BE BETTER

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

On the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, in the second year of Darius, the word of the Lord came to the prophet Haggai: “This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘Ask the priests what the law says: If someone carries consecrated meat in the fold of their garment, and that fold touches some bread or stew, some wine, olive oil or other food, does it become consecrated?’”

The priests answered, “No.”

Then Haggai said, “If a person defiled by contact with a dead body touches one of these things, does it become defiled?”

“Yes,” the priests replied, “it becomes defiled.”

Then Haggai said, “‘So it is with this people and this nation in My sight,’ declares the Lord. ‘Whatever they do and whatever they offer there is defiled.’”

“‘Now give careful thought to this from this day on—consider how things were before one stone was laid on another in the Lord’s temple. When anyone came to a heap of twenty measures, there were only ten. When anyone went to a wine vat to draw fifty measures, there were only twenty. I struck all the work of your hands with blight, mildew and hail, yet you did not return to me,’ declares the Lord. ‘From this day on, from this twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, give careful thought to the day when the foundation of the Lord’s temple was laid. Give careful thought: Is there yet any seed left in the barn? Until now, the vine and the fig tree, the pomegranate and the olive tree have not borne fruit.’”

“‘From this day on I will bless you.’”

Haggai 2:10-19

This ends today’s reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

In yesterday’s message, we found God telling His people that once the construction of His temple was finished, He would once again dwell within it, filling His house with a glory that would be even greater than the glory in the prior temple which had been destroyed during the Babylonian invasion.

Indeed, God’s holiness would once again be alive and well in Jerusalem and His people could once again worship and revere Him in the new temple.

But would that holiness translate to the Israelites?

Yes, God had commanded their ancestors to be holy just as He was holy (Leviticus 19:2) but they didn’t take that order to heart. Rather, the pre-exile Israelites chose to worship false gods and idols, abandoning the God who promised and then provided then a land to live in for counterfeit deities worshiped by other nations. God was the God of His people but His people were not honoring and revering Him, choosing sinful worship practices instead which included defiling God’s holy temple by bringing idols within and offering sacrifices to those gods.

Think about how utterly disrespectful that was to the Lord God Almighty, the God who had commanded His people to have no other gods before Him, adding that He was a jealous God and would not allow any other entity to share His place of authority and honor.

And so God took action and brought judgment on His people. The Assyrians attacked and assaulted the northern kingdom of Israel; afterwards, the Babylonians would assault the southern kingdom of Judah. The aftermath of these two one-sided battles was devastation and destruction, a nation in whole left in ruin and desolation as its people were taken away into captivity.

All this was fresh in the minds of the Israelite remnant who God allowed to return and restore the nation after His seventy year exile punishment penalty was served, and as we see in today’s passage as well as in other places earlier in this post-exile book of Haggai, He wanted to make sure His people wouldn’t repeat the mistakes of the past. Look again at today’s verses:

On the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, in the second year of Darius, the word of the Lord came to the prophet Haggai: “This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘Ask the priests what the law says: If someone carries consecrated meat in the fold of their garment, and that fold touches some bread or stew, some wine, olive oil or other food, does it become consecrated?’”

The priests answered, “No.”

Then Haggai said, “If a person defiled by contact with a dead body touches one of these things, does it become defiled?”

“Yes,” the priests replied, “it becomes defiled.”

Then Haggai said, “‘So it is with this people and this nation in My sight,’ declares the Lord. ‘Whatever they do and whatever they offer there is defiled.’”

“‘Now give careful thought to this from this day on—consider how things were before one stone was laid on another in the Lord’s temple. When anyone came to a heap of twenty measures, there were only ten. When anyone went to a wine vat to draw fifty measures, there were only twenty. I struck all the work of your hands with blight, mildew and hail, yet you did not return to me,’ declares the Lord. ‘From this day on, from this twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, give careful thought to the day when the foundation of the Lord’s temple was laid. Give careful thought: Is there yet any seed left in the barn? Until now, the vine and the fig tree, the pomegranate and the olive tree have not borne fruit.’”

“‘From this day on I will bless you.’”  Haggai 2:10-19

Note here that the Lord begins by exchanging dialogue with the priests through His prophet Haggai. The intent of the exchange was to make sure that the priests had a solid understanding of the law as it pertained to holiness versus defilement and the discussion was framed around a couple questions.

First, the Lord had Haggai ask:

“If someone carries consecrated meat in the fold of their garment, and that fold touches some bread or stew, some wine, olive oil or other food, does it become consecrated?”

To which the priests answered, “No.”

Going to the Leviticus, one of the books of the law, you will find that once the meat of the sacrifice was consecrated, it would consecrate anything it touched however if the item consecrated then touched something it would not transfer consecration to another item (Leviticus 6:27). In the case of the Lord’s question, the priests were being tested as to their knowledge of the law, quizzed as to whether the garment, now consecrated by touching the consecrated meat, could in turn touch something else and consecrate it (bread, stew, wine, olive oil, etc). The priests responded correctly, saying the transference of consecration would not happen in that scenario and so the Lord posed a second question:

“If a person defiled by contact with a dead body touches one of these things, does it become defiled?”

And the priests replied:

“Yes, it becomes defiled.”

Here the Lord was drawing His question from the Book of Numbers which clearly states that a person who has touched a dead body would be unclean (defiled) and defile other things if not purified and cleansed prior (Numbers 19:11-16). In other words, defilement could be passed from one thing to another, unlike consecration. The priests were two for two in correctly answering the Lord’s questions.

But what was the point? What was the Lord getting at?

We find the answer in the next statement, again sent from the Lord through Haggai:

“So it is with this people and this nation in My sight,” declares the Lord. “Whatever they do and whatever they offer there is defiled.”

Here we get to the heart of the issue God was raising with the Israelites, an issue He would transmit through the priests, the religious leaders of the community. If you treat the two parts of the law mentioned as a formula, you get this end solution:

Sin is more easily transferred from person to person than holiness.

It’s true, isn’t it?

Every single person is born into sin. They are sinners from the moment they draw first breath. It’s an affliction that has ailed mankind ever since the great fall in Eden’s garden and there is no worldly cure for it.

This sin disease, inherent in us, can also be very contagious. Survey through the Bible and you will see countless examples of how sin was passed from one person to another, sometimes infecting entire nations to include God’s beloved nation of Israel. In fact, it was the volatility and voracity of that sin infection that led to God sending His judgment to at least break it up and try and send His people into some semblance of remission. The judgment involved isolation, removing His people from the point of infection (Israel and Judah) and moving them into captivity for a seventy year period, the amount of time He, the Great Physician, prescribed.

Now, that they were back, the Lord wanted them to do one very important thing.

He wanted them to be better.

They could start making inroads toward this goal by once again placing God at the center of their lives, recommitting themselves to the One who was the only true source of consecration, the only One who could set them apart and make them holy as He is holy. He wanted His people to refrain from repeating the mistakes of the past and rebuild His temple so they could start fresh and new in their worship with one another. Through all this, the Lord ultimately wanted to once again bless, not punish His people.

Friends, God is speaking loudly and profoundly to us today, sinners every bit as much as the Old Testament Israelites of Haggai’s time. For if we hope to be consecrated, we need to draw near to the One who can transfer that holiness to us. That One is not a pastor or parent or any relative or friend. No, the fount of holiness is only found in the Lord God Almighty and when we come to Him and drink from that fount then consecration happens, a consecration that drives out our sin and prevents us from defiling others through sin, which is what manifests itself within when holiness is absent.

The Lord is calling us to be better today. In fact, He calls us to be better every day, especially to be better than we were yesterday. When we turn to Him, asking that He set us apart in His holiness while praying for Him to use us to minister and bless others in accordance with His will, we will accomplish just that as we become holy as He is holy.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark
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