A Correction of Unclean Hearts
Background
Over the past few weeks, we’ve been considering the words of the prophet, Haggai, who was sent by God to the Jewish people. The Jews had rebelled against God (they were spiritually unclean), so He sent foreign armies as a consequence, to destroy their cities and to take them from their homeland. This period of banishment lasted for decades. But at the earliest opportunity, many Jews returned with the hope of rebuilding the former capital city of the Jewish nation, Jerusalem.
For many years, though, the people neglected to rebuild the temple. And God sent Haggai to the Jews, to encourage them to recommit themselves to worship and to the restoration of this temple. The people responded well to Haggai’s message. They began to rebuild.
Yet at this point, God, in his infinite wisdom, recognizes that with all of this physical labor, focused on the construction of a physical temple, there is a risk that the people will believe that God is just concerned about their physical doings. There’s a risk that the people will place their confidence in their outward obedience, and that the inward devotion of their hearts will be missed or neglected.
So about three months after the people start rebuilding the temple, God delivers another message through his prophet Haggai. And God clarifies that empty ritualism won’t receive his blessing. Instead, he will bless those who are obedient and reverent from the heart.
If you haven’t already, please turn with me in your Bibles to the book of Haggai, Chapter 2. I’ll be reading verses 10 through 19. But before I read the text for us this afternoon, please pray with me.
[PRAY AND READ TEXT]
There are three points I want to explain from the text this afternoon. First, from verses 10 through 14, God’s law confronts human defilement. Second, God’s corrective action follows empty religion. You can see this in verses 15 through 17. And third, God’s blessing follows heartfelt obedience, in verses 18 and 19.
God’s Law Confronts Unclean Hearts
So first, God’s law confronts our defilement. In the first couple verses here, Haggai is instructed to go speak to the priests. The priests, you may remember – God appointed them to lead the people in appropriate worship and to carry out certain rituals on their behalf. And Haggai has two questions he’s supposed to ask the priests, to clarify what God’s law says about cleanness and uncleanness.
For some of you, it may seem unusual that God’s law has anything to say about cleanness and uncleanness. But sure enough, if go back in your Bible to the book of Leviticus, chapters 11 through 15, you’ll find that God lays out a variety of instructions related to the cleanness and uncleanness of his people. But why?
Though there’s something to be said for God’s wisdom in giving rules that promoted physical health, the laws concerning cleanness and uncleanness weren’t just connected to public wellness and hygiene. These laws were especially about public worship. To be clean, according to the law, meant that you were ceremonially holy – you were capable of bringing an acceptable offering to God. Conversely, to be unclean, according to the law, meant that you were ceremonially defiled. A defiled person couldn’t approach Him who is Holy, Holy, Holy. Anything a defiled man offered would not be acceptable worship in God’s eyes. And so provisions were made in the law, to explain how to deal with uncleanness, so that a person could once again draw near to God in worship.
If you read through the book of Leviticus, you’ll see that the laws concerning holiness and defilement, cleanness and uncleanness – the laws deal with forms of contamination that are physical and external in nature. But over the course of this message to Haggai, it becomes clear that this isn’t the only type of defilement God is concerned about.
In verse 12, Haggai asks the priests the first question God has given him: “If someone carries holy meat in the fold of his garment and touches with his fold bread or stew or wine or oil or any kind of food, does it become holy?” In other words, if I offer a sacrifice, and I have holy meat from this sacrifice nestled in my pocket, will this meat make holy the things that it touches – stew, wine, oil, etc.? And the priests respond, “No.” The holy meat from the sacrifices won’t make you and the things you touch holy. External rituals don’t have the power to transform all the various parts of your life to make them clean and acceptable before a Holy God.
In verse 13, Haggai asks a second question: “If someone who is unclean by contact with a dead body touches any of these [food items], does it become unclean?” And the priests confirm Yes. “It does become unclean.” In other words, the uncleanness of a person causes the things that they touch to become unclean – contaminated – unacceptable in the eyes of God.
And Haggai explains where he’s going with all this in verse 14. He says, “So is it with this people, and with this nation before me, declares the LORD, and so with every work of their hands. And what they offer there is unclean.” Haggai is confronting the people because they have an uncleanness problem. And since the people have been unclean, everything they have touched – every work of their hands, all their crops, all their accomplishments – are likewise unclean and unacceptable.
But this would have raised a question for the people: “How is it that we’re unclean? We haven’t eaten any unclean foods. We haven’t touched any dead bodies. What is it that’s contaminating us?”
God’s Corrective Action Follows Hollow Religion
We find out in verses 15 through 17. The uncleanness isn’t coming from an outside source. But instead they’ve been unclean because of something inside. Prior to be called back to true devotion a few months earlier, the religious exercises of the people had been hollow and insincere. And this brings us to my second point here. God’s Chastisement Follows Hollow Religion.
You’ll notice, in these three verses, God asks the people to think about what their life had been like up to this point, before the rebuilding of the temple. In verse 16, he asks them, “How did you fare? When one came to a heap of twenty measures, there were but ten. When one came to the wine vat to draw fifty measures, there were but twenty.” The lives of the people were marked by scarcity. Even when the people tried to take the matter into their own hands, and work harder – still, there was scarcity.
Why? The Lord tells them why in verse 17: “I struck you and all the products of your toil with blight and with mildew and with hail, yet you did not return to me, declares the LORD.” The reason the people never had enough was because the Lord was striking them with crop diseases and bad weather. And the reason God sent these poor conditions was because His people had turned away from him. This was the source of the people’s uncleanness – they had turned away from God.
You need to understand, though, these people who were unclean – they weren’t hardened atheists. These people weren’t bowing down to Baal, Molech, and the false gods of the nations around them. These people would have told you that they worshiped the God of the Bible. And if you go back to Ezra 3, you’ll see that the people had built an altar to God and were offering sacrifices to him. From outward appearances, these people didn’t look rebellious.
But the problem is that the worshipfulness of this people had morphed into something dry and artificial. They were offering sacrifices to God: cattle, oil, bread, wine – thinking that those were the things God wanted from them. Yet somehow it didn’t occur to the Jews here that God wanted them. The covenant God established with Israel – it was never intended to just be transactional, where God gets roast beef and incense, and the people get two or three blessings for the day. No, the covenant was intended to be personal – relational: with God committed to His people, and the people committed to their God.
But the people had become defiled by embracing this hollow form of religion. And God wanted to make it abundantly clear, that empty religion leads to emptiness, not fullness. It leads to barrenness, not blessing. The superficial performance of ceremonies and rituals might please you, it might impress other people, but it does not and will not satisfy God.
Now a quick word of pastoral insight here. There’ll be times that you’re seeking to obey God, and you won’t feel, inwardly, a strong sense of love or devotion. Your heart may feel numb. You may be tempted to think that your loving service to your family and neighbors, your church attendance, your Bible reading, your prayer time, your other acts of obedience to God – you may be tempted to think that these things are empty and meaningless because you don’t feel excited about doing them.
But the distinction being made here isn’t between obedience that feels meaningful versus obedience that doesn’t feel meaningful. Our emotions can be all over the place. That’s not the point here. The distinction here is between a person who thinks God is impressed with external appearances, versus the person who seeks to serve God with real, whole-hearted devotion. The distinction is that the defiled person relies on outward performance to please God, whereas the clean person relies on God’s cleansing power to make our hearts and lives holy and acceptable in heaven’s eyes.
God’s Blessing Follows Heartfelt Obedience
And God wants to confirm, here, that his blessing follows heartfelt obedience. Which is my third point: God’s blessing follows heartfelt obedience.
Ever since Haggai came to the people of Israel, to confront their hollow, half-hearted religious practices, there had been a transformation in the people. The Word of God had affected their hearts. The Lord had stirred their spirits efficaciously. The people had turned from their self-absorbed lifestyles to recognize their need for God’s presence in their midst – associated with the temple – to be with them, to bless them. There was a vitality in the hearts of the people, to genuinely serve God and live for him.
Now, the temptation to turn back to empty rituals, just going through the motions – that was always going to be there. Part of Haggai’s words here are intended to guard the people from backsliding into that way of life. But in these last two verses, Haggai speaks for the LORD, to assure his people – He really will bless heartfelt obedience.
In verses 18 and 19, Haggai urges them to be on the lookout – because now that they’ve turned back to the Lord, now that their hearts, minds, and bodies are rightly employed in reverent obedience, God intends to bless them. Though their orchards and vineyards have produced nothing, God will soon bring an abundant harvest.
Now it’s really important to clarify – the take-home message of this text isn’t, “Try really hard to be a good, obedient person, and you’ll earn God’s favor and salvation.” This isn’t teaching salvation by works – that’s not the blessing in view here.
But instead this text is intended to be a comfort and encouragement to those who have already found salvation through faith. The people here who are rebuilding the temple – aren’t building the temple because they think their work will bring them up to God! But they’re building the temple because they recognize that their neediness for God’s presence, to cleanse them from their defilement and sin.
And so the encouragement here is for those who have entrusted themselves to God’s saving power. If you’re trusting in Jesus Christ, the one God sent to die for our defilement, and to clothe us in his cleanness, then this is an encouragement here for you. God really intends to bless you in your obedience.
For the people of Israel here, God promised to bless them with abundant harvests and social prosperity – he promised to send a form of blessing that was evident in a very physical, visible way. And we shouldn’t be ashamed to acknowledge that there’s an extent to which God continues to do this today. People who walk according to God’s ways – who are honest, hard-working, faithful to their spouse and family – God will often bring earthly displays of blessing on people who embrace His wisdom. Yet we can probably all think of examples from history or from our own lives where righteous people have suffered terrible things. How does that work?
It’s important to realize that the blessings of God aren’t limited to the earthly realm. God often enables his people, in their times of suffering, to experience blessings of heavenly peace and hope. This world isn’t all there is. In fact, Ephesians 1 suggests that the blessings God has for his people aren’t primarily earthly, when verse 3 says, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.” Our obedience to God won’t always result in a visible, physical display of earthly blessedness. In fact, our physical earthly blessings may be taken away. But that’s okay. Because we have every spiritual blessing reserved for us, in the heavenly places, secure and unchanging. God will convert the blights and mildews and hailstorms of this life into the abundant harvests of eternal joy. God will always bless the heartfelt obedience of his people.
Are You Unclean?
Where’s your heart tonight? Remember, now: performing so-called “holy actions” will not, in itself, make your life holy and acceptable to God. And all the things you touch with an unholy, unclean heart will be defiled and displeasing in His sight. But for those of you who have drawn near to the presence of God, not through that old earthly temple, but through the Holy Temple of Christ’s body, by faith – your worship and obedience is acceptable and pleasing in His sight. And God himself will bless you, forever. I hope this encourages you to pursue humble and happy obedience this week. Let’s pray.