From This Day Will I Bless You Hag. 2:10-19 CLICK TITLE FOR AUDIO
In the 6th month Haggai prophesied to the people of their neglect of the house of the Lord while they tended to their own houses and labors – the result was that God withheld his blessings from them – when Haggai showed them that the trouble they were having was directly related to their neglect of the things of the Lord, they hearkened to the words of the Lord and decided to rebuild the temple – in the 9th month the prophecy that we are studying today was given to them.
Basically the Lord said, whereas I had smitten you with blasting and mildew, from this day will I bless you – and he admonished them about something they had been doing before that he didn’t want them to repeat later – they were trying to apply holy things to themselves to be clean – in fact, since they were unclean, instead of becoming clean by the things they were doing, the opposite was happening – they were defiling the things they were touching because they were unclean – the Lord had to straighten them out on this problem because in rebuilding the temple they were going to be sacrificing again and he didn’t want them to think that they could live wicked, unclean lives, offer a sacrifice and somehow sanctify their wickedness – God didn’t want a clean temple defiled by unclean people.
The Lord promised likewise, that since they had turned to the Lord and started rebuilding the temple, he was going to bless them from this day forward.
Now let’s make the application to our lives:
People get the idea that they can touch something that is “holy” and somehow be made clean [i.e., holy water, water baptism, an item blessed by the pope, a statue, a rosary, the “Eucharist”] – Hag 2:12-13 shows you that something clean on the outside will not remove the uncleanness of man on the inside – that was the trouble with the Pharisees Matt 23:27-28 – Mk 7:1-4 – Mk 7:14-23.
For the Jews, God gave them visible chastening [Hag 2:15-16] to let them know that he still wanted them to turn to him [Deut 28:22] – and whether you are being chastened by the Lord or not, you need to turn to him – he will not accept your sacrifices from a wicked heart [Prov 15:8; 21:27].
Here, when they turned, the Lord said, even before your crops produce, I will bless you – he could do that because he knew their heart – if you are under a strain due to reaping what you have sown, you need to turn to the Lord – and even before you can fully recover from the results of your wickedness, God will begin to bless you – I have watched the Lord provide for folks who have turned and he has spared them from the full blow of their rebellion against him.
If you are religious and you think the traditions of your religion are going to clean you up, you are mistaken, you must turn to the Lord [1 Thes 1:9] – your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, if you are saved, and you need to keep the temple clean from the inside out.