HE WHO PUTS GOD FIRST
KEEPS HIMSELF PURE

10 In the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, in the second year of Darius, the word of the LORD came by Haggai, the prophet, saying,
11 Thus says the LORD of hosts: Ask now the priests concerning the law, saying,
12 If one carries holy flesh in the skirt of his garment, and with his skirt touches bread, or pottage, or wine, or oil, or any food, shall it be holy? And the priests said, "No!"
13 Then said Haggai, If one that is unclean by a dead body touches any of these, shall it be unclean? And the priests answered and said, "It shall be unclean."
14 Then answered Haggai, and said, So is this people, and so is this nation before me, says the LORD; and so is every work of their hands; and that which they offer there is unclean.
15 And now, I pray you, consider from this day on, from before a stone was laid on another stone in the temple of the LORD;
16 Since those days, when one came to a heap of twenty measures, there were only ten; when one came to the winevat to draw out fifty vessels from the press, there were only twenty.
17 I struck you with blight and with mildew and with hail in all the labours of your hands; yet you did not turn to Me, says the LORD.
18 Consider now from this day on, from the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, even from the day that the foundation of the LORD's temple was laid, consider it.
19 Is the seed in the barn yet? Yes, as yet the vine, and the fig tree, and the pomegranate, and the olive tree, have not born fruit; but from this day on I will bless you.

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When God's people had obeyed by getting to work at building the temple, God sent them an encouraging message through Haggai to show His pleasure in their response to His exhortation. That was our previous meditation. However, God also judged it necessary to remind them that their responsibility to heed His Word was not discharged once-for-all with this one obedient response. They had an ongoing need of keeping themselves cleansed.
We have a New-Testament reminder of this same truth in I John 3:3, which tells us that everyone who has this hope in Him, purifies himself, even as He is pure. The same epistle warns us that if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us (chapter 1, verse 8). That is applicable to saints at every stage of spiritual growth-- "little children, young men, and fathers" (2:12 to 14).
We may think our conduct is "not too bad"-- until we realize that the greatest of all commandments is to love God with our whole being (Mark 12:29, 30). When we remember that, every time we pass a moment without loving God with our whole being, we sin-- that changes our picture of how we stand before God. In fact, that tells us that simply failing to put God first in our lives in every way, is sin. In order to keep giving Him first place, we need a day-by-day cleansing to keep us pure.
This third message of Haggai begins with a picture of the CONTAGION of impurity. God tells Haggai to ask the priests of Israel two questions about the law of Moses, and to use their answers as an illustration of Israel's condition. According to the Mosaic ceremonial law, certain items were considered holy because they had been consecrated to God. The "holy flesh" referred to at the beginning of verse 12, was an example. Other items were neutral, such as bread, pottage, wine, oil, and unconsecrated meat from clean animals, as are mentioned next in the same verse. Haggai's first question was whether a neutral item would be made holy simply by its touching a holy, consecrated item. The priests said it wouldn't. To make an item ceremonially holy required a lengthy process of consecration. To sanctify the altar of burnt offering, and the priesthood took seven days each (Exodus 29:37; Leviticus 8:33).
Haggai's second question was whether a neutral item would be made unclean simply by its touching an unclean item, such as a person who had touched a corpse. The priests said it would. For example, simply touching a corpse, disqualified a person from eating the Passover, and obliged him to postpone it till the following month (Numbers 9:6). If a person died in the same tent where there was a container that had been left open, the container was thereby made unclean (Numbers 19:15). These are only examples of how readily defilement spread.This went to show that holiness is not contagious, whereas impurity is. Our human nature remains sinful even we have been justified and positionally sanctified in salvation. Left to itself, our nature will always drag us back down into the dirt. We become spiritually defiled even without being conscious of it. To keep pure, we need to "watch and pray," draw on Christ's strength, and "exercise ourselves to godliness" (I Timothy 4:7), besides putting away any known sin (Proverbs 28:13).
Because our nature so inclines us to slip into evil, the Christian life requires that we make constant progress in holiness in order to avoid slipping backwards. It's like driving uphill with a vehicle that has manual transmission and no brakes. As long as we keep going up-up-up, all will be well; but the moment we stop, we'll immediately roll backwards and have a struggle to get moving forward again. Let us therefore "watch and pray, that we enter not into temptation" (Matthew 26:41).
The picture drawn from the ceremonial law, next reminded Israel of the CHARACTER of impurity. It was not only such horrors as visible idolatry with statues and heathen practices, or gross sin, that would defile a person. In fact, the Jews of Haggai's day might have been surprised at the very suggestion that they were unclean in God's sight. Before their seventy-year exile in Babylon, their ancestors had frequently fallen into gross paganism with many cruel and immoral practices. But they had learned their lesson by the captivity, and had put away that form of idolatry. Now they had to learn that they had been practicing another type of idolatry, by letting something else take the place in their lives that belonged to God alone.
The particular application of this truth to Israel was that the houses they were building were in themselves neutral items. They were mere "things." Yet putting the finishing touches on them at the cost of neglecting God's temple, was making the houses unclean. This shows how readily a thing that's legitimate in itself can be used for an evil purpose. For their houses to be spiritually cleansed, the people would have to repent of their selfishness and get to work on the temple, so as to put God first.
Nor was such idolatry limited to willful, deliberate rebellion. Ceremonial uncleanness was generally not contracted that way, but simply by lack of care. For example, touching dead bodies was usually done accidentally, or even as part of one's duty; yet it left the person unclean. Similarly, God can be robbed of His rightful place in our lives simply by our unawareness of how great a place we're giving to something else. The daily cleansing we need from such impurity, is what's pictured by the washings of priests' hands and feet in the laver of the tabernacle, by the water of purification made with ashes of the red heifer (Numbers chapter 19), and by Christ's washing the apostles' feet (John 13:10). It is not the initial cleansing in salvation, but the continual cleansing to keep us pure.
Closely related to putting something else in God's place, is the sin of giving God the "leftovers" of our lives. Israel in Haggai's day fully intended to build the temple someday; but they wanted to finish their own houses first. Thus, they would take time first for what they wanted, and then give God what was left. How easy it is for us to do the same! We fill our schedules with what we want to do, and budget our money for things we want to buy; and then whatever is left over, God can have it. But in acting that way, we are giving God the last place in our lives; and that is a form of idolatry.
A story intended for reading to children, is tells how the children in a certain family played when they had to stay inside on a rainy day. They got out all their stuffed animals and a toy boat, and played "Noah's Ark." To make it "rain," the turned on the bathtub faucet, and then pulled the plug to make the water go down. But when it came to Noah's offering a sacrifice after the flood was dried up, they had a problem. They weren't willing to part with any of the stuffed animals they had with them. Finally one boy went to the attic, brought down a stuffed lamb that was all battered up and had a couple of legs missing, and asked, "will this do?" The others consented. Then, the person reading the story is supposed to end it by saying, "the game was over when they had offered a _______?" Children listening to the story will likely answer with, "Sacrifice!" But the person reading them the story says, "No they didn't! That was no sacrifice! They just offered something they didn't care about. A real sacrifice always costs the giving up of something that means something to us."
What about our giving of our time, energy, and resources to God? Is it a bona fide sacrifice that costs us something? Or do we just give God the "leftovers" that we don't care about anyway, like the children in the story? Remember that David refused to offer to the Lord something that had cost him nothing (II Samuel 24:24).
When the people had realized how they had become unclean by not giving God His rightful place in their lives, Haggai's message told them of the CLEANSING of impurity. The could be restored to God's favour, but they needed to be cleansed. To be cleansed, they needed to submit to divine discipline. God reviews in verses 15 to 17 how He had chastised them with crop failures and economic woes. "Blight" (verse 17) is caused by excessive dryness, whereas "mildew" is caused by excessive humidity; therefore God had used opposite means of seeking their attention. Then, hail would destroy everything. Solomon's prayer of dedication of the temple he had built, had foreseen these forms of chastisement as being sent for idolatry (I Kings 8:37); so the experiencing of them would cause these Jews to realize that their putting of their "home improvements" ahead of God was idolatry.
After repentance, the people needed to wait patiently for God to change their lot. It had been nearly four months since Haggai had delivered his first message to them, and three months since they had taken up construction of the temple. Yet there was no change yet in their harvest. During that time, they needed to recognize that God was just in chastising them, and accept the consequences humbly. After all, He had waited patiently for their repentance; so now they needed to wait patiently for Him to remove the consequences. Of course, God had forgiven the immediately when they had repented; but the consequences had to last awhile afterwards to drive the lesson in deeply enough.
When the people had fully proven that they were serious in turning back to God, He promised them blessing; He said, "from this day I will bless you" (end of verse 19). Four times in these messages through Haggai, God had exhorted His people to "consider" (1:5, 7; 2:15, 18). The idea behind that word is similar to the Prodigal Son's "coming to himself" (Luke 15:17). It means to grasp what God is trying to tell us, and take it seriously. It is only after such a return that blessing can expected.
Such truth particularly needs to be preached in these days when there is so much emphasis put on making people feel good. We need to get back to warning them of their need to repent and put their lives in order. Feeling good without repentance, can actually be a way of "searing one's conscience" (I Timothy 4:2), so that it no longer warns of danger. Messengers who put all this emphasis on feeling good, are like parents who are more concerned about stopping their children's screaming, than about correcting them when they've done wrong. God does what is genuinely good for us; and we need to remember that no chastening for the present seems joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterwards it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to them who are exercised by it (Hebrews 12:11).
Are you and I keeping ourselves pure? To do so requires a continual review of our priorities, so as to determine what place God has in our lives. It is so easy for our natural inclinations to crowd Him out. Yet He requires the very first place, the highest priority; and to let anything else even compete with Him for that place, is idolatry. The exhortation little children, keep yourselves from idols (I John 5:21), is to be responded to by giving God the first place in all things.

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