that Jesus states directly: "The one who hears you hears me, and the one who rejects you rejects me" (Luke 10:16). When the Word of God confronts us — through a sermon, through our own reading, or through a brother or sister lovingly quoting it to us — we're not free to treat it as merely human words we can take or leave. Lesson Three: We Find God With Us the Moment We Obey Now watch how God responds to their obedience and fear: "Then Haggai,...
