ENGAGE
Would you agree with me that health is not contagious, but that disease is?
If I’m healthy and you have the flu and I cough on you or shake hands with you or Sneeze on you, I am not going to make you well, am I? On the other hand, If I have the flu and I do any of those things to you, I might very well make you ill. That is one of the main reasons that it is much easier to get sick than to remain healthy. Those of you who send your kids to school for the first time certainly find that to be true, don’t you?
TENSION
Even though we know that and it makes sense to us, for some reason when it comes to our own personal holiness and spiritual growth, we somehow lose sight of that. It seems like there are a lot of Christians who think that if they just come to church and hang around with holy people each week that somehow they are going to develop “holiness antibodies”. And conversely, there are those who think that they can hang around with godless people without any adverse impacts. But as we will see this morning, they are wrong on both accounts, because…
Holiness is not contagious, but sin is
TRUTH
This morning as we continue in our series title “Little Books with a Big Message” we’ll take a look at the second chapter of Haggai.
As I mentioned last week, the book of Haggai consists of four precisely dated messages that come from God over about a four month period from September to December in the year 520 BC. Last week, we looked at the first of those messages, which comprised all of chapter 1.
Since chapter 2 contains the other 3 messages and we won’t have time to look at all three in detail, I’m going to briefly summarize a couple of those messages and then focus most of our time on the one that I believe is most relevant for us today.
The second message in found in the first nine verses of chapter 2. It comes nearly 2 months after the first message. In this message. God is addressing those in the community who are longing for the “good old days”. There are a few of the remnant who had apparently seen the temple before it was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar and now what they are rebuilding doesn’t even come close to the magnificence temple that Solomon had constructed. So it seems that some of them were questioning whether what they were doing was worth the effort.
I think we, too, often have a tendency to look back and long for things to be what they were once like and wish that God would take us back to a time when more people attended church on a regular basis, when there was prayer in our government meetings and in our schools, when Biblical marriage was held in high regard.
So I think it’s worth considering how God responds to those people who wanted to make the temple great again. Three times He commands them to “be strong” and then He tells them to “get to work”. He then reminds them that He is still in control and that one day He is going to fill the temple with even greater glory than before. We could paraphrase what God commanded them like this:
Quit looking back and reminiscing about the past. Remember I’m in control here so get busy with kingdom work and watch and see what I’m going to do as you serve Me. It will blow your mind.
The next message begins in verse 10 and that is the one I am going to spend most of our time on today, so go ahead and follow along as I read.
[Read Haggai 2:10-19]
This message comes a little over two months after the second one, in the month of December, 520 BC. By that time the people would have planted their winter crops, but they would not know yet whether it was going to be a productive crop or if they would experience another drought. As we see in verse 19, the seed is not in the barn and the vines and trees have not yielded their fruit.
Haggai tells the people to ask the priest two questions. This might seem a bit strange to us, but it was actually quite normal in that culture since one of the important roles of the priests was to instruct the people on how to live holy lives as we clearly see in this passage in Ezekiel:
They shall teach my people the difference between the holy and the common, and show them how to distinguish between the unclean and the clean.
(Ezekiel 44:23 ESV)
Let’s look at the two questions that God tells the people to ask the priests and see if we can’t make an application to our own lives here in the United States in the year 2018.
The first question was:
If someone carries holy meat in the fold of his garment and touches with his fold bread or stew or wine or oil or any kind of food, does it become holy?
Meat that was considered “holy” was meat that had been set apart for an offering. It was common for the people to wrap that meat in the fabric of their garments to keep it separate from their “ordinary” food, so that it wouldn’t become contaminated. It would be similar to what we experience today if we go to the grocery store and buy some meat and the butcher wraps it in paper to keep it from coming into contact with any of our other groceries.
The priests rightly answer that question and say “no”. Holy meat cannot make anything else holy just by come into contact with it.
Or as we put it earlier…
Holiness is not contagious
From all external appearances, it seemed like the people were serving God, but in verse 14, it is clear that God is not happy with their work on the temple. He calls them “this people” and “this nation”, not “my people” and “my nation”. Although God certainly desired for the temple to be rebuilt, but He was much more concerned with the hearts of the people.
Apparently at least some of the people working on the temple assumed that if they could just get that building project done, it would be like a good luck charm that would bring bountiful harvests. And I suspect that there were others who were just hanging around with those actually doing the work in the hopes that they would get credit for just being there. Some of that is just speculation, but what we do know for sure is that the people had a heart problem and that they were not drawing near to God with clean hands and a pure heart. And that was not going to be made right by “catching” the holiness of those whose hearts were seeking God.
Nothing has changed in the last 2,600 years. You still can’t “catch holiness” just by hanging around other holy people, or even by engaging in works that you think will be a good luck charm that will obligate God to do something you want Him to do for you.
While it is true that only God can make something or someone holy, developing holiness does require work on our part. Remember last week we looked at Philippians 2:12, where we were commanded to “work out our own salvation with fear and trembling”. And we’ve already see God command the people to “work” earlier in this chapter. I want to come back to that idea in a moment and talk about the kind of work we need to do in order for God to develop holiness in our lives. But first, let’s look at the second question that God tole the people to ask the priests:
If someone who is unclean by contact with a dead body touches any of these, does it become unclean?”
The priests also give the right answer to this question since the idea of becoming unclean by coming into contact with something or someone who is unclean is taught consistently in the Old Testament Scriptures.
Or as we put it earlier…
Sin is [contagious]
Although these people were engaging in religious rituals, their hearts were not right with God. And so the sacrifices that they were offering were being defiled just as those who touched an unclean body were defiled. And because sin spreads more easily than holiness, that corruption was impacting the entire body.
That wasn’t altogether different than the way some Christians live today. They come to church on Sunday and sing a few songs, listen to a sermon, maybe even put something in the offering plate, but then the other 167 hours of the week, they hang out with people who have a bad influence on them and get pulled away from God and live a life that is far from holy.
If it is true that…
Holiness is not contagious, but sin is
and I believe that it is, then we need to heed God’s command that is given three times in this passage and “consider” what that means for our lives. There are two distinct ideas that we need to consider as we close:
APPLICATION
First, if holiness is not contagious and we can’t develop personal holiness by osmosis, we need to consider the means that God uses to develop holiness in our lives. This week, I ran across a video of an interview done with theologian, author and pastor Kevin DeYoung where he discusses what I believe are four of the most important of those means. I’ve given you a place to jot them down in your sermon outline as you watch.
[Show YouTube Video – “Extraordinary Holiness Through Four Ordinary Means”]
Let’s see if you were able to get all four of the means that he talked about.
FOUR ORDINARY MEANS OF EXTRAORDINARY HOLINESS
(https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/extraordinary-holiness-through-four-ordinary-means)
1. Bible reading
2. Prayer
3. Local church fellowship
4. Lord’s Table
There is really nothing here that we haven’t talked about before, but one of the reasons that I wanted to show the video this morning is because I think if you just hear these things from me all the time, after a while you tend to just tune them out. If you’re a parent, you know what I mean. I’m amazed at how many times when my kids, even as adults, will come and share some nugget of truth or wisdom that they’ve heard from someone else. And my first thought is, “Isn’t that exactly what your mother and I have been teaching you all your life?” But I’ve come to realize that sometime our kids need to hear the same thing we’ve been telling them over and over from another person before it really sticks. So my hope this morning is that by hearing these four means that God uses to develop holiness in our lives from someone else is that it will at least legitimize what I share with you on a regular basis.
The second idea we need to consider is how we lessen the chances of being infected by sin. This is a lot like trying to prevent physical illness, There are a lot of things we can do to try and prevent sickness – eating healthy, exercising, washing our hands, getting vaccinated – but none of those things, no matter how meticulously we do them, will guarantee we won’t get sick. But it is still worth doing those things in order to minimize the chances we contract an illness.
Since we are all subject to our sin nature, there is nothing we can do to totally prevent the possibility we’ll be infected by sin in our lives, but it’s still worth making the effort to lessen the chances.
HOW TO LESSEN MY CHANCES OF GETTING “INFECTED” BY SIN
1. Isolation is not the answer
The is the approach that some of God’s people have taken throughout history. In Jesus’s day there was a monastic community called the Essenes who left Jerusalem and went to live in and isolated area near the Dead Sea where they prepared and preserved what we know today as the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Today, even here in the Tucson area, there are some people who still live that kind of monastic lifestyle. Most of us would never go quite that far, but it is not uncommon for some Christians to only hang around with other Christians and to isolate themselves from the world by avoiding all TV, movies, secular music and other “worldly” things.
But just like isolation can’t prevent physical disease completely, that kind of isolation can’t completely prevent being impacted by the sin that is in the world because it is so pervasive. But even worse, that kind of isolation prevents us from carrying out the task that Jesus gives to His disciples to bring His kingdom near to others and to make disciples.
As Paul reminded the church in Corinth, we are not to isolate ourselves from those who are not yet disciples of Jesus:
I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people—not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world.
(1 Corinthians 5:9–10 ESV)
Probably the best evidence we have that isolation is not the answer is the fact that Jesus doesn’t immediately take us to be with Him the very moment that we commit our lives to Him.
2. Neither is license
Some Christians unfortunately go to the other extreme and not only engage with the world around them, they live just like unbelievers. These people will often justify that by claiming that they are trying to be a witness to their unbelieving friends and family members. They often justify this approach by claiming that it’s okay because God will forgive their sin.
The apostle Paul addressed that very idea in his letter to the churches in Rome:
What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?
(Romans 6:1–2 ESV)
This is the very same idea that Jesus expressed in his prayer in John 17 when He claimed that while His followers would remain in the world, they were not to be of the world.
I think most of us understand that we are to avoid the two extremes of isolation and license. But we still probably have a bent in the direction of one of those extremes. So how do we live life between those two extremes in a way that will lessen the chances of getting “infected” by sin?
3. Remember my objective
If our objective is to bring the kingdom of God near to others, then we must obviously have some contact with them. But we don’t want to have so much contact with them that they begin to influence us more than we are influencing them. I can’t give you any hard and fast rules this morning about how to strike that balance. But what I can do is to give you a principle to apply.
In just a couple of weeks, we’re going to be studying the little book of Jude. And there we find some really good advice that will help us here:
And have mercy on those who doubt; save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh.
(Jude 22–23 ESV)
We ought to approach our interactions with unbelievers as if we are snatching them out of a fire, which is actually what we are doing in a spiritual sense.
If your house was on fire and one of your children were trapped in that burning building, I’m pretty sure that every one of us here today would go back into that building to rescue him or her. But we would only stay in that building long enough to get our child out of danger. We wouldn’t hang around and attempt to put out the fire or to retrieve some personal belongings because that would endanger both our life and the life of our child.
That’s a great picture to keep in mind as we think about how much contact I should have with those who are not yet followers of Jesus. I want to have enough contact to be able to complete the rescue, but not so much that I will get burned myself.
Let me illustrate. As I’ve shared with you before, one of the main ways that I have contact with unbelievers is refereeing volleyball. And when I do that I have regular contact with most of those referees as a group in our meetings and training sessions and with individual officials as I work with them throughout the season. And because almost all of them know I’m a pastor, I often get a chance to have a discussion about spiritual matters with some of them.
But some of those officials often have a more informal get together after a meeting or a match – usually gathering at a bar somewhere. And since I know those gatherings are likely going to include some off-color stories and vulgar language in addition to some excessive drinking, I choose not to be a part of them.
Holiness is not contagious, but sin is
And my prayer is that this passage has provided you with some practical ways to develop holiness and avoid being “infected” by sin.
There is one last message from Haggai in verses 20-23. This fourth message comes on the very same day as his third. Haggai tells Zerubbabel that God is about to shake the heavens and earth and overthrow earthly kingdoms and their military might and make Zerubbable his “signet ring”. This is clearly a Messianic prophecy that has not yet been fulfilled in whole. It looks forward to the “Day of the Lord” when Jesus will return to this earth and overcome all earthly rulers and set up His own physical rule here on the earth.
So just as we saw with Haggai’s second message at the beginning of the chapter, this is a message of hope which is intended to get the people to look ahead to God’s future glorious reign rather than to dwell in the “good old days” of the past.
INSPIRATION
I think the very fact that you’re here this morning is probably a pretty good indicator that you want to develop holiness in your life. But just coming here for an hour on Sunday and hanging around with others who are on that same journey, while it is important and helpful, is not enough. You will never become more holy just by hanging out with holy people.
As we’ve seen this morning, developing holiness does take some effort on our part. But the results make that effort well worth it. Throughout the book of Haggai, we find that God blesses those who are seeking to live a holy life. God says, “I am with you”, “I will fill my house with glory”, “I will give peace”, “I will bless you”, and “I have chosen you”. Wouldn’t you like God to say those same things to you? I sure know I would.
ACTION
So as we close this morning, I want to ask everyone here to take one very practical step toward developing holiness in your life. A ministry called Disciple Labs has developed an assessment that is designed to help you evaluate your spiritual health. Our Elders have been considering how we might be able to use this tool down the road to help us evaluate the overall spiritual health of our church and to identify areas where we can better help all of us to grow in our relationship with Jesus. But for right now, I just want to ask all of us to take the free individual assessment. You can complete that assessment in no more than 10 minutes. I’ve given you a link to the survey in your bulletin and I’ll also include it in my weekly newsletter.
https://disciplelabs.com/spiritual-health-assessment-tool/
Once you have taken the assessment, if you need some help addressing some areas of need in your life, will you reach out to any of our Elders and let them know. Any of us will be happy to provide you with some help or to direct you to someone who can help you in that area.
Holiness is not contagious, but sin is
What are you doing to develop holiness and avoid sin in your life?
Discussion questions for Bible Roundtable
1. What are some of the dangers of looking back and longing for the “good old days”? What is a healthy way to look back on our past?
2. Why do you think God uses “ordinary means” to develop “extraordinary holiness”? Does doing the four things Kevin DeYoung talked about automatically develop holiness in our lives? Why or why not?
3. What are some ways that Christians can tend to exercise isolation in our lives? How do we overcome that tendency?
4. What are some practical ways to balance our tendencies toward isolation and license? What can we learn from the life of Jesus about how to do that?
