Kingdom Currency(1)

“‘Consider now from this day forward, from the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, from the day that the foundation of the Lord’s temple was laid—consider it: Is the seed still in the barn? As yet the vine, the fig tree, the pomegranate, and the olive tree have not yielded fruit. But from this day I will bless you.’” Haggai 2.18, 19

Once more, for emphasis
The people of Israel had returned to the land of their forebears, the land promised to them of old by God. For seventy years they had endured an economy of oppression and uncertainty, under the tyranny of pagan kings. Now, under the watchful eye of Cyrus, they had the opportunity of starting over, of righting themselves as a people before the Lord.

This return to the land was an act of the great grace and forbearance of the Lord. Now God was restoring His nation and offering them the opportunity of discovering their true calling within the framework of His divine economy. They were His people, His redeemed and holy people, and they were to be a new nation, a nation apart, pursuing an economy different from all other nations, one that modeled the way God intended all human beings to live.

This would be Israel’s second opportunity to “get it right” as the people of God. But, as with the first go-round, following their deliverance from Egypt, this one did not start well.
Immediately upon returning to the land the people began to reconstruct the altar and house of God. This was as they had been directed to do by the Lord, in order to declare to themselves and all who observed them that their hope, trust, confidence, security, and blessing were concentrated in the Lord and His glory.

But they had not gotten very far into this project until other concerns began to distract them. The people completed the altar but then set about building their own homes and cultivating their own fields, leaving the project of building God’s temple to languish. The people busied themselves with much planting, and with adorning their homes with all the finery and accoutrements they needed for their own comfort.

Yet no matter how much they built or sowed, it was never enough. Their crops were meager, their homes never quite satisfied, and they never seemed to have enough money in their accounts for all they thought they should have.

Enter Haggai
At this point God stepped in to remind His people of their purpose and calling. He sent the prophet Haggai, who upbraided the people because they had missed the point entirely. Instead of following the Lord’s instructions and becoming a people holy unto Him, they had begun to live like all the nations around them, seeking their pleasure, fulfillment, and security in temporal conditions and material things. They had abandoned the economy God intended for them and embraced that of the surrounding world.

Because of this, God had sent leanness into their souls, so that no matter how much they lavished themselves with material things, they were never satisfied and never had enough. They had missed the point of being a redeemed people, and Haggai was sent to get them back on course with the Lord.

Through the prophet, God called His people back to the work of the temple. This, He insisted, would bring Him honor and glory in the sight of all the people and the nations. For by setting aside their own temporal and material desires, and doing that which declared God’s presence and glorified Him in their midst, the people of Israel would show the world what it means to live upright before the Lord. They would be at last a rightside-up people in an upside-down world. And when they did this, God assured them, He would pour out upon them more blessings and bounty than they could ever secure by their own efforts.

The divine economy
This is how the divine economy works. God shows His people grace, then calls on them to live by faith, acting according to His gracious instructions and priorities so that, in whatever they are doing, His pleasure and glory might be in everybody’s focus as the greatest and highest good.

In the divine economy the currency of blessing is neither goods and services nor coin of the realm. The currency of God’s Kingdom is grace. Only by knowing grace, desiring grace, and living in the grace of the Lord can those who know the Lord realize their full potential as a rightside-up nation.

As believers we’re pretty good about receiving the grace of the Lord – just like those people who returned to the land of promise from captivity in Babylon. But, like them, we need a little help learning how to live in God’s grace. We are too easily distracted from our unique Kingdom-and-glory calling (1 Thess. 2.12) – lives of overflowing grace (Jn. 7.37-39) – to the pursuit of materialism, leisure, and fleshly pleasure, so that we become captive to a pagan economy. We need to rediscover not only the gift of God’s grace, but the life of grace to which we are called within the Kingdom economy.

For reflection or discussion
1.  What do you understand by the word grace? What is the place of grace in the life of faith?

2.  What do we mean by saying that God intended His people Israel to be a “rightside-up” nation?

3.  In what ways do you think the Church today is like ancient Israel, returning from her captivity in Babylon and Persia?

Next steps – Preparation: What is grace? How do we receive it? What is it like to receive grace? What does it mean to live in grace? Talk with some Christian fiends about these questions. Challenge them to read all the installments in this series, then meet together to discuss how each of you might make better use of the currency of the Kingdom.

T. M. Moore

This week’s ReVision study is Part 4 of a 10-part series, “The Kingdom Economy.” You can download “Kingdom Currency” as a free PDF, prepared for personal or group study. Simply click here. Start your day in the Word of God. Study with T. M. in our daily Scriptorium newsletter, as he walks us through the ongoing work of Christ in the book of Acts. You can subscribe to receive Scriptorium each day at 5:00 am Eastern, or go to the website to download each week’s study in a free PDF.

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Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.