Haggai 2:10-19
Consider Your Ways
Woodlawn Baptist Church
October 16, 2005
Introduction
In the book of 1 Chronicles, there is a little prayer that swept our country a few years ago that reads like this,
“Oh that You would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that Your hand would be with me, and that You would keep me from evil.”
Many of you recognize it of course as the prayer of Jabez, made popular in 2000 by Bruce Wilkinson in the book titled The Prayer of Jabez. The subtitle goes on to say, Breaking Through to the Blessed Life. Of course it was a best seller and the topic of much debate. Was the book scriptural or was it just more of the health, wealth and prosperity gospel that has deceived so many? Is there anything of any substance in it or is it more of the bubble gum, psycho-babble that has swept Christianity in our generation?
A couple of you bought me the book, and what caught my attention then and continues to do so now is not finding answers to those questions, but watching our modern pursuit of God’s blessings. Jabez prayed, “Oh that You would bless me indeed…” It is still the prayer of God’s people today. But in my opinion it has become more than a prayer: it has become an obsession. Let me explain.
Of all people on earth, we are the most privileged, not of this generation only, but of all generations. We have more stuff, more information, and more opportunities than of any people before, but it is not enough. I don’t have to convince you of this; it is evident all around us. We race here and there trying to do more, trying to accumulate more, trying to accomplish more than ever before. We cannot find significance in being good husbands and fathers; we are driven to be more than that. We cannot find significance in being good wives and mothers; we are compelled to find significance outside the home.
You might disagree with me, but in my opinion our nation’s greatest days have been our leanest days, and that is not only true of our nation, it is true of the Lord’s churches and of His people in general. We have grown fat on God’s blessings, and now those blessings do not satisfy, which is why so many people are attracted to preaching and teaching that is aimed at helping them “maximize their potential,” or whatever other things so many “feel good” and “be happy” preachers are preaching these days. Especially telling are the signs across our land that say, “God bless America,” the same America that has largely turned its back on God.
Our study in Haggai has shown us a people like this. They had sown much, but had brought in little. They had eaten much, but were never filled. They had drunk much, but were always thirsty. They were making lots of money, but it was never enough and you know that their prayer was that God would bless them. “Oh that you would bless me!” “Oh that you would bless us!”
God told them in chapter one that He was not going to bless them because they couldn’t find the time or resources to build His house when they had plenty of both to build their own homes. They always had excuses as to why it was never the right time to do His work. Well now they’ve gotten to work. They’re building God’s house and doing what He said, but the blessings still aren’t coming. They can’t find joy; can’t find satisfaction in their work, can’t enjoy their relationships, aren’t enjoying the fruit of their labors and are just generally unhappy with the way things are going in their lives.
In the verses we are going to read this morning, God talks about His blessings. He tells the people why He has been withholding them and we learn how they can get them back. There could not be a timelier message for us today: not for us individually, nor for us as a church. Do you ever feel like God is withholding His blessings from you? Do you ever wonder why you give and serve so much, but struggle to get ahead? Have you wondered why our church is struggling along? In spite of some growth and lots of work going on it so often seems like we’re treading water and just trying to survive. If you’re like most people, you’ve asked these questions and felt this way. I believe Haggai has some answers we need to consider. Let’s read Haggai 2:10-19.
“In the four and twentieth day of the ninth month, in the second year of Darius, came the word of the Lord by Haggai the prophet, saying, Thus saith the Lord of hosts; Ask now the priests concerning the law, saying, If one bear holy flesh in the skirt of his garment, and with his skirt do touch bread, or pottage, or wine, or oil, or any meat, shall it be holy? And the priests answered and said, No. Then said Haggai, If one that is unclean by a dead body touch any of these, shall it be unclean? And the priests answered and said, It shall be unclean. Then answered Haggai, and said, So is this people, and so is this nation before me, saith the Lord; and so is every work of their hands; and that which they offer there is unclean. And now, I pray you, consider from this day and upward, from before a stone was laid upon a stone in the temple of the Lord: since those days were, when one came to an heap of twenty measures, there were but ten: when one came to the pressfat for to draw out fifty vessels out of the press, there were but twenty. I smote you with blasting and with mildew and with hail in all the labors of your hands; yet ye turned not to me, saith the Lord. Consider now from this day and upward, from the four and twentieth day of the ninth month, even from the day that the foundation of the Lord’s temple was laid, consider it. Is the seed yet in the barn? Yea, as yet the vine, and the fig tree, and the pomegranate, and the olive tree, hath not brought forth: from this day will I bless you.”
If we want the best of God’s blessings, then we need to deal with three things mentioned in this passage.
Uncleanness Is the Issue
This is the third message Haggai delivers to the people for God. It comes about two months after the second message, and it begins with two questions to the priests. First, in verse 12, “If a man carries consecrated meat in the fold of his gown and with this fold touches bread or drink or food of any kind, does that food become holy?” In other words, is that food made holy by virtue of being touched by this holy food? Their answer was appropriately, “No.” The second question is in verse 13. He says, “Ok, let’s suppose that we have the same scenario, but this time the man who is carrying the consecrated offering and touches the other food is unclean because he has touched a dead body. Are the things he has touched unclean by virtue of having been touched by an unclean man?” Their answer? “Yes.”
The lesson then was simple. Holiness is noncommunicable. In other words, proximity to holiness, even touching that which is holy in no way makes something else holy. However, uncleanness is communicable. It can be passed along. Suppose I had two potatoes and I washed one of them. It is clean; holy if you will. If I put them both in the same basket and leave them there, will the second one also become clean? Of course not. But what if one of those potatoes was rotten? If I put them both in a basket and left them, would the other one also become rotten? Yes!
God doesn’t chastise the people any more because they aren’t working on His temple: they are working on it. The issue any more is not whether they are doing the right things, but that they are unclean while they are doing them. The questions are object lessons. Look at verse 12 again. The holy flesh or consecrated meat represents the temple: the holy thing of God. The bread, or pottage, wine, oil, and meat all represent the people. The question then from God becomes, “Can any of you, by virtue of working on my temple, by being near my temple, by doing good things for me become clean? Can serving me and working for me make you holy? No!”
On the other hand, if you who are unclean touch that which is holy does it also become unclean? The holy temple does not make you clean, but your uncleanness is making my temple unclean also! You see, the issue was not whether they were working for God, but that because they were defiled they were desecrating His temple, and for that God would not bless them.
Verse 14 says that when the priests answered these questions Haggai followed by saying, “So is this people, this nation, every work of their hands and that which they offer. It is all unclean! Every one of them and everything about them was unclean!”
Crime Doesn’t Pay
Haggai then says to the people in verse 15,
“Now think about this. From the day you started laying the stones…from the first day you started to work on my temple you’ve been coming up short. You go to the barn for grain, but there’s not much there. You go to the wine vat for wine and it’s already gone. I smote you with blasting and with mildew and with hail in all your labors; but you still wouldn’t turn to me.”
Verse 19 continues that thought. There’s still seed in the barn, but no crops; vines in the vineyard, but no grapes; fruit trees in the orchards, but no fruit. “Consider your ways!” In other words, how much longer will I have to deprive you and withhold my blessings from you before you’ll recognize that it’s me you’ve been fighting against and turn back to me?
Listen, I hope you’re taking all this in. God is saying to these people that if we do tend to His interests we cannot expect Him to tend to ours. They were unclean, and God wasn’t going to bless it. He wouldn’t bless it then and He will not bless it now.
Why? What’s the big deal about uncleanness? The word unclean makes me think about baths and showers. Did I wear enough deodorant? But that’s not it. God spelled out the various ways a man or woman could be unclean, but the real issue was and still is what that uncleanness represented. Cleanness is a picture of holiness. It has to do with purity and righteous living. Uncleanness then is a picture of unholiness. Instead of purity it has to do with that which is defiled and unrighteous. Uncleanness is a picture of sin: man in his wicked, sinful state.
When Isaiah stood in the presence of God in all His holiness and majesty, he said,
“Woe is me! For I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.”
Isaiah probably thought he was a pretty good old boy until he stood in the presence of God. When He saw the holiness and purity and righteousness of God he could not help but recognize how unclean he was. In other words, he recognized what a sinful man he was. Then he added, “and I live in the middle of a people who are also sinful.”
In Leviticus, God spent a lot of time explaining to Moses the various ways people could become unclean. They could become unclean by the things they ate, by the things they touched, by their bodily fluids, by certain sexual activities, by certain skin conditions and more. But through all the talk about clean and unclean, there are two lessons for us that we absolutely must learn.
The primary concern was not for the health of the people, but for the holiness and purity of God.
Leviticus 15:31-33 says,
“Thus shall ye separate the children of Israel from their uncleanness; that they die not in their uncleanness, when they defile my tabernacle that is among them. This is the law of him that hath an issue, and of him whose seed goeth from him, and is defiled therewith; and of her that is sick of her flowers, and of him that hath an issue, of the man, and of the woman, and of him that lieth with her that is unclean.”
On the surface it might appear that God’s concern was for the life and health of the people, but the real concern is for the holiness and purity of His tabernacle. If you come around here unclean, you are risking your life to do so. You see, God’s primary concern was not the curing of the individual, nor protecting the public health. That’s not to say that we don’t matter to God, but our having good health is not His primary concern. If it were, Jesus would have spent much more time healing the sick. The primary concern of God was the protecting of the sanctity of the dwelling of God in the camp.
Numbers 5:2-3 says,
“Command the children of Israel, that they put out of the camp every leper, and every one that hath an issue, and whosoever is defiled by the dead: both male and female shall ye put out, without the camp shall ye put them; that they defile not their camps, in the midst whereof I dwell.”
And last of all Deuteronomy 23:14 says,
“For the Lord thy God walketh in the midst of thy camp, to deliver thee, and to give up thine enemies before thee; therefore shall thy camp be holy: that he see no unclean thing in thee, and turn away from thee.”
Not only is God’s primary concern for His holiness and purity, we need to learn that…
Cleanness and Uncleanness Determine Our State of Access to God
Simply said, our access to God is dependent, directly tied to our willingness to be clean before Him. If a priest became ceremonially unclean, he was eliminated from service until he became clean again. David recognized that when he because unclean through his sin, that he needed to be cleansed before he could enjoy fellowship with God again. It wasn’t a bath that he needed or a dip in the river. He needed the cleansing that only comes through repentance and the forgiveness of God.
You see, cleanness in God’s mind is tied to holiness. God said at the end of Leviticus 11, “Be holy, because I am holy.” If we want to enjoy God’s presence then we must demonstrate concern for holy living before Him.
All uncleanness is a picture of sin, and all sin is nothing more than crime against God. When we sin we are breaking God’s laws, violating God’s desires for us, stepping over the boundaries He has established for our benefit. Does crime pay? Not in God’s economy. The unclean man limits his access to God by his sin.
Now, I have told you that the real issue in God’s message through Haggai was uncleanness. I have told you that crime, or uncleanness does not pay, but there’s something else I think you need to realize.
God Wants to Bless His People
Did you know that? God wants to bless His people. He wants to bless you. At the end of verse 19, after God says that the seed is not producing crops and the fruit trees are not yielding harvests, He makes a statement almost in passing that you don’t need to miss: “from this day will I bless you.”
Having said that, we must realize that there is a condition that must be met in order for God to bless us, and that condition is that we be clean: holy, pure, righteous.
I want you to listen to what I’m about to say. I think that you cannot afford to miss this. Two weeks ago I told you that God is displeased with us so long as we are unwilling to put Him first. He does not want to be one of the things we love. He wants to be our greatest love, and while so many of us go around claiming to love God more than anything we demonstrate that we do not by our excuses and misplaced priorities.
Now, there is more to it than that. Here is a people that have put God’s work first in their lives, but God is still withholding His blessings from them because they are unclean in His sight. Did you ever stop to think that it matters to God not only that you are doing a thing, but that you are right while you’re doing it? I did not say that God cares that you do the thing right; but that He cares that you are right while you’re doing it.
God says, “On these terms they will still stand with me, and on no other. Listen, so long as we are willing to be profane and sensual and morally impure, even while doing the work of God we cannot expect the blessings of God. So long as we have wicked hearts and live wicked lives, even though we work so hard in church or at being an A-1 Mr. Christian God will not bless us the way He wants to. Even though we might offer many costly sacrifices and give regular offerings, if we do not concern ourselves with being a holy and righteous people before God, we cannot expect God to be impressed with those offerings.
You may be doing a good work; teaching a class, driving a nail, singing in the choir, but if you are unclean then your uncleanness is defiling or polluting the things of God you touch. Your proximity to church and church business is not making you holy in God’s sight. Your uncleanness is making His house and our service unacceptable to Him.
Earlier I asked you whether you ever feel like God is withholding His blessings from you? Whether you ever wonder why you give and serve so much, but struggle to get ahead? Why our church is struggling along? Could it be because even though we are doing the right things we have not been so concerned about being the right people?
Are your actions such that would be considered clean by God? Are the places you go and the things you do honorable in God’s sight? Are the things you allow your eyes to feast upon holy and righteous or are they sensual and defiling? What about your attitudes? Do you think unholy thoughts? Do you allow your mind to wander where it does not belong? Is your speech such that honors God?
I do not know all the right questions to ask you to make you earnestly and honestly consider your state before God, but I believe the Holy Spirit already knows what questions to ask you in the quiet recesses of your mind. He knows what you need to hear and consider. The invitation today is to come into His presence and be cleansed from your sins. I want the blessings of God in my life, and I know that you do too. The question then is whether we are willing to be the right kind of people God can bless. In Psalm 24, David said,
“Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? Or who shall stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully. He shall receive the blessing from the Lord, and righteousness from the God of his salvation.”
