Stirred Up

​Haggai 1:14-15 ~ “And the LORD stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and the spirit of Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, and the spirit of all the remnant of the people. And they came and worked on the house of the LORD of hosts, their God, on the twenty-fourth day of the month, in the sixth month, in the second year of Darius the king.”
 
What stirs you up? Before we look upon our text today, let us first explore those things that would get people motivated. There are those who are moved to fight against their view of injustice. Others are driven to try and curb the condition of those who are suffering in foreign lands. Humanitarian agencies strive to make a dent in the desperate lives of those who are ravaged by poverty. Some are inspired toward political pursuits and others toward social changes. All of these are good reasons to have your desires stirred up to move you toward action. But are these from the LORD?
 
And this brings us to our text today for we find that it was “the LORD who stirred up the spirit.” Of those mentioned, they all were affected by the LORD God toward the purpose He had given. To be “stirred up” literally means to be awakened. It is to be roused from a slumber unto a critical activity. We find the LORD giving a stirring to those who were to be the craftsman for the temple. “And Moses called Bezalel and Oholiab and every craftsman in whose mind the LORD had put skill, everyone whose heart stirred him up to come to do the work” (Exodus 36:2). We find that God Almighty stirred up foreign kings to do His will. Consider Jeremiah 51:11, “Sharpen the arrows! Take up the shields! The LORD has stirred up the spirit of the kings of the Medes, because his purpose concerning Babylon is to destroy it, for that is the vengeance of the LORD, the vengeance for his temple.” Often people pray for a mighty move of God, desiring that the LORD would do some marvelous thing that might illuminate the world with the gospel of Christ. However, it is often the stirred-up people of God, those who are awake and alert to the desperate state of our world, that God uses to accomplish the work. In our text we see that the LORD stirred up the governor, Zerubbabel; He stirred up the high priest, Joshua; and the LORD stirred up the remnant of the people.
 
And the LORD God stirred them up to a specific task. We read in our text, “And they came and worked on the house of the LORD of hosts.” God is a God of order, and He does not stir up His people that they should run helter-skelter in this world, frenetic and chaotic in their effort to fulfill God’s will. 1 Corinthians 14:33 states, “For God is not a God of confusion but of peace.” Thus, we read in 1 Corinthians 14:40, “But all things should be done decently and in order.” For being “stirred up” does not mean moving forward in a frenzy, but to be determined in every step to accomplish the task of the LORD. As we consider the task given to the remnant of God’s people, the rebuilding of the temple, let us also take a moment to consider to what God has wakened us. It was said of Jesus, “Zeal for your house will consume me” (John 2:17). For the Apostle Paul he was stirred up for the proclamation of the gospel. He says of himself in 1 Corinthians 9:16, “For if I preach the gospel, that gives me no ground for boasting. For necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!” So ask yourself, beloved, what “necessity” is laid up on you?
 
Let us return to the question from where we started: what stirs you up? If it is the LORD who is stirring your heart to action, He will always direct your life to accomplish what He has purposed. Many find themselves stirred up to do things for themselves that are not from the Word of God. James warns us in James 4:13-15, “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit’—yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.’” Dear ones, if it is the LORD who has stirred your heart to action, it will always be toward those things that builds His kingdom, blesses His people and brings Him glory. And, as Paul said in 2 Thessalonians 3:5, “May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ.”
 
In His Grace,
Pastor Michael

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