Stop Thinking Like Dirt

Haggai (1:3 ) Thus speaks the word of the Lord came by Haggai the prophet, saying,

(1:4) It is time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, and this temple to lie in ruins?

(1:5) Now therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider your ways!

(1:6) You have sown much and bring in little; You eat, but do not have enough; you drink but are not filled with drink; you clothe yourselves, but no one is warm; and he who earns wages, earns wages to put into a bag with holes.”

(1:7) Thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider your ways!

(1:8) Go up to the mountain and bring wood and build the temple, that I may take pleasure in it and be glorified,” says the Lord.

(1:9) You looked for much, but indeed it came to little; and when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why? Says the Lord of hosts. Because my house that is in ruins, while everyone one of you runs to his own house.

(1: 10) Therefore the heavens above you will withhold the dew, and the earth withholds its fruit.

(1:11) For I called for a drought on the land and the mountains, on the grain and the new wine and the oil, on whatever the ground brings forth, on men and livestock, and on all the labor of your hands.”

Ok…

The setting is 538 BC and a man called Haggai this time is the chosen one from God to speak to the people of God…

I’m thankful that God has directed me to speak on the Minor Prophets…

Recently we have been able to learn of Amos … And Obadiah… and Now Haggai…

Haggai’s… the second shortest book in the bible

Not much is really known about the man himself… He is only mentioned just a few times in the Bible

It’s interesting that all of his prophecies occurred within a 4 month span in the second year of the Persian King Darius …

As I mentioned its 538 BC and some 50,000 Israelites was now allowed to return there home land under the spiritual guidance of Joshua the Priest.

About 2 years after their return … right about 536 BC there was a call to rebuild the temple of God that had been previously destroyed…

Unfortunately however, God saw then (much like today in many cases) opposition from neighbors and indifference by His own people caused the work of God to be abandoned and the temple remained in ruins for years…

And as it is told it was 16 years later that Haggai and then Zechariah would be commissioned by the Lord to stir up the people…

God would speak through his prophets to let the people know that it is time…

Time to start rebuilding the Temple of God…

Time to re-order our spiritual priorities

And since God had at that time because of the general apathy of His people toward Him the people had seen drought and crop failures … It also became time to see the harvest from the soil that they would ultimately sow into…

And the Prophet was told by God that if the people did these things then and only then would they see

Greater Peace…

Greater Prosperity

And a Divine ruler ship over their situations or circumstances…

And as you do the diagnostic on this passage what we learn about what Haggai was saying is that Haggai was saying to the People of God is that you are thinking like Dirt and its time to start thinking like Harvest…

And the interesting thing here is that the people then (just like today) believed that they loved God…

They sought God and His favor upon their lives…

They even had good days and bad days like we do today…

But like many of us today they may have acquired some things in life but still remained that void…

They may have possessions of life but have not really “cracked the code” of life itself…

They have seen some blessings but at the end of the day nothing still exists… There is no harvest because they have gone from blessed to broke so many times that for some reason they begin to believe that that is the way I am suppose to live and since I am supposed to live this way well maybe I will just give up on some things …

Maybe I won’t spend time with my family…

Maybe I will start hanging out in the wrong places…

Maybe I will stop thinking about the church as much …

And maybe I will just start going for self…

And as we start going for self and start wandering further and further away from God...

All the sudden we find ourselves now in a further drought season and instead of going from Blessed to broke we are now going from Broke to Broke…